However in the 80s I remember if you understood Wordperfect thoroughly (i.e. could do reveal codes and manipulate them) you were called a "secretary." Some form of dumbing down seemed to happen when the GUI came in.
You should see the command line interface my travel agent has (maybe all of them, I don't know), they seem to memorize 100s of airport short codes and use an odd syntax surprisingly quickly for 'non-computer' people.
Very true. Anyone who could confidently boot up a computer had a that geek cache/tarnish.
Is there an example of expectations changing around programming or automation, specifically? Programming, as opposed to computer literacy.
I suppose what I'm wondering is, why is there such a barrier to programming? People are more and more comfortable with complex apps, but not really more liable to fire up some kind of text editor... It's quite a jump to make on your own, I think -- say, going from Excel formulae to VBA macros, or using a WYSIWYG HTML editor to coding JavaScript.
I was called a 'computer wizard' as early as 3 years ago for knowing how to change the wallpaper in Windows, and also for knowing how to use Alt-Tab to switch between windows.
