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I'd venture this guess: because programming is presented everywhere as something easy, with a ton of "hello world" tutorials which don't even begin to scratch the surface. "Everyone can do it" is thrown left and right. Man are they in for a surprise, when they are introduced to tons of poorly written legacy code used by, say, critical medical systems. Think spaghetti code and text-file interfaces with dozens of systems but on a whole new level, likes of which is hard to even imagine.

Damn right, programming is hard, and it is getting harder with every line of code people write.

Note: in this example, I bunched programming with maintaining together. If you only write code for new features without taking into account existing or legacy code, you're a lucky son of a gun.

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> I'd venture this guess: because programming is presented everywhere as something easy

I'd say that's an overreaction to the default presentation where coders are genius wizard wunderkind hackers from the movies. I don't know about your experience, but whenever I say I'm a programmer (or more directly translated "informatician") in a mixed group, everyone thinks that' must be rocket surgery.

Perhaps kids in specific countries now grow up being told that it's easy, but I think the 25-30+ years old cohort thinks programming is hard and only for the really smart people.

> whenever I say I'm a programmer

It's funny to see how different reactions in different cultures are.

In India, being a programmer will be looked at with exhaustion and judgement. Sorta,"Oh you too? Get in line."

I agree that kids are now growing up being told that it's easy. Here's a possible scenario:

1. we tell kids it's easy in order to get them interested

2. those who are interested, learn with time that it isn't as easy but love it anyway

3. those that are not interested, which is probably the majority, still go home thinking it's easy