"[...] ultimately pretty simple" you mean if you ignore everything making it hard?
I must admit that this kind of attitude triggers me. I have worked in the energy sector, in engineering (but not IT) heavy companies, and many have this attitude. "its easy to learn programming", "we just need to teach the engineers python" etc etc, and I have seen MOUNTAINS OF SHIT so tall you would faint. It's easy to get tricked, because being both the user and developer at the same time can be such a boost. But the moment there are more users things get hard. The moment the code base gets so large that you can't keep it all in your head, it gets hard.
Software development is easy until its not, and it surprisingly quickly gets to the "it's not" stage. And then you get excel sheets in python.
Some "subject matter experts" make good programmers, but in my experience its not because their background, but because they are smart and have talent for it.
I must admit that this kind of attitude triggers me. I have worked in the energy sector, in engineering (but not IT) heavy companies, and many have this attitude. "its easy to learn programming", "we just need to teach the engineers python" etc etc, and I have seen MOUNTAINS OF SHIT so tall you would faint. It's easy to get tricked, because being both the user and developer at the same time can be such a boost. But the moment there are more users things get hard. The moment the code base gets so large that you can't keep it all in your head, it gets hard.
Software development is easy until its not, and it surprisingly quickly gets to the "it's not" stage. And then you get excel sheets in python.
Some "subject matter experts" make good programmers, but in my experience its not because their background, but because they are smart and have talent for it.