RAM and resources are one thing, but knowledge accessibility has also evolved in order of magnitude since the 2000. I remember the pre-Google days, offices were the only place with always-active internet access, (ie it was much more difficult to learn on your own and during your spare time) and there were very fewer communities and less-structured knowledge sharing communities.
Back then (around 97, 2000), we used to subscribed to plain-text mailing list to 'enter' a community. Software documentation which was incomplete or not good wasn't completed by some community-led effort in a structured fashion, because the tools weren't there yet.
On the other end though, for better or worse, things evolved fast but not as fast as today. I mean, I cannot imagine leaving today's world for 6 months without having to anticipate some strong catch-up when I come back. Back then, fewer things happened in 6 months regarding languages, framework, security, potential solutions to leverage in your architecture.
All to say, it was much more difficult to learn and become an expert back then, but once you acquired that knowledge, the deprecation speed was not as fast as it is today!