Being able to use a computer is like being able to drive a car. After a little practice and learning a few rules most cars are pretty easy to just get in and drive. It takes a little more effort to learn to drive stick, and formula one cars are only driven by professionals.
Computer programming is like building, modding, or repairing your car — you can learn but it’s an activity done basically only by hobbyists and professionals.
Troubleshooting computer issues is like car maintenance. Everyone can fill the tank with gas, most people can change a tire, fewer can change their oil, and fewer still can jump a battery.
Those are really poor analogies. What you call "using a computer" means using a pre-made application that turns the computer into an appliance. Instead of making inappropriate analogies (IMO usually a redundant phrase), look at where the tasks fit into Piaget's model of cognitive development.¹ Driving a car is the sensorimotor stage. Proficient computer use requires a high capability of the formal operational stage.
The bad news is that a lot of people will never attain the formal operational stage, and what is even worse is that the percentage of people that do is falling.² The results of this study are not surprising.
The take-away should be that it is pointless and counter-productive to try to dumb down the user interface for applications in domains that require a high level of cognitive development. No amount of picture icons and hamburger menus is going to make up for an inability to reason abstractly. What it will do is make it impossible for anyone to ever use the application efficiently.
Pretty much right. Yes its useful for almost anyone to know programming but we can't learn everything in the world that's useful. A carpenter is probably thinking its crazy I can't build my own bench and have to pay loads more for someone else to do it.
You can make a bench with 4 cinder blocks and a plank. Now a good bench ...
I guess the equivalent in computing would be spreadsheets? You can automate and build awesome things but god help you if you wanna move it somewhere else
As long as such a bench gets the job done, the person making it wins.
Similarly with spreadsheets. Sure, they get ugly. But they allow to get work done better and faster that it would be otherwise (if it was done at all). The alternative usually involves finding a ready-made domain-specific application and adjusting your (or your company's) workflow to it, or pestering someone to make it for you, both of which are frequently bad trade-offs. It takes time to arrange, often siloes you off your data, you have lots of irrelevant stuff to learn besides your task, and it prevents you from iterating on your workflow. I'd say the last one - iteration on workflow - is the biggest source of Excel (ab)use. Hard to lock down your process in a domain-specific tool if the details of that process are fuzzy and subject to change.
The idea of a house full of hacked together cinder block and chipboard furniture doesn't thrill me. It might work for a workshop but I think I will just pay for the expert made stuff in my house.
Computer programming is like building, modding, or repairing your car — you can learn but it’s an activity done basically only by hobbyists and professionals.
Troubleshooting computer issues is like car maintenance. Everyone can fill the tank with gas, most people can change a tire, fewer can change their oil, and fewer still can jump a battery.