[tptacek]

Nobody cares how hard things are to code except for people are are already naturally disinclined to pay for software. Difficulty of execution may, for a very large swath of possible apps, be inversely correlated with success.

FWIW: The answer is "yes", followed (implicitly, because you didn't ask this) by "yes, people did pay", followed by (to the question you actually asked) "reread the article".