I can't speak for everyone but I can tell you what my ice-breaking moment was that got me into software: I was playing the original Driver game for PC, and via reading on Gamespot forums, learned you could give yourself god-mode + access to any map if you went into the files and edited the map configuration, which was stored as plain text and easily editable. I never completed more than like... 3 missions of that game back then, I was just too dumb, but I was smart enough to edit a text file and it was the first time I altered software without using an interface or settings menu.

Of course being a dumb kid I assumed all software was like this and broke many files and executables opening them in Notepad and changing random characters, but nevertheless I credit this with starting me down the path of being a software developer. I don't think most people get into this stuff because it's easy or hard, we get into it because we want the computer to do something that it isn't currently doing, and we look for a way to make it do that. And of course there are still innumerable ways to go about it now, but they are paradoxically more complicated (not able to be performed in something like notepad, usually) and also less complicated (installing mods via Nexus, for example, is not technically challenging: the software does the vast majority of the work for you).