WHY IS SOCKET PROGRAMMING SO DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND

No it's not. It is just a matter of getting use to the logic.

Because you have a typo, it's called sockit programming ;)

Not sure if this is applicable and java, and there may well be an easier way, but when doing some socket stuff in rust with a nonfunctional program, I just wrote the entire socket to an array and dumped it to stdout to see where I went wrong

Because it is difficult

@minigeek depends on the issue, the problem I caught using this is that a sneaky packet didn't get drained

If sockets are difficult you should get more used to the language before messing about with sockets.

It's theory part of it that I'm unclear with. I guess Google will be my best friend for now