There's a touch of "let them eat cake" in the author's expectation that these difficult problems could be easily solved, if someone just put a little thought in

There's a touch of "let them eat cake" in the author's expectation that these difficult problems could be easily solved, if someone just put a little thought into it. This is perhaps most clearly revealed here: "Changing the program is the most common thing we need to do in our work, it's the reason our job even exist. And yet, most of programmer's time is spent reading or planning how to change the code." Combined with the disdain for testing those changes, it seems the author wants a magic programming wand.