Interesting that the author didn't really discuss WHY programming is hard; I agree that it is, but if their concern is that beginners are being misled into thin

Interesting that the author didn't really discuss WHY programming is hard; I agree that it is, but if their concern is that beginners are being misled into thinking it's easy then I would have expected they'd spend some time exploring what programming is really like rather than commenting on tangential social issues. My own experience as a programming teacher leads me to believe that one of the main difficulties for the new programmer is the level of precision with which they must be able to articulate a concept in code in order to have it work. For example, it was much more common for a given student to grasp, say, a conditional statement and when to use it than it was for them to understand that changing the capitalization of a variable meant they weren't referring to what they wanted.