Programming is getting harder and harder instead of making our lives easier. Is it really supposed to be like this?

Well programs are getting more complex too... That might *partially* explain

The volume of information is increasing exponentially. Most of the programs we have today would be completely useless 20 years ago, because back then we weren't so overwhelmed with information as we are today.

We need more, better programs to handle all of that information for us, and just show us what we need, in a fast and easy way, without us losing focus.

So yeah, it's harder. But it also pays a lot, and keeps up very well to the most fast growing workforce offers in history. The amount of developers has exploded, yet we still have well paying jobs.

Getting into programming seems easier than ever, yet due to the complexity of modern world -
We need to write much more complex stuff, while keeping it as simple & clean, as possible.

I disagree.

Programming is not supposed to make your life as a developer easier. It's there to make somebody else's life easier. (Or to kick them out of a job.)

Yet even as a developer, when I see how I work today and compare this how I did things in the past, not even 5 years ago, I never want to go back. I want to code in the now.

Our toolsets are constantly evolving and making us much more productive.

And the very aspect that our work gets harder means that automation works. It kills all those easy jobs, and we just started to work our way to even get rid of the hard ones. And we barely started.

"The amount of developers has exploded, yet we still have well paying jobs."

I like this one.

There are still people who avoid programming at all cost. They think they can't do it. My friends tell me that they don't like thinking.

I think that although there is a huge amount of new developers, there is still a shortage of the good ones. And I strive to belong to the latter.

@nikolatesla yes, there is shortage of good people. But you should see this shortage as a shortage of people on the X level of quality that are willing to be paid on the (X-1) level of quality. This would be a "yeah, d'uhhh".

The problem is that people are still learning to work with devs. Jobs like project manager and product owner have gone through so many transformations, and all because people can't communicate with devs. As a result they can't use the dev's abilities properly, and use them only at a (X-1) level, and pay accordingly.

Don't know, since I switched to vs .net and c#... For me is becoming easier and easier :)

@Alt-Grrr with asm you needed the know-how of how to make certain easy algorithms (re-invent the bicycle). But you only had a handful of commands.

I bring you, Full-Stack Developer v.2.0.1.7:
.NET: EF API, LINQ, complex syntax, tons of libraries and knowledge on how to use them. Knowledge on how to extend the framework itself, etc. Thousands upon thousands of APIs everywhere that keep changing once fashion dictates.
Java: just the whole monster of an infrastructure that is maven, gradle, and all the Java-related technologies that I have no idea about
PHP: welll PHP isn't that complicated, but still, today it's more about knowing how to use composer packages
JS: and now let the fun begin. npm, React, React Native, Redux, Flow, TypeScript, jsx, CoffeeScript (dead but whatever), Babel, Express, callback hell, etc.

The knowledge required to be a full-stack developer is just over the roof. Huge entry requirements compared to the handful of Assembler commands.

@Alt-Grrr no, that's not "hello world" level app.
In the past, "Hello World" was not far from what was really needed.
The most complicated programs back then could be written in small and simple pieces of code today. Very simple. Not very different from a "hello world". So relatively speaking, the average problem in the past was much, much simpler than the average problem today.

@Alt-Grrr have you seen the most famous game of that time? "Pong"? Its complexity isn't much different from what "Hello World" does. How I know that? It was one of my first challenges in the first 2 months of coding in my life.

The FACT is that people could learn how to code from a thin manual, without computer science classes. How I know that? I DID THAT!

Today, in order to be a software developer, you need YEARS of studies, YEARS of practice, THOUSANDS of pages of books read, or the equivalent in additional classes and tutorials.

@theScientist Moore's law was never a prediction. It was more like a frame, a target. But in the latest couple of decades it was far from reality. But this isn't about Moore, but about the more complicated world that we live in.