I meant in terms of documentation, i.e. stack overflow, youtube, etc. Universities are putting their course materials online for free, that sort of thing.

It's easy to be cynical about modern software, but remember it can still be sold and the economic benefit of being able to quickly throw together something that looks like a finished product to test an idea is hard to quantify.

I developed a product like what you described and started a company using nothing but my laptop and an AWS account. To make the same product in 1997 would be difficult if not impossible without very deep pockets.