There's been an explosion in easy access to high quality learning material now. Sure, it's always been possible to teach yourself. Higher level languages and frameworks have sufficiently lowered the barrier to entry, that more people are willing to take the first steps. Being able to easily find answers on Google, to problems that might otherwise be sticking points, also makes it easier than ever to keep going once you've started learning/building. It's possible to learn to program without access to any of those, but it's certainly much easier now.