[axilmar]

Coding is hard because most APIs suck. Most APIs

a) contain many leaky abstractions.

b) are unnecessarily complex in order to adhere to a specific ideology.

c) have various gotchas, either documented or undocumented.

d) the basic concepts behind them make sense only to the authors.

e) do not contain any abstractions at all, exposing all raw technical details to the user.

f) many details about their parameters are not documented at all.

g) have undisclosed side effects.

h) not implemented in the same way in different platforms. etc.

With all these and many more, a newcomer to coding can feel lost for many years.