If anything, there were a bunch of low barrier to entry software development options like HyperCard, MS Access, Visual Basic, Delphi, 4GLs etc. around in the 90s, that went away.

It feels like programming then got a lot harder with internet stuff that brought client-server challenges, web frontends, cross platform UI and build challenges, mobile apps, tablets, etc... all bringing in elaborate frameworks and build systems and dependency hell to manage and move complexity around.

With that context, it seems like the AI experience / productivity boost people are having is almost like a regression back to the mean and just cutting through some of the layers of complexity that had built up over the years.