On your P.S.: I contemplated your point being “I can cope with this stuff and know when to correct it or give up on it, but what chance does a beginner have?” w

On your P.S.: I contemplated your point being “I can cope with this stuff and know when to correct it or give up on it, but what chance does a beginner have?” which I think is what you actually meant, but ended up deciding to write what I wrote anyway, because it ends up feeling fairly connected to me, though from a slightly different angle. I’m in India at present, and a number of 18–25 year-olds ask me about learning to code (commonly because their college or University is teaching C/C++ and they have no idea). Somehow, they have more access to a computer than ever before, because most of them carry one on their person all day, and more information about this task than ever before, yet their computer, a phone, has been dumbed-down and locked-up in such a way that they can’t really use it to learn to code, because that’s something you do on Computers, and those are just on the campus or your laptop, Chris, or things like that. Easier for the simple tasks, so that the more complex tasks that enough in a previous generation used to work for just don’t get reached, leaving over time perhaps a chasm, and fewer really skilled people in a society that may depend on them more than previously. The lower floor helps some who wouldn’t have got started before, but discourages others by making things too easy so they never find the challenge they seek.