<i>the barriers aren&#x27;t much lower</i><p>They <i>really</i> are. I&#x27;ve been writing code for 30 years (professionally for 20) and while the logic hasn&#x27;t really changed a great deal, all of the things <i>around</i> coding absolutely have. The work necessary to get something to display on a screen, the speed of both compiling code and running an application, the sheer quantity and quality of example code to learn from, the tools available to do things like source control and testing, the libraries that do most of the work so you can concentrate on the bit you&#x27;re actually interested in, the quality of debugging tools and error messages that a language will give you ... all of these things add up to an environment where writing code is just so much simpler than it ever has been before. All that means that beginners can concentrate on learning rather than getting frustrated by incomprehensible messages that they need to look up in a manual and decipher because a lot of technical writing was pretty awful back then.<p>It&#x27;s impossible to overemphasise how important it is when you&#x27;re learning to be able to concentrate on what you&#x27;re trying to figure out without needing to worry about <i>other stuff</i> that might distract you. <i>That</i> is what&#x27;s made it easier to get in to development.