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Hmmm, it's an interesting point. I think the reason people don't even try is because they recognize that they can't tell the difference between something that might take them 15 minutes of monkeying around to fix, and something that is beyond their competency. Worse, they are not sure that they won't make things when trying to fix the problem.

I'm sure it must be similar to the feeling I get when I'm working on a new code base that I'm not familiar with, and I need to make a modification in a function so that it calls another module correctly for some new functionality. But I can't tell if that change isn't going to break something somewhere else, so making that change becomes quite scary.

In the software development world, we handle this by creating suites of automatic tests that we can run after the change to make sure that what we just did doesn't break things. We also use config managent software so that we can back out any erroneous changes. These things aren't available to nontechnical users - they can't verify that they haven't broken anything, and if they have broken something, they may not be able to put things back the way they were. This pretty much guarantees that people won't experiment with their computer.

I'm sure it must be similar to the feeling I get when I'm working on a new code base that I'm not familiar with

Haha - I know that feeling well. First moveup with a new code base is always the scariest. You're always fearing something like, "Oh crap, I had no idea what that module did and I accidentally disabled it."

I think you may have given me an insight that will make me more tolerant of my wife's refusal to attempt fixing technical things on her own. Thank you.

I think part of the problem is that with the advent of the Internet, no computer comes with proper documentation that you can read to learn what a system does and how it does it. DOS was probably the last OS that could be completely described in its paper manual. Now learning about a new system has to be done through Google, experimentation and thoroughly inadequate help systems where it's very difficult to find an answer if you don't know how to describe the problem.

linux is completely described by its source code.

> linux is completely described by its source code.

I would say that linux is defined by the way its source code [in C] runs on machines [of various kinds]. It's also helpful to know some history, especially of unix, for context. And the communities of people that use linux. I think there's more to understanding linux, or even describing it, than the source code only.

It's only slightly less accurate to state that Windows is completely described by its binaries.

Both statements depend on your ability to devote time and appropriate expertise to discerning the documentation.

Some people are vehemently proud of their limited technical experience. You can't even convince them that they should learn more so that they can solve their own problems. It's a hopeless argument to have with one of these people.

They will only change their minds if they can convince themselves that it's important. Most people remain ignorant of the value of such skills. When there's cheap access to skilled labour to fix it for them then there's almost never going to be an opportunity for them to discover this value.

Then again the same is mostly true for a lot of other technologies we largely take for granted these days. Despite not knowing much about cars we use them all the time. Same with air conditioners, televisions, radios, etc.

My home air conditioner stopped working a couple of weeks ago. I turned it off and on, but that was about the extent of what I felt I could intelligently do. I called a technician, who spent 15 minutes or less in my basement diagnosing the problem and replacing a capacitor. He charged me $115 to replace a $17 capacitor.

I'm not complaining. I called him, I wrote the check, and I have a functioning air conditioner again. But it did make me wonder if I couldn't take a $115 class at the community college to learn air conditioner repair. (And I imagine I could get the capacitor for less than $17 too.)

What about the cost of the time you would put into the class? Surely that brings the total effective cost of the course to far more than $115, to acquire a skill you're unlikely to gain much from (unless you want to learn it for its own sake or become an AC tech).

If you pick up some general electronics and mechanical skills, that will go a long ways helping to understand what might be wrong with your car, or around the house.

Just last week I replaced the inducer fan on my natural-gas furnace, with no prior training other than watching a YouTube video. I was able to deduce that the inducer was the problem in the first place, because I wasn't afraid to take off the cover and carefully observe what the furnace was and wasn't doing. And understanding at a high level how furnaces worked in the first place.

Of course, to do that, I was able to draw upon decades of experience with all kinds of systems. My training started as a child by observing and helping my father in his workshop. Even so, just having some basic, basic skills and knowledge of debugging [1] can go a long ways to isolate what the problem is and then see if it is something you can fix yourself.

[1] http://www.debuggingrules.com/

If stuff doesn't break often enough, your skills might get a bit rusty.

I used to have to help my aunt with her computer. She eventually learned how to do a few things (create and edit documents; print), but it was like she had an absolute blind spot to anything I would say about how to do things.

Eventually I gave up and had my wife explain things to her. I swear she used the exact same words that I would have to explain some things, but my aunt understood her just fine and told her how much better she was at explaining. :|

Just mentioning this because it appears there are multiple factors at play, at least with some people. My aunt was a lawyer, by the way, so presumably she could think for herself logically on other topics.

Aside: I was also a kid who knew more than the programming teachers. And FWIW, I know a lot more about car maintenance than the author of the article, because (unlike him) I also apply my thinking skills to cars and just about everything else in my life. Seems like he shouldn't be throwing stones.

It's partly partly true though. People aren't used to think about `network of things`. They will try to fiddle with the first layer they perceive and they will loose faith and motivation. Here's how they end up looking 'not being able to think'.

But on the other hand, computers and programs aren't build to be understood or fully manipulated with ease. It's often an ad-hoc mess of bad stateful abstractions that break very easily if you don't do things in some arbitrary order.

I'm on Alan Kay side when he thinks that computers programs are far too large accretions that could and should be reduced through better infrastructure. (his recent work was on an entire fully OOP desktop system in ~100Kloc instead of 100Mloc). In my mind giving this to people could lead to a better understanding and less psychological knots.

> Only my computer teacher was in his first year of teaching computers, having been drafted from the math program because "computers use math". He was completely just learning about computers.

Same here. My senior year independent study in programming was converting all the C++ projects and notes to Java because the AP exam was switching over. I think the idea was that the next year instead of helping she could say "look at what it should look like" or "well, this version here works".

This is precisely the point Rebert Pirsig explores in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. You should read it if you find this to be curious.