Programming is not getting harder, these are just the reactions of people who probably shouldn't be in this discipline in the first place.
A great deal of any programming, technical, what have you job is just getting stuff to work. A lot of it has nothing to do with the actual core task at hand or your specialization but still needs to happen one way or another. This means using critical thinking skills, deductive reasoning, the scientific method. It means scouring Google, trying things until you have a clear mental model of whatever insane legacy you're working in.
Back in the day, I'd spend my time at home trying random things, looking at files in a hex editor, disassembling software to figure out how it worked because there was simply no other way. There was no Internet, and the only documentation I had was at my library, which was limited to whatever they had and usually was out of date or incorrect. Sometimes they wouldn't even let me bring stuff home, because I was a kid and why on earth is this weird kid wanting some giant technical reference manual? There were no laptops (that I could afford) so I had to read it there, and then go back home and try more things with my hopefully newfound knowledge.
Today, we have Google, we have groups, the Internet, mobile devices, tons of high quality blogs, books, free online courses, and the industry itself is infinitely larger with resources that still boggle my mind to this day. As long as I have the time, I'm usually able to tackle most any problem. I couldn't really say that as a kid growing up in the early 90's, trying to learn programming. Those were the literal stone ages. No internship programs, most people thought of tech jobs as vocational IT help desk related (at least in my hometown). There were times when I was legitimately stuck with no resources or recourse.
So please, excuse me if I don't find sympathy of these people who cannot be bothered to setup their python envrionment with the aid of stackoverflow.