[EdiX]

Where is the casual carpentry? Why can't I make my own tables and chairs? How do I know which tools to buy? Why so many different types of screw heads with no clear indication in the box as to which kind should I use? Tapered shank what? How do rivets even work?! And it's not like it's a new thing either we have had wood manufacture for millennia!

IMHO some things will never get past the hobbist-accessible stage.

[ttt_]

I agree. If the OP was talking about mechanics, he could be saying: "I want to build a hotrod from scratch, but oh look so many little parts!".

I think that what many people fail to realize is that although the intended purpose seems simple enough, the tools to do it are sitting atop so many levels of abstractions that without prior knowledge you just have no way to figure where to start assembling the parts. The only way for a hobbist to manage that, would be with the right tools pre-assembled for some finite set of purposes that could guide most of the work.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

... or to learn what the abstractions are, why they are used, and break through them to learn the basic steps.

What you describe is a very common problem on electronics forums. Consumer electronics are cheap, sophisticated and ubiquitous, so the newcomer to electronics DIY thinks that a cell phone as a first project should be easy and then gets angry when everyone tells him how hard it is to actually design & build one and that he should start by learning how to make an Arduino blink an LED instead.

When I consider all the problems that had to be solved to make a disposable $20 phone, it's absolutely mindblowing that we could ever have reached this point in technology.

[mohamedsa]

There are many facets to the problem, some of them are easily solved with the technology we have. We need to learn from the tools people already casually program with: VBA, Matlab, Excel, Turbo pascal in its days...etc.

They may have many defects as languages, but they got a lot of the 'casual' right; we could start from there.