Is it? When I was learning to program, I had a computer with Windows on it and no money. First, I needed to install Borland's C++ compiler / IDE, because that's what they used in the class and computer lab at my high school and I didn't know of anything else. But I had no money, so first I had to figure out how to pirate it. Then awhile later I heard that there was a free compiler on this operating system called Linux. So, after reading a bunch of stuff to figure out whether I wanted Slackware or Gentoo or SuSe or Fedora, I had to figure out how to download and install Linux. Then I had to figure out how to use GCC, but first I had to figure out how to edit text, which meant figuring out how to use Emacs. Then I finally had a usable (and legal) development environment.
Nowadays it seems like I could just get a Mac and download Atom to get to that same point.
Maybe there are other hard things to figure out now, but it just doesn't seem true that it was easier "back in the day", at least 15 years or so ago.
It's as if you were describing my own experience. With the only difference, that I had to figure out how to use vi. Such fun! I took me some time to figure out how to exit the editor, let alone how to make changes or write the file.
We didn't have all the resources at out fingertips back then. Just the books. We couldn't find copy-and-paste hideous solutions on StackOverflow, we had to figure it out on our own. Programming had the air of wizardry.
I do believe that nowadays it's much easier to learn the basics of programming, considering massive number of resources available just a few keystrokes away. On the other hand the expectations have changed a lot after programming went mainstream.
In my line of work, before I became a consultant, I had interviewed a lot of candidates for web development positions. In my rough estimate only 2 out of 10 are cut out for it. And no wonder - the demand on the market is massive, the money is all right, so more people jump on the bandwagon and try to get by. They don't want to learn a great deal, they don't have a real interest in the domain. They just want to do the job as painlessly as possible and get paid good money.
This also means, they have to cut corners. They don't have time to figure things out and build solid foundations. They are after quick results. They just want to become employable. The passion in our profession is hugely diluted, with the inflow of people who want to do the job just because it pays nicely. It's pure economy.
And because it is economy, the expectations have changed. Maximising return on investment, where the time spent on learning something is the investment, means that steep learning curve is no good anymore.
So maybe let's not dwell on how hard it is to become a programmer these days. In my view it's definitely harder to stay one, than to become one, with everything changing so fast. However becoming a programmer is not more difficult today than it was 20 years ago.
Nowadays it seems like I could just get a Mac and download Atom to get to that same point.
Maybe there are other hard things to figure out now, but it just doesn't seem true that it was easier "back in the day", at least 15 years or so ago.