#coding?

I distantly remember—many, many years ago—learning CS and being frustrated as heck. That said, I had absolutely zero coding experience whatsoever. It will likely be hard at first, but persistence can get you a long way. CS can do most of the basic "IF stuff" you might want it to do, and you don't have to design the UI. Those are definitely pluses, especially for people new to the format. CSIDE, which is sort of like... well I don't know the proper word for it, but basically it's a program/app that you can write into (an IDE, or "integrated development environment") is pretty helpful, though I didn't use that for a few years, so I can't comment on whether it smooths the learning process. It does, however, help a lot with the writing process.

However, almost none of that tells you anything without something to compare it to. So. I've recently been learning Twine, specifically Sugarcube, as well. Compared to CS, I would say my learning process has so far been smoother, for the same stuff CS does (that is, setting up choices, variables, and all that). This is probably partly due to the fact that I have experience now, but it should also be said that it seems to be in wider use, and so searching the internet for answers tends to go better. With CS you have the wiki and the forums, which have been enough for me, but are certainly not as extensive.

Most of the difficulty in Twine comes from using custom interfaces, and other things that are sort of past the basic IF stuff. So I would say that, if you discount that, CS is somewhat simpler, but not as much so as you might think. Twine has the ability to customise more, which can be both blessing and curse. It definitely sacrifices some simplicity for that.