Programming!

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Sorry if there was already a thread about this, I checked the first three pages and didn't find anything, so....

Computer programming. Writing the code that compiles into executable code (programs) that your computer runs. Just how hard is it to learn this skill? Like, how hard would it be for someone who doesn't do this sort of thing for a living to learn a programming language like C or Python?

I don't think anyone can answer that question with the assumption you are on the autism spectrum.
I have superb visual processing. I can flip through a book and tell you the spoilers.
Those with autism often have superb abilities in some areas and deficits in others.

See if you can do it. Or not.
If it is difficult you may just need a different method of instruction.
Some of us do better with pictures. Or words, or something different.

When I was in school I could type really fast. That was a big advantage over those who never learned to type.
Learning typing was a gender thing back in the 1970s, as typing was a useful secretarial skill in an office.
When I worked in the 1980s there were still secretaries where I worked.
By the 1990s they were gone.

How hard it is depends on what language you're learning. If you actually want a career in coding, you'll probably need to learn one of the harder languages like C/C++, or C# or Java (easier than C/C++, but you still have to implement your own algorithms).

Glue languages like Python and shell scripting can be automated by AI, since cobbling together pre-written functions is straightforward enough for a computer program to do it. Also, web applications where you're mostly doing CRUD operations (CRUD is an acronym for Create, Read, Update, Delete) can be done with AI using vibe coding, again, because CRUD apps are fairly straightforward and the steps are self-contained, so there's more or less a one-to-one mapping from English prompt instructions onto CRUD operations.

If you want an actual career in programming that won't be replaced by AI, you'll have to challenge yourself by learning algorithm design. If you want to really go all-out, learn something like graphics card programming or how to write device drivers. No matter how advanced AI gets, it will never be able to do that stuff.

It took me a couple days but I managed to write a C program that lists prime numbers.

And wooooooooow, it is fast. My code took about four minutes to generate a list of the first million prime numbers, and this was in a virtual machine on a nearly ten-years-old laptop.

Congratulations! Programming is a very useful skill, even if you never use it for anything "useful."

I would say it depends on the language as well. If you're interested in programming though, I think as long as you have a good understanding of the normal fundamentals of programming languages (data types, controls, comparisons, loops, functions, etc) you can just piece things together and learn as you go. I just end up with a goal of something to create and work from there, googling when needed. Unfortunately it doesn't come so easy to me, so I've never gotten good with the lower level languages. It would be cool to be able to do that as well as disassembling.