> If coding is easy, how come programmers were in high demand, and have demanded large salaries for years (even before ZIRP)?

There's probably a lot wrong with the "coding was never the hard part" take, but this quote right here shows that the author is not willing to engage with the actual idea that folks who say this are espousing. Because if the author was discussing these ideas on good faith, he'd know that the answer is obvious: there's much, much more to a software engineer's job than just coding, and that other stuff is very hard to do well, and people pay for that.

Again, I'm not saying the "coding was never the hard part" folks are right, but I really, really hate straw men.