The premise of this article is that people say, "programming is easy," when they mean, "programming is accessible," or that anyone can do it with a will and a w

The premise of this article is that people say, "programming is easy," when they mean, "programming is accessible," or that anyone can do it with a will and a way. This is true. What is meant when people generally say, "programming is hard," is that only some especially gifted people have a special talent they are born with to truly master it. That's complete non-sense. It's the same kind of thinking that leads people to believe that programmers cannot possibly understand the deep complexities of product design, management, or any other skills a human could possess. It pigeon-holes people into a narrow vacuum of skill. Yes, the skill of programming is technically difficult. I know many programmers, myself included, could probably write a passable implementation of binary search. But I know a good number of our solutions, when verified formally, will have errors in them. What most people refer to as "gatekeeping," is this idea that some of us are born programmers and others... should not hold up hope that they can learn the skill. Programming is a skill that is a commodity. The art of it is in being able to think, critically and solve problems using it.