[mathattack]

Much easier to learn to program and do bigger things today. Professional life (and life in general) is much better today than 25 years ago.

20 years ago: - It was hard to find books on technical subjects. - Computing time was so scarce you had crazy internal chargeback systems. (Though this is sort of coming full circle with AWS) - You had to worry about every level of the stack to do the simplest things. (Weak abstraction) - No meetups or other technically assisted socializing. - In most cities if you wanted to grab a beer, the cost involved coming home smelling like smoke.

[pmorici]

You realize it will be 2015 in two weeks right? 20 years ago it was 1995 computing time wasn't "scarce" the PC had already been around for 10+ years 20 years ago.

[mathattack]

I'm aging myself. Maybe I should say 25. :-)

When I was in school, computing time was a pain in the ass. Same with my first job after. I'm not talking run a little Excel, more like "Create the data cube for a company's monthly sales numbers" computing.