Most people I know who are any good at programming had started learning about it by modifying something either on their own computers (pre-2000) or on the web (post 2000). They took things they found interesting or useful and somehow introspected and changed them. Good chunks of skills gained by that were transferable to professional environment.
Today, this is not how people get into tech. There is an ever increasing gap between technologies used for professional computing and things that are observable and modifiable by a normal person out there.
Curiosity and experimentation have been replaced by (appropriately named) coding bootcamps.
This is a problem EE’s currently talk about. People good at analog electronics are starting to age out of the workforce. There are a ton of people who got into electronics 40+ years ago by fiddling with things. This is harder today than it was back when through hole was how components were made (though the maker movement has changed that trajectory IMO). I could easily see the same problem with CS in general as access to general computing becomes less populous. I’ve even heard rumor it’s happened to some degree already when people talk about an unusual age band for devs born around +/- 1975 who tend to have a particularly good grasp of computers due to growing up with the first personal computers.
I agree that the proportion of people getting into tech via curiosity and experimentation has decreased.
However, I'm not convinced that the absolute number has decreased. It's completely possible that larger numbers than ever of people are getting into tech as an extension of their own curiosity, and are simply less visible due to being outnumbered by the masses from bootcamps.
You are talking about a barrier to entry (in the sense that it used to be easier) for a person who is new to general purpose computing to get on boarded while the person you are replying to is talking about the opportunity increase in the number of systems you can with work with presently.
I think it's actually easier today, because of the large amount of free well made educational resources out there, stack overflow, raspberry pi, instant IDEs from just typing in a URL, scriptable and popular online games like roblox and more. While in the past you had books you had to buy and if you were lucky, some help on IRC and basic on your computer, that you were encouraged to use to get some basic games on your computer if you were a gen X kid.
As a kid I got into programming in basic on my Acorn Archimedes because I had a book on basic. However I never got further than that because I didn’t have access to any more advanced programming books.
Now, all the information about it everything is available within a few minutes of searching.
Most people I know who are any good at programming had started learning about it by modifying something either on their own computers (pre-2000) or on the web (post 2000). They took things they found interesting or useful and somehow introspected and changed them. Good chunks of skills gained by that were transferable to professional environment.
Today, this is not how people get into tech. There is an ever increasing gap between technologies used for professional computing and things that are observable and modifiable by a normal person out there.
Curiosity and experimentation have been replaced by (appropriately named) coding bootcamps.