> "I'm not scorning "those below me" (your words, not mine)"

Your opening sentence: "Software engineering is held back by having to get as much mindshare and reach the lowest denominator" - the lowest denominator is not you, which means it's other people and they are low - beneath you. Instead of saying "the world is improved by experts making things accessible for everyone", you say "we (elites) are being held back by the lowest common denominator (plebs)". How is that not scorning those below you?

> "I am simply saying the complete opposite, that we should in fact stop being so condescending of non-techies, creating fisher-price interfaces because they might get hurt"

Fisher-Price?? What's that quote, "You think it’s degrading for a man to act like a woman, because you think being a woman is degrading"; you think using a plain, simple, accessible interface is not convenient and desirable, but like a baby's toy? That's you scorning those below you, right there. This is the "real man" view that things are better if they are hard and dangerous for no specific reason other than that filters out inferiors. It's the old, deaf, missing-fingered laborer mocking hearing protection and safety guards on workshop equipment, it's the person running everything as root. Hello? Getting hurt is bad, avoiding it is good, not laughable.

> "or, by God, they might have to become proficient at it." "The comparison is always with grandma, ask her how she likes being treated like that. She's quicker than most give her credit for."

My mom is approaching 70. She's used a smartphone for maybe 5 years and has never installed an app, never tried to swype on the keyboard despite seeing me do it, always saying she will have to learn about it another time, she has no interest in computers, but she uses it multiple times a day to WhatsApp with family and friends, share photos. The simple interface hides so much complexity, it is a wonder which enables her to do things without having to learn computer internals, not an embarrassment. The last thing she needs is punishing her by taking the guard rails off because some programmer thinks making a simple interface is holding the industry back, making her choose between png, webp, jpg2000, watch videos through ffmpg so she can set her own filter and processing chains, be able to sideload apps or use open source firmware. And if she did want those things, there's Android phones with third party builds and removable safety rails available.

> "Dumbing down interfaces is treating users like idiots. Users are not idiot."

If users are not idiots then making something easy for them ISN'T DUMBING DOWN. Hiding complexity and making things simpler is good, not bad. It's how we progress - abstractions let us wrap complexity up and pretend it's not there and use it as building blocks for higher level things. It's amazing that I can swipe an email to the left and it gets deleted, and I don't have to care if it's POP or IMAP or ActiveSync or if it's held in a text file or a SQLite DB, and the delete syncs across all my devices without me having to host the server or punch NAT holes in firewalls or anything. If I wanted to host my own mailserver and configure all that, that is an option, but it's in no way beneficial to force everyone to have to do that so they can become proficient at postfix or exim config files or Exchange administration or DKIM and SPF; what a complete waste of grandma's time!