I think it stems from the fact that you actually have to understand a problem in computer science to comprehend it's difficulty. In carpentry, for example, any

I think it stems from the fact that you actually have to understand a problem in computer science to comprehend it's difficulty. In carpentry, for example, anyone can observe a finely carved piece of wood work and immediately know that it was a difficult to make. In computer science you show a layman gcc next to the Windows calculator program and my guess would be a majority would choose the calculator as the more difficult of the two. This likely makes us computer scientists feel like we have to explicitly state the difficulty of our accomplishments where as for some better understood professions it is implied. I mean there are loads of people out there who think that they know everything there is to know about a computer because they can upgrade their sound card and install windows w/o setting their house on fire.