Programming is hard
I've been programming for a long, long time. Went to college for it when I was a pre-teen. The more and more I code the more I see it closer to something like music than something like engineering. Getting a little garage band together isn't hard. A couple years of practice and you and your friends can play at a little bar or at least at a high school shindig.The same is more or less true for programming. A simple stack of JS, HTML, and CSS is pretty easy to get going. And if you're content to make marketing sites for advertising companies or similar, then go nuts. That's your simple jam and you rock out on it as much as you like.Other people want to learn violin or weird keys or timings or cross rhythm. They want to woodshed some African drums and mix them into complex arrangements. And you know what? It is harder than playing a simple guitar for a simple song.We have the same thing with software, and once you've put in the years you find a sort of series of specializations that make you stand out a bit more and get you a bit more money.So when people say "programming is easy" what they really mean is that it's easier than most people expect it will be for the financial incentives it provides. Compared to, say, structural engineering which takes four years of focussed study then a long period of practical understudy, software is easy and it pays more. Almost any structural engineer can become a data analyst or junior data scientist and make around double the salary within a year or two.Yes we've all had the frustrating semicolon days, but there are highlights too. Fast feedback, ease of learning new technologies, ease of scaling to millions of customers. There are many advantages and I think they make up for it.