-> Lets be honest in here, most of the programming jobs are not really that complex
I am pretty positive that this notion is one part of the problem. Seen in the SQL area: Code has been created to do a simple task. Code does it's job. Data gets bigger and bigger. Upon analysis we found out that Code is very suboptimal, no thought put into indexing, partitioning or operating on set-level overall.
SQL isn't complex to learn and to be honest, it's not difficult most of the time. But there are points in knowledge where people think: "That's it, i figured it out" and the general topic is sooo much more complex underneath. This hidden complexity leads to statements like yours, given off by relative beginners (not assuming you are one).