Programming is some combination of complex and difficult. "Difficult" in the sense of mathematical elegance, algorithmic design, or other sense of academic "ha

Programming is some combination of complex and difficult. "Difficult" in the sense of mathematical elegance, algorithmic design, or other sense of academic "hard". Keep in mind the average developer probably doesn't understand big-O. Usually these programs/systems are focused on the specific algorithm and not a lot else. "Complex" in the sense that the code may be no more than a glorified crud app in the classic database-transport-presentation architecture, but nevertheless has such a breadth of data, classes, types, frameworks, and the like that it still becomes "hard". So a "casual" programmer will run into the hard-complex code structure, but will flounder completely at hard-difficult algorithm. Of course SV/FAANG interview on hard-algorithm, and then make them spend all day on hard-complex crud. The reality is that hard-algorithm requires academic smarts, but hard-crud requires social and management skills.