Is there a natural boundary for what we expect "non-IT people" to know? https://m-cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/231489-tech-user-responsibility/fulltext

Some people do not like how Computer skills become a standard skills for everything in sight, every workplace, every aspect of living in fact. Before everyone got comfortable that they have to know how to drive a car, I am sure there were people who did not even want to learn and used other means of transportation. Some people should not drive a car ). The problem with teaching how to drive a car was solved by a person needed to pass driving rules exam. I guess it comes to the time when something very unified about dealing with computer has to be produced and be available to everyone and need of knowing had to get across. There is no such thing yet. It is difficult to ask of anyone to be aware of limitations on help they will be able to receive if there is no standardized collection of minimum knowledge required prior to getting help. Right now there are instructions to particular things but in order to understand them other basic knowledge is needed. That is why some people do not read them. They do not understand them. In their situation helping them person needs to fill all the gaps. But it is very difficult and nearly impossible in some situations. How to standardize basic computer education? How to create a unified resource? How to make it to be known and available?

There are instructions to particular things but in order to understand them some other basic knowledge is needed.

Whenever I get pulled into IT support when visiting my family, I'm struck by how many error messages and other dialogs were clearly written from a programmer's perspective. Messages like: "failed to read from .cache/a/b/c123.db" can give a lot of information for where to look next to debug, but the message is completely unclear to most humans. That's an extreme example, but it's true that some basic understanding of the models computers use, such as hierarchical filesystems and common directories would be useful for everyone who uses today's computers. Then again, the iPhone showed a way to hide most of those concepts from most people to great success.

To put it simply, the current system situation sucks. The difficulty speaks to how inhumane current models are. The very concept of OS is even something that should be challenged. (I know this is a weaker response than some of my others, but I've been responding a lot in here lately (it being essentially my initial involvement here), and I need a break from writing out long things on a touch keyboard that keeps guessing every other word wrong) (Ha, accidental meta-example^)

Sometimes I think of ideas how to teach basic logic behind computer skills in more human way. I feel as programmers really are capable of abstractions. And it is abstractions and ability to create metaphors for them is really needed. For example. Simple thing like a traffic lights. It is an abstraction and a metaphor. Red is danger. Fire. Warning. Green is life, way to grow, prevail. Yellow is a transitional color between them. The colors were found naturally. Out of real emotional attachment to other things in life besides road traffic regulation. When it comes to transfer knowledge of computer to everyone, one would need to find things connecting to other aspects of life. Cache is absolutely nothing to most people. Meta data is also far out. You know it took me months trying to figure out what some programmers mean by agile. )) and I still think that every one of them means something different )

Right on. It's not about teaching "code", but the underlying concepts of abstraction & composition, etc. BV has some great material on that topic: http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/ http://worrydream.com/LadderOfAbstraction