[rndmize]

> Being a parent is definitely harder that being a software engineer if you want to do a good job. Same for being a farmer. It isn't the default job anymore for a reason.

There's a difference between hard = effort, and hard = difficulty. Most people struggle to understand software engineering concepts. If you do understand them, then the effort required to succeed at the job is less than parenting/farming/etc; but there's a reason software engineers are in the top 20% of the economic ladder and picking vegetables on a farm is on the bottom.

And at last check, subsistence farming was still the default job worldwide. Perhaps things have changed in the last decade or two, but I have my doubts.

(I'd also take issue on the idea of parenting being difficult, vs. good parenting, vs. newer cultural expectations on parents/education/helicoptering, vs. kids being free to roam etc etc., but that's a whole huge discussion on its own - and I think there's a pretty strong argument to be made that raising kids is not harder on either axis than having a job, but doing both at once is very difficult and forces an economic choice many women are making in favor of money.)

[randomdata]

As both a farmer and a software engineer, farming is way harder – and I don't mean in terms of effort. To your economic point, farming pays better too.

Sure, neither is hard if you want to do it at subsistence level. Hell, I started programming at like 5 years old. Software development is the easiest endeavour a human can partake in – so easy, it is easily picked up by young children who can barely read. Anyone can build software.

But I think it is far to say that building robust, reliable, maintainable, performant, and scalable software that satisfies a market need is a different story. And same goes for farming. If you want to farm at a level beyond subsistence, that is when it becomes hard.