Maybe it's not as complex as you think. (Score 1)

So, you have tried to explain to other intelligent, competent techies why programming is so much more complex than what they do, but you can't seem to convince them, eh?

Have you considered that maybe, just maybe, you are wrong? Maybe programming isn't harder than hardware design, or mechanical design, or mathematics, or physics? I mean, if it were, it would be a really convenient excuse, wouldn't it? "Your OS crashes so much because software is really complex." "You got infected by this virus because security is software, and software is really complex." "I missed this deadline because programming is really complex." Personally, as a professional, I am leary of ideologies which promise to exculpate me of professional responsibilities.

Brooks writes, "software systems differ profoundly from computers, buildings, or automobiles, where repeated elements abound." This is certainly true. However, you have to ask yourself if it is necessarily true or only accidentally true; that is, is it the only way software development can be or is it merely the current state of software development, perhaps because we don't yet understand programming well enough? For example, better programming languages let you abstract out more complex and varied patterns in software than worse ones; the result is simpler, more regular programs. As our understanding of how programs operate and are structured improves, we can expect to make them smaller and more regular with such tools.

The proper response to, "Programming is hard!" is not, "Therefore I am not responsible for bad programs," but rather, "How can we make it easier to meet our responsibilities?"