I think the point is that nothing about this is really that specific to programming; what we're talking about here isn't an instance of programming being hard b

I think the point is that nothing about this is really that specific to programming; what we're talking about here isn't an instance of programming being hard but effective communication being hard. The parts of software development that are time consuming aren't very intuitive to non-programmers because there isn't an obvious way to show tangible progress, which makes it very hard to track externally, so it relies more heavily on verbally communicating the current state of things, and that introduces the potential for a lot of misunderstandings.