Certainly not a good article. I'd really like studies that test the hypothesis that "programming is hard". Whenever this topic comes up there is a lot of anecdotes, usually about people who have positive experiences but that doesn't show anything about the population!

My personal hypothesis (if I may) is that programming is hard for a majority (>50%) of people. It starts with reading: Reading comprehension is hard for many people. And reading code is way harder than reading text, which means programming can only be easy for those who read well. And that's just the start. You also have to have a sense of logical thinking and finding solutions. Many people have trouble with that as well. So just from these two aspects (reading + logical thinking) I'd already say that programming is indeed hard. At least if we use the general population as reference.

Programming is hard because you need to have a lot of pre-acquired knowledge before you can even start to delve in the only interesting aspect of it, which is the logic solving.

Is like having to learn everything about how a lego brick is built (from the materials used, to the production processes used in the factories, to the composition of the houses where lego bricks are used) before being able to play with them. Everyone (aside from an very motivated subset of people) would find Legos "Hard" in that context.

Having to memorize a myriad of arcane incantations, software setups and a million "standards" will always make programming look "hard" and daunting, even for those who have an interest in logic problems, but not have an interest on babysitting a computer.

In conclusion, programming is a land of contrasts. Thank you.