This is very, very true:

What the PARC guys got that the PC guys didn’t was that the computer is much better at conforming to our mental models of how things should work than we are at learning its model. If programming a computer is just a matter of telling it what to do, then anybody can be a programmer. If, instead, it’s a matter of telling the computer how to do it, then programming is going to be a lot harder. Computers are fast enough for this conceptual gap to be bridged, but no compelling solution is available yet.

Of course, the way things turned out is much better for the Enterprisey, "if it isn't hard, it isn't work" types, who love long meetings and inscrutable code. For the rest of us? Not so much.

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