The vast majority of people do not want to be programmers and would not enjoy programming. Delaying the moment the actually have to do something difficult with a programming language is not especially heathly.
How would you feel about a career in football sold to you on the basis of table pong? Keep playing the pong, and then one day, you're face is in the dirt and you drop out.
The self-esteem hack psychology of the 60s-90s equivocated encouraging people with lying to them, as-if the only way we can get programmers is by lying about what programming is about. This isnt encouraging anyone, it's lying to them.
You can’t run a business expecting every employee to be a rockstar. It just doesn’t scale. So you skill it down and put the high-skill people where they can have the most impact.
The complexity of the code is not part of the definition. Nor is your understanding of the hardware/software involved.
Unless you've experienced this sales pitch you're not going to connect with the point i'm making.
The whole point of programming is power and flexibility. Else there would be no need to move beyond logic gates.
The problem is tools sold for newbies tend to take away too much power to make it easy for people to start, but then keep them, right there, all life.
Somebody playing football in a Sunday pub league is still playing football, and still loves playing football, even if they're not at the same standard of Lionel Messi.
For me at least, I feel the same about programming. I love understanding somebody's problem, and building a solution for them that solves that problem. I normally use PHP (and sometimes Python or Ruby or JavaScript) because they make it easier for me to focus on the problem, rather than language details. I can't always solve the problem because it's too difficult, and perhaps some of my solutions are not 'optimal'. But I feel hurt by the idea that because I don't have a strong understanding of how Python works at a really deep level, I'm not a real programmer.
I also think that's a great way to piss people off who are just getting into the industry, and may one day become great programmers - even Linus Torvalds was a junior once. I'd encourage them to keep going, keep learning, and keep helping people solve their problems (and getting paid good money for doing that).