I'm a high school computer science teacher (who has also taught middle and elementary school students) and would like to absolutely echo this.
As folks who are fairly proficient in programming, our scales for what constitutes as a "difficult task" can be wildly different from beginners to the field. They haven't built the knowledge, experience and mental representations to accurately determine whether something is hard or easy (case in point: my 9th graders will often propose final projects that would take a group of seasoned engineers months to complete).
After CS classes in college and working in the field, I kinda forgot about the initial setup barriers that I first encountered (and was much more patient to battle through); but after just teaching a single class of middle school students (a) not knowing how to properly install software and (b) as a result, getting into the state of "This is boring ... so I'm going to entertain myself by socializing, distracting my friends, or goofing around" I quickly realized how important it was for these kids' first experience with programming to be painless ... otherwise they would also make my life as a teacher a difficult one.
As folks who are fairly proficient in programming, our scales for what constitutes as a "difficult task" can be wildly different from beginners to the field. They haven't built the knowledge, experience and mental representations to accurately determine whether something is hard or easy (case in point: my 9th graders will often propose final projects that would take a group of seasoned engineers months to complete).
After CS classes in college and working in the field, I kinda forgot about the initial setup barriers that I first encountered (and was much more patient to battle through); but after just teaching a single class of middle school students (a) not knowing how to properly install software and (b) as a result, getting into the state of "This is boring ... so I'm going to entertain myself by socializing, distracting my friends, or goofing around" I quickly realized how important it was for these kids' first experience with programming to be painless ... otherwise they would also make my life as a teacher a difficult one.