Programming is to great software what writing is to great literature. You might reach some basic level of literacy -- say, the ability to write a blog post -- and conclude that writing is easy. You might then translate your blog post from English into French and take the results as further evidence of your literary mastery. Programmers often celebrate their words, their phrases, their languages, but these things don't really matter. What matters is the end result. Producing great literature or great software is not easy. It is the work of a lifetime.
Shopping! Creating a useful software product is harder than buying one off the shelf. Creating great literature is harder than buying something at Barnes & Noble.
