easy - think about the pain and toil of standing up a webapp in 1992, compare it to logging into aws and spinning up a template that uses managed databases and lambda functions with some templating engines, write minimal code, lots of configs, etc.

the latter requires much less knowledge and enginnering than the former.

the process has been dumbified

There were only a handful of websites in 1992, all using CERNLIB [0] and was easy to setup. AWS is 10000x more complicated to understand and setup.

[0] https://cernlib.web.cern.ch/cernlib/

That's only true if you plan to use some of the many AWS "services".

Get an instance, choose some linux distro image that comes with ssh and nginx installed, start it up, configure a few files, grab an elastic IP, you're done.

I set up the first public web server in the pacific northwest in 1993. It wasn't that hard, but mostly because I already admin'ed the machine(s) it ran on anyway.

OK, "dumbification" is unnecessarily antagonistic. But one can bring up an online presence today with astoundingly little knowledge of the technology or the implications. So maybe "massive simplification" is a fairer, nicer and more reasonable tone.

REAL programmers use a magnetized needle and a steady hand

https://xkcd.com/378/

F** that, I use Butterflies and Murder Hornets.

when my code doesn't work. I send in the murder hornets for retaliation.