Item — HN Reader

As a daily driver of a car, I don't need to know how it works. I know how to _use_ it - get in, turn it on, drive.

Who cares if it's electric or ICE, how combustion or regenerative breaking works, why you need to balance tires, how to change brake pads etc. I take it to the mechanic (IT Department) and they do magic, then give it back to me.

Same for computers. Why does the user need to know about USB 2 vs 3, memory, disk space, multi-threading, ad blockers, etc. Turn it on, use it, and send it out to be fixed when it doesn't work.

2 comments

I bet that the maintenance costs on vehicles/computers is inversely proportional to their operators understanding of how they function.

If you hired a driver which would you rather hire, the one who knows which grinding sounds that a vehicle makes are good/bad or the one who just keeps using it with disregard for the grinding sounds because it isn't currently inhibiting their ability to drive?

You're abstracting the complexities down to a granularity that strawmans my contention.

If you cannot operate the vehicle you need to do your job you don't have that job. I'm not saying that people need to be experts. I'm saying if you cannot learn the tools needed to do your job then you shouldn't have the job.