>It's a curious thing, this misplaced, or in some cases faux-humility about programming, or any other academic/intellectual endeavour.

Programming rewards the rational, and compilers and bugs have no sense of survival that would make them relent in the face of intimidation. So programmers deal with compilers and computers on their terms: the unfailingly rational.

Humans are not computers. Humans do respond to intimidation---or rather, they respond to relative intimidation. Programmers are carrying tweezers in the fencing societies that corporations are.