Maybe it is for people who have written code all their lives, but as someone who started with reading code and has read far more code than I’ve ever written, reading code is WAY easier for me.

If you have little experience writing code, do you know that you actually understand what you’re reading though?

For example could you reproduce the code you read immediately after writing it?

It’s very easy to “read code” if you’re just reading for surface level understanding.

If it's easier for you to convert written code into mental models than the other way around, you are either a incredible smart and skilled person and a good programmer and should be able to convert that into a job and money easily, or you can't really write code at all.