I think most people reading Hacker News generally find the programming easy. For me, the hard part is graphics and sound.
Why do you think so many startups fail to get any traction? It probably has little to do with the quality of their code.
Just look at what separated early Yahoo and early Google, a confused page of text and links vs. a simple search box. Was this necessarily the reason Google ended up winning out? Maybe not, but it's probably a strong reason for why.