It's intriguing seeing how often we reach for metaphors when trying to define software engineering. Some say it's like music, others like painting, the crafts a

It's intriguing seeing how often we reach for metaphors when trying to define software engineering. Some say it's like music, others like painting, the crafts and so on. What often gets overlooked is that those areas are thoroughly anchored in the physical and sensorial world - one perceives their work and usually physically interacts with it. For software, one sits most of the time in front of a glowing screen and the rest is drawing boxes and text on paper/whiteboards (plus meetings). Certainly doesn't sound as glamorous and one is left with imagining their work most of the time. That's why such comparisons fall flat and at least to me it seems that an attempt is being made at rubbing some "cool" on something that is typically perceived as uncool and for a regular human looks mind-numbingly boring. So programming's not hard because it's like <arts/crafts>, but because it's abstract and mechanical and emotionless. It's an acquired taste which needs fertile ground to develop in, when most people understandably don't have that, not even for a simple stack of JS, HTML and CSS.