Context. I might try something like “Frontpage is to MS Paint as writing code is to Adobe Illustrator. I’m not trying to teach you a child’s toy so you need to stick it out long enough to gain some perspective on this.” I’ve had success convincing people that the terminal isn’t “for hackers” by showing them the command line is really where everything happens like double clicking an icon is the same as running `open ~/Applications/Adobe/Creative \Cloud/Photoshop.app` and other normal operations performed with commands. It also helps to differentiate between things we’re doing just to operate/navigate vs. steps taken in the actual writing of code/building something. You can tell how much they understand by how literal they follow directions. I usually start with a whole lesson on using the command line so when we get to the actual meat of building they’ve seen many of the common commands before. It also helps if they’re on the clock and getting paid to learn vs. trying to pick a new skill on nights and weekends.