The whole point of libraries and higher level languages is that they allow you to work at a higher level of abstraction.

As the languages and libraries improve, difficult problems become trivial, while impossible problems become merely difficult. Given enough time, problems eventually become trivial enough to be solved by non-programmers.

There will always be a frontier - problems that have barely just become solvable thanks to improvements and technology, and these 'very difficult' problems will be what the best and brightest will be drawn to.

Maybe the author is working on problems that aren't challenging enough.