Is mathematics hard? Well it depends, are you doing high school level mathematics, or are you trying to solve highly complex mathematical problems and/or devis

Is mathematics hard? Well it depends, are you doing high school level mathematics, or are you trying to solve highly complex mathematical problems and/or devise new theorems? In general, the aspect of programming where you write the code is not especially hard, at least not that much more so than basic writing. However, like trying to write a decent quality full length novel, competently programming a large complicated system as part of a large team is definitely quite hard. Although there are occasionally some very hard algorithmic challenges in programming, for the vast majority of programmers, their projects tend to fail for project management reasons. So, while solo programming on a small scale is by and large quite easy compared to many things (such as mastering a musical instrument, being a world class athlete, understanding complex physics, etc), working on a large programming project is certainly very hard and failure is quite regular in our industry. As I've gotten older, I've come to realize that any type of work which requires many people to complete (things such as large construction projects, feature length movies, television series, large aeronautical projects, etc) is hard to complete on time and within budget for the same general reasons, management of a lots of tasks and coordinating lots of people effectively. The most valued programmers in the industry tend to be those that manage to make large scale projects succeed. Programming a little solo project is not "hard", but successfully programming large complex systems is absolutely "very hard".