For the average person, programming is simply sorcery.
"How did this iPhone app get built?"
"Um, someone was on a computer, and typed things on a keyboard… uh…"
is not that different from
"How did this otherworldly vortex open and begin spewing demons?"
"Um, this guy was waving his arms, and then it just appeared…"
In the past, this was treated as the inscrutable dark art it is for most people, but now it's blasé.
"That's Peggy, she's HR… Tony, he raises the dead… that's Jim, sales…"
It's therefore unsurprising that the average person could not care less if a given program uses all the best wizarding standard practices, unless it has some horrible side effect--and even then, probably not.
"The wand has a low risk of incinerating the person who uses it."
"How low?"
"Probably 1 in 1000."
"We'll add a disclaimer. Ship it."
The average person has no desire to learn about it beyond the surface trappings. It's hard, you have to learn a lot, and it's boring reading spell books all the time. Sure, necromancers use a lot of garlic, but as to why…? Who cares? Get back in the black spire and finish the undead army already.
However, in your example, most people have been on at least one side of that equation, if not (at least informally) both sides.
I mean, it's true that I have no clue how to run the machine that mounts a tire on an automobile wheel, but I've at least put a bicycle tire on a wheel so I have at least a little idea of what might make it complicated.
The idea that there is perhaps a larger gap between casual users of technology and the people implementing that technology has some merit to it.
I wonder if, in a sense, what defines "technology" is that size of that gap: it seems like there could be a scale along which we could measure how much we need a techne in order to comprehend the working of something. Although that really would probably be overstating it, I do think that some kinds of work require a lot more technical understanding to appreciate/do... but I could be wrong about that.
Many professions have subtleties that the layperson may not grasp at first, but most people can understand the basics.
Your example is too simplistic. The answer to that question would include information about academic area, lectures, homework, exams, schedules, and what makes a good teacher and a bad teacher. The layperson could go into detail on any of those subjects, citing first-hand examples.
"How did this iPhone app get built?"
"Um, someone was on a computer, and typed things on a keyboard… uh…"
is not that different from
"How did this otherworldly vortex open and begin spewing demons?"
"Um, this guy was waving his arms, and then it just appeared…"
In the past, this was treated as the inscrutable dark art it is for most people, but now it's blasé.
"That's Peggy, she's HR… Tony, he raises the dead… that's Jim, sales…"
It's therefore unsurprising that the average person could not care less if a given program uses all the best wizarding standard practices, unless it has some horrible side effect--and even then, probably not.
"The wand has a low risk of incinerating the person who uses it."
"How low?"
"Probably 1 in 1000."
"We'll add a disclaimer. Ship it."
The average person has no desire to learn about it beyond the surface trappings. It's hard, you have to learn a lot, and it's boring reading spell books all the time. Sure, necromancers use a lot of garlic, but as to why…? Who cares? Get back in the black spire and finish the undead army already.