Right. So my point is that if we define a non-technical user as "someone who doesn't know how to do the thing yet", and any amount of teaching them to do the thing is thus implicitly deemed an unacceptable cost, then the problem simply has no solution
As the defacto I.T. support man for family and friends of varied skill levels… sometimes it’s really daunting trying to get them to do things that seem very intuitive to the technically experienced. I’m not saying we should just give up ok trying to show people new tools but I can empathize with the terror of even imagining handing a terminal off to some of these people, hah! A simple GUI goes a long way for people who don’t, for example, know how to write a file path or don’t know the difference between a forward slash and a backslash!
Nah, you just make your interface use verbs the target audience is already familiar with. They might not by familiar with command line text verbs, but they're probably familiar with point & click or drag & drop verbs.
Having just last night gone back and forth with multiple screenshots and careful explanations to guide someone through importing a picture from email to the ios photos app… maybe I’m lazy but it’s just exhausting. I agree that with effort it’s do-able, but it IS tiring :)
