It's hard to write code for computers, but it's even harder to write code for humans
Writing code for a computer is hard enough. You take something big and fuzzy, some large vague business outcome you want to achive. Then you break it down recursively and think about all the cases until you have clear logical statements a computer can follow. Computers are very good at following logical statements.
I need to clarify what I mean. I'm talking about code that other humans will interact with. More specifically, I'm talking about the art of crafting joyful frameworks, libraries, APIs, SDKs, DSLs, embedded DSLs, or maybe even programming languages.
Writing this code is much harder, because you're not just telling a computer what to do, you're also grappling with another user's mental model of your code. Now it's equal part computer science and psychology of reasoning, or something. How do you get that person to understand your code?
Feynman famously said: Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings. about something very different, but in a funny way I think this describes programming for humans a bit. The person interpreting your code actually has feelings!
