Are research papers hard to read?

This question may not suit to here, but I couldn't find a better place to ask (it was closed in SO). I find research papers on computer science hard to understand. Of course the subjects are complicated. But after I understand a paper usually I can tell it to someone in simpler terms, and make them understand. If somebody else tells me what is done in that research I understand too. I think the best example that I can tell here is: I have tried to understand SIFT paper for a long time, and I found a tutorial while googling, in a couple of hours I was ready to implement the algorithm. If I was to understand the algorithm from the paper itself it might have taken a couple of days I think. My question is: is it only me who finds research papers this hard to understand? If not how do you deal with it? What are your techniques? Can you give tips?