I think the more likely explanation is that he's just not as familiar with frontend web development and react, so he underestimated the difficulty. He was asking for help on Twitter for how to make pills inside of a text field. His failure was caused by a knowledge check rather than a skill check.

> His failure was caused by a knowledge check rather than a skill check.

whats the difference w/r/t programming? in this case I'd argue the knowledge was the skill