Still in progress, but I'm writing https://www.circuitlab.com/textbook/ (an electronics book with schematics & simulations built in) which will get into some the details mentioned.
It's still harder than programming because electronics doesn't have any comments or variable names and runs all at once like a massively parallel piece of software. In many cases it takes a lot of experience and pattern matching to engineer or reverse-engineer why that capacitor is that size and goes there.
On the other hand, if you learn a handful of concepts really well, that'll probably get you 50% of the way there: Thevenin equivalents, input/output impedance, low-pass/high-pass filters, voltage dividers, level shifting, how to use MOSFETs and BJTs as switches...
It's still harder than programming because electronics doesn't have any comments or variable names and runs all at once like a massively parallel piece of software. In many cases it takes a lot of experience and pattern matching to engineer or reverse-engineer why that capacitor is that size and goes there.
On the other hand, if you learn a handful of concepts really well, that'll probably get you 50% of the way there: Thevenin equivalents, input/output impedance, low-pass/high-pass filters, voltage dividers, level shifting, how to use MOSFETs and BJTs as switches...
I'd also recommend https://electronics.stackexchange.com/ -- a double-digit share of questions are of the type OP describes.