Code really is the easiest part. That doesn't mean code is easy. It means everything is hard, and code is just the least hard part. The best programmer in the world will still create bugs. Therefore you need something else to account for and deal with the eventual bugs.

In the rest of the engineering world, the way you do that is by standards bodies developing reliable, tested, certified methods to build things that avoid common problems. Pipes that are certified to a certain PSI or UV exposure. Wires certified to a certain amount of amperage, wetness, heat. Nails certified with a certain metal grade, tolerances.

Those standard parts are then used in a certified building method for a specific application at specific usage criteria. 3x 12d nails in one kind of wood joint. Beams spaced 24" apart, with 3/4" CDX plywood spread load. You don't guess or follow trends. You don't do what you think is "clean" or "beautiful". You solely follow the engineering standards and code. Now you don't have to think much, and your results are highly reliable. The job becomes easy.

Software doesn't have professional engineering and building standards like that. So humans literally just make this shit up as they go, making software however the zeitgeist of HN says "feels good". This results in unpredictable, unreliable software products that are hard to build because nobody agrees on the "right way".

Somebody read a blog post, or a slogan or quip on a Wikipedia page, and decided on their own interpretation of how that generic advice would drive their work. Software engineers only talk to other software engineers, so they don't realize how incredibly unscientific, inefficient, unreliable, and difficult their work is. Trying to make something predictable and reliable is therefore very hard. Not because writing the code is hard, but because the entire software product lifecycle is basically vibes. The uncertainty, variability, and lack of reproducible standard parts makes figuring out how to build something become way more complicated than it should be.

The actual lines of code are easy to read and write. But without the standards common to every other engineering discipline, the rest of the job is a slog.