I don't feel any smarter than I were on my 20's. OTOH, software has gotten much more complex. Mastering the Apple II ROM routines is one thing, but understanding how every piece in a complex web application (app server, rdbms, non-relational storage, cache) interact is much harder. After wrapping my brain around some concepts, it feels very thin. We rely on Google and the web to supplement our memories for things that 25 years ago depended on books and synaptic pathways.
I'm quite sure I am much more effective today than I were 25 years ago, but a lot has to do with cognitive prosthetics.
I tend to think inherent in your reply is an idea that I only see with older developers: that we should actually understand the whole stack. Newer developers are content to let more and more of the development ecosystem be someone else's problem.
So, I empathize strongly, but I think the issue isn't that we need to use prothetics as much as the conventional wisdom is that "that's devops problem."
People have always been content to let parts of the development ecosystem be someone else's problem. It's only the boundaries that have shifted over time.
Today's webdevs consider the webserver and database to be black boxes that are just "there" to be used. The people writing those webservers and databases in the 90s and 00s usually considered the OS and compiler to be black boxes that were somebody else's problem. The people writing those OSes and compilers in the 70s and 80s considered the hardware to be a black box to be trusted (at least at a high level; they knew processor architecture, but I doubt very many thought hard about how to build a flip-flop, NAND gate, or multiplexer). The people designing those chips in the 50s and 60s considered the vacuum tubes and silicon wafers to be black boxes; you don't think very much about how your silicon gets out of the ground, but that's a pretty huge project on its own.
I find web development less enjoyable than 5 or 10 years ago because of the increasing size and complexity of the stack.
At least us old fogies have had the last 15 years to learn web development. How the hell do young programmers learn such a big stack in a few years? I'm guessing half using youthful energy and the other half skipped in blissful ignorance?! :)
When I was starting out, I did design, frontend dev, backend dev, and ops work. Over the last 15 years these positions have all split into specializations: design was the first to go, then ops. The split between frontend and backend opened up in the middle of the last decade, and continues to split even further into controller and model devs on the back end and Javascript and CSS people on the frontend.
The increasingly popularity of frameworks stems from this specialization. It's more important than ever to have separation of concerns, because as apps get larger, individual devs are doing smaller and smaller sections of the work.
Young programmers don't know less than us -- they know way more than we do, but on a much narrower range.
I really don't agree with this, design/dev have always been different specializations, serious javascript has only appeared in the last few years and I've only seen people actually describing themselves exclusively as a 'frontend dev' in the last 6 months.
And 'frontend dev' at the moment seems to be as malleable as a SEO was, sometimes it means a designer who can add jQuery and a couple of modules to a page, sometimes it means a talented javascript programmer with an in depth knowledge of HTML/CSS.
And young programmers can't know way more than older programmers, if you keep learning.
I mean I am lazy, but not so much that I would knowingly write insecure code for my customers; I'm can't imagine that many developers are different in that respect?
I find web development less enjoyable than 5 or 10 years ago because of the increasing size and complexity of the stack.
Part of this is that stacks that start off all light and fresh "we're not Struts!" before long acquire a few too many "must-have" features until, Lo! they are Struts.
Then it's time to drop that framework and find something more fresh, light, and lean, and enjoy it while it lasts.
The past weekend (during a RHoK event) I was introduced to TipFy by a young dude who's far faster than me in grokking new tools. It was easy, fresh and led to a fun weekend of web development.
Tipfy runs on the Google App Engine Python stack. It's a bit rough on the edges, but that's part of the fun.
I started programming in web development about 4 years ago: first HTML and CSS, then adding Javascript and AJAX, then PHP, then Ruby and Rails. In the process I learned a fair amount about MySQL and I can do the most basic Unix server administration.
I'm on my third full-time web development job and I now feel decently confident in my abilities. But yes: it's a big stack, and overwhelming. Everywhere I turn I see more things I don't know. I'm always reading and trying to improve.
Were there ever simpler times? It's an interesting thought to me. I find the constant challenge to be interesting, but admittedly, sometimes tiring.
It's not about being able to add code to every piece of your stack, but understanding what all of its external interfaces do. How many programmers you know can do that with their stacks?
At my age of 39 I solve tasks that in my 20's I can't even dream approaching. I attribute it to much higher-level languages I use today (mostly Haskell) and, of course, to experience in various fields.
I'm quite sure I am much more effective today than I were 25 years ago, but a lot has to do with cognitive prosthetics.