I'm often asked 'How do I get to be a great programmer like you Pete?'.  Well not quite, I added the last bit, but Tokes provides a better answer than I ever could. 

I completely agree with Tokes, being a (Microsoft) developer is getter way harder. But it's not Microsoft's fault.  It's those pesky users.  I always said that being a developer would be a piece of cake if it wasn't for users!  They seem to want more and more every year and are less impressed by coded coolness.   In fact, I think there is a formula to calculate coolness:

(C is Coolness, loc is lines of code, si is systems integrated, To is time overrun)

Time seems to be suffering too.  As systems and requirements grow in complexity there seems to be some sort of temporal distortion reducing the amount of time available to a developer. I think Stephen Hawking discovered this when he ran out of budget for his black hole simulator (SimHole).

Developers must also share the blame for increasing complexity. We are always chasing the next best thing without much regard for using what we already have.  Microsoft's job is to create temptation - it's us developers that can't keep our hands out of the cookie jar.  Visual Basic 6 is still a great tool.  Visual Studio 2008 just looks prettier!

It's no wonder that fewer and fewer kids are taking up IT as a career. Although, with both parents in the industry my 3 kids seem to be heading in the right direction.  Maybe we as developers should procreate more?