1500 is ALOT of time. Most like to glorify their jobs that are relatively easy regardless of position or airline. All we really do is fly from point A to B and try to avoid bad wx. So what's the big deal? What we have now is nothing like it was before.

Flight Training Aircraft WWII
At the beginning of the war, flight training lasted nine months, with three months of primary, three months of basic, and three months of advanced training. Each pilot had 65 flying hours of primary training and 75 hours of both basic and advanced training. During the war, each phase was reduced first to 10 weeks and then to nine weeks. Primary training was accomplished in aircraft such as the PT-17, PT-19, PT-22 and PT-23 while basic training took place in mostly in the BT-9, BT-13, BT-14 and BT-15. Advanced training for fighter pilots took place in the AT-6, and training for multi-engine aircraft occurred in the AT-9 and AT-10 aircraft.

Many of these guys didn't have collage degrees nor took a cognitive, personality, or a knowledge test and still had stellar carriers. They did it without fancy auto pilots with FMS and a bit more happening then just flying between point A and B.