So is this some grand conspiracy from Microsoft to make programming less fun?
The following explanation may be more to your tastes:
The market has noticed that there are insufficient programmers to meet demand. Microsoft is a profit maximizing company seeking to provide a service as requested by the market. Microsoft (along with every other company) is not in a position to make people capable of programming, as this would require proper nutrition, and education for children, reducing contaminants and pollution, reducing spectacle and distractions, and marinating these youngsters in the field, etc. Not to mention that resolving these issues could increase their cost of business, or on their officers substantially through taxes!
So barring the possibility of making complete human beings the world has seen 1001 ways to reduce programmer cost by attempting to offload onto armies of apes, which would otherwise be few men. These replaceable parts don't need to read documentation, or specification, only examples which they can imitate without thinking. They get by fine because almost everything they're doing has been done many times before; typically their only challenge is locating a new example to copy. They meet performance criteria since their solution passes an exhaustive testsuite in a timely manner, and because no one cares if the software is well designed and thought out. Unfortunately programming is a thinking game, you have to understand, and contemplate to find ``The Right Thing'' in both interface and implementation. The result is a cancerous growth of complexity and ``The Wrong Thing'' so as to make thinking and ``The Right Thing'' nearly impossible.
With this growth we are presented with two options, let men rebuild, or more monkeys. We repeat from the beginning. This is how things have always been here.