It depends on the country and the government there, i'd say, as well as how technologically advanced they are. Here in Latvia, it's actually not too hard - you just need to fill out a couple of forms, take care of the starting capital and payments and then you'll be registered as a company. In addition, there are various types of companies, to support small startups as well: https://www.ur.gov.lv/en/register/
That said, i believe that taxes and such are a tad overcomplicated in most countries, though there probably are a few good arguments against making most of the bureaucracy a bunch of online forms with prepopulated data, with which i may or may not agree.
Of course, for many, other aspects of actually running a company are what cause difficulty - everything from doing sales to marketing, as opposed to just writing code and architecting technical solutions.
No, but not because it's supposedly difficult to incorporate; I did this once and it only took filling a one page form, waiting 10 minutes in queue and paying 20€ with a bank card.
It's because instead of programming then time would be frittered away with customer acquisition and asshole management.
Probably not, from comments I've seen here, it takes an awful lot of work to make a legal business. In the US, it takes minutes to incorporate, and even less time if you don't care to incorporate and just want to file a Doing Business As to use a separate name. Business banking doesn't take a lot to get going either. If you live in California, your employer probably can't stop you from quitting to start a competitor (as long as you don't take IP with you)