After 14 years in the industry, I still find programming difficult

I agree with some of this, and that green field productivity can be impressive... but I work a lot on very large systems that would simply be impossible for a single person to create in a reasonable amount of time. Even though I am sure I could create every system I need to solve the problem, it would take decades. I like working on small subsets of the overall problem, that is not the issue. I even like working on teams!

The issue is the things outside of solving the actual problem.

I'm 100% certain Wilhelm Kempff still found playing the piano difficult after 41 years in the industry. Because he cared about doing it well.

Yes, also still struggling, after some decades.

But I wonder what the metric is, when other people comment that 'it's a breeze'?

Sure it's too easy to lay down any old crap. But the trick is addressing all the aspects and concerns of the problem, in an elegant way, that is easy to understand and modify.

So for me it's more 'analysis paralysis', and perfectionism, if not simply 'pride in a job well done' than any difficulty in just slinging code.

IMO it massively depends on what you're working on.

I work on some codebases that are primarily about moving data around in Go. There are patterns to follow, there are no tricky algorithms, concurrency is largely solved, etc. All the challenge is about the broader engineering task of developing requirements, communicating, managing risks of deployment, stuff like that.

Then, I work on kernel code where it takes me months to get a few hundred lines of C to a quality that is acceptable. It's mentally exhausting, I have to take breaks. I can randomly get stuck for hours at a time on stupid stuff like a linked list corruption. Deadlocks happen. It's just as hard as programming has ever been. I have very little energy left over to engage with stakeholders, do project planning, etc.

So there's one PoV.

Yup. As a senior programmer who's been a professional for 10+ years and has been programming on and off since roughly 10 years old, I have found that the more time I spend in my field, the harder my work becomes in a way that is disproportionate to my experience. It's not the programming itself that has become more difficult, but all the process, tooling, and lack of organizational self-correction that makes aspects of my job hell.

Do I have the hardest job in the world? Not even close, by most measures. It can still be psychologically torturing at times and even cause a form of internal suffering that is distinct from the existential dread that comes from doing menial or repetitious work. Unlike the feeling of being a human robot, it's a feeling of the system attempting to slowly stretch my humanness to its limit.

Before I say anything else, there are still things I like about my profession and the company I work for. I don't think being a programmer is a complete waste of time.

However, in many ways, it indeed has become a waste of time.

I'd say easily one of the worst things about being an experienced programmer today is knowing that the task you are working on would have taken you 1/10 the amount of time to complete when you were a novice a long time ago. Even if your younger self wouldn't have gotten it totally right the first time, there was enough of a lack of friction there that a n00b could at least figure out how to integrate something workable.

At my current and few prior jobs before it, I have no clue how a junior programmer would survive. Maybe that's why all of my most recent employers only hire "seniors". Code bases are architected using approaches that everyone eventually agrees are bad, but the establishment inevitably uses the "that's just how we always do it" or "we'll make it better someday" excuses, and if you suggest a solution that goes against that attitude you'll likely get nowhere – that is, unless you have some clout, like if you're a prominent contributor to some framework, in which case you're given license to dictate the views of non-staff engineers and force new languages and tools down their throats without having to actually prove any of your assumptions. Because framework contributors are better than all of us?

If the software industry hits a greater downturn than the one it's experiencing right now, to the point where I'm laid off, I can't say I'll be terribly disappointed. It was a great ride and fun while it lasted. Today, programmers are merely seen as a necessary evil rather than an asset. Many companies still pay programmers handsomely, but those programmers are otherwise not treated that well because their real purpose is to duct tape the mess and allow middle management to collect their own paychecks. It will be rough not having that sweet programmer paycheck, but fortunately I have other ways to make income now.