She is horrified that you might write programs when you don't really understand what's going on. Because I doubt she understands the real innards of chips down to quantum level. I surely don't. The fact is we all use systems we don't entirely understand. It's part of the complexity of civilization.
Specialization makes civilization possible.
I don't understand my own body down to the cellular level, but I go on using it, and I doubt I will ever try to learn do it yourself brain surgery. I think she has a point, but it's buried deeply. I needed the money. This was a problem Nikolas Wirth was writing about when I first got interested in computers. Which inevitably led to the wizards and other programming aids that Ellen Ullman rails against.