Having had a... scenic, shall we say, academic tenure, I can say that programming is not really that hard compared to some other topics. Second year biochem te

Having had a... scenic, shall we say, academic tenure, I can say that programming is not really that hard compared to some other topics. Second year biochem tends to kill chemists. My inability to grasp differential equations in my mechanics class (physics) pissed me off so much that I accidentally got a math degree instead of a CS degree (had to go back for a year to convert it). I could go on, but in reality there are far harder courses than anything I took in CS. I don't think anything has change so much even though a considerable amount of time has passed. As more evidence, look at the huge number of people with degrees in unmarketable skills doing boot camps and actually becoming productive professional programmers. It's not that hard -- maybe a bit harder than learning a human language (but not nearly so time consuming). But I will say that in my time the biggest destroyer of talented people in CS: Empire. I had to forbid myself from playing that damn thing. Ruin your life, it would! I wonder if there is any kind of similar geeky crack these days... (though I think that even today if undergrads got their hands on Empire they would be doomed...)