plenty of people are fine with learning how to program. It's Learning How To Program that people don't want to do. I blame hiring practices TBH. If anything programming should be the ONE field that leaves the bullshit signaling aside and just hires people who can make things work.
Shakespeare had it wrong---not kill all of the lawyers, leave them on the list sure, but first kill everyone in human resources. Ask yourself how many times the first question asked in today's interviews is 'Can you do the job?' To my admitted old fashioned way of thinking, it should be the first , middle and last question. Particularly since it is the only question that makes a damn bit of difference. Oh---and then kill all of the lawyers...
Bullshit comes from interviewee and interviewer. The asymmetric information (interviewee knows self better than interviewer) and conflict of interests (interviewee wants job; interviewer wants best person for the job) is what makes it difficult. This is before accounting for the Dunning-Kruger effect, which states that people are useless at evaluating their own abilities.
