> When we were using Hypercard or BASIC to make dumb little programs, we weren't learning any of that stuff either, really.

> Making apps is so complicated now

Well that is not entirely true, I recall trying to learn game development. A lot of the time I spent was searching posts on web forums or asking questions in DAL/EF/Free/etc net and getting told to learn how to ask a question... not only that but I had learned it was better to write games not engines. Though I still managed to find out about GDI, which led me to DirectX, OpenGL, and then SDL. Those were scary... This is also when I learned about modding games, specifically Half-Life modding, which for some reason led me to creating bots for Counter-Strike just because I could and that is when I learned ladders are really difficult.