[nabla9]

Turing thought the same same way about programming. For example, he didn't see any point in programming languages.

Basically nobody saw at the beginning that actual computer programming could be very difficult task. You just design algorithms in abstract and some clerk inputs them into the computer in machine language.

"As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs." – Maurice Wilkes, designer of EDSAC, on programming, 1949

ps. & edit:

Similar thing happened with AI. Dartmouth Workshop in 1956 was the beginning of systematic AI research. Tt was thought that there could be significant progress in in few months and at least during the next year in things like natural language understanding. McCarthy, Minsky, Shannon, etc. had to first discover how hard problems really were.

[cgearhart]

We're still doing that with AI today. Each step forward is seen as signs of imminent acceleration towards AGI, when we really have no idea yet how hard the problems are that lie ahead. It's encouraging to know that it isn't a new phenomenon.