Each new generation of programmers creates new tools to replace the 'complex' ones that came before without even bothering to understand them.
In my 25 year career I've seen it multiple times. We are all going downhill.
Attention spans in the smartphone era might be preventing people from reading the f*ing manual.
This means that any system or library which has an operating model that must be understood before it can be effectively used¹ simply can't be understood by the majority of programmers today.
1: The currently popular things in software world are mostly the type of system that lack such a model and which can be 'mastered' by asking discrete questions on stack overflow. This lack of complexity causes a loss of expressive power.
I would also add that the economic conditions of the software industry are stacked against endeavoring to master and use a complex and thus powerful and expressive system / library
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Ugh, I don't share this sentiment.
Each new generation of programmers creates new tools to replace the 'complex' ones that came before without even bothering to understand them.
In my 25 year career I've seen it multiple times. We are all going downhill.
Attention spans in the smartphone era might be preventing people from reading the f*ing manual.
This means that any system or library which has an operating model that must be understood before it can be effectively used¹ simply can't be understood by the majority of programmers today.
1: The currently popular things in software world are mostly the type of system that lack such a model and which can be 'mastered' by asking discrete questions on stack overflow. This lack of complexity causes a loss of expressive power.
And no one even writes the manual anymore. Software project documentation is a disaster.
I would also add that the economic conditions of the software industry are stacked against endeavoring to master and use a complex and thus powerful and expressive system / library