My problem with this "hydraulic" analogy (first time I've seen it called that) is that I feel most people don't have that good intuition on hydraulics either, s

My problem with this "hydraulic" analogy (first time I've seen it called that) is that I feel most people don't have that good intuition on hydraulics either, so you are just trading one poorly understood subject with another almost as poorly understood one. Maybe 50 years ago engineering students learning electronics could have had more solid hydraulics background knowledge, but I bet these days more people start from electronics before doing hydraulics.