There's a pretty strong tension between creating a great product and creating a product that encourages learning.
Great products we love make it so that we need to learn as little as possible to be successful (intuitive = didn't need to learn). Windows just works, macOS just works, and Linux gets closer every day.
The author recommends switching to Linux, but I think he underestimates the Linux dev community. They're taking their sweet time, but they will eventually get to 'just works', and students raised on Ubuntu will be just as alienated from the command line as Windows users are.
I would never have learned so much or gotten any sort of limited understanding of computers if Windows 98 just worked. That is scary because we've been in 'just works' territory across the board for years.
I'm not sure what the solution is, but asking people to fix their own problems is probably a good first step.
Great products we love make it so that we need to learn as little as possible to be successful (intuitive = didn't need to learn). Windows just works, macOS just works, and Linux gets closer every day.
The author recommends switching to Linux, but I think he underestimates the Linux dev community. They're taking their sweet time, but they will eventually get to 'just works', and students raised on Ubuntu will be just as alienated from the command line as Windows users are.
I would never have learned so much or gotten any sort of limited understanding of computers if Windows 98 just worked. That is scary because we've been in 'just works' territory across the board for years.
I'm not sure what the solution is, but asking people to fix their own problems is probably a good first step.