The thing is what is “basic understanding” is a moving target. I’m sure some old dude is chuckling at us youngins not knowing what a program counter register is and how to manipulate it while we are chuckling at kids not knowing what a folder is.
I’m sure there will be a time when someone will think that pressing buttons on gui is basic understanding while new generation will know nothing but neural interfaces. “What? You actually have to move this plastic thingy with your hands and physically press on a microswitch like a savage?”
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Scotty: Computer. Computer?
Scotty: Hello, computer.
Dr. Nichols: Just use the keyboard.
Scotty: Keyboard. How quaint.
https://www.quotes.net/mquote/90494
Many decades ago, I watched a shop assistant turn to the cash register to add two prices in lieu of a calculator or manual addition to write an invoice. These days I think most people just wave their NFC enabled phone to pay no matter what the final price is, trusting the system. Not me. I can still add up grocery prices in my head (until dementia sets in 
) and this has helped me catch errors in price ticketing.
I learned to read the classic clock when I was 6 or 7. About 10 years ago, when I first realized that someone at the age of 15 could not read the time from the clock, I thought - what a fool. But a few years later I found out that another 15-year-old girl whom I know is smart also doesn’t know.
Students know what they were taught and what they themselves had to learn. Knowledge that is not needed is not explored because for what thread.
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I really think we can blame it all on the programmers. They write stuff so all the average person has to do is find and switch on the power, wait 30 seconds, then click the little pictures on the screen and presto! The magic happens… instant entertainment or work or whatever… no brainpower needed.
Probably all a gigantic plot to retain job security. 
Of course, the above comment excludes the writers of Kicad.
The users of this programme are required to exercise their brains and generate folders and files for all sorts of reasons, especially that huge stumbling block: personal libraries!
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Actually kicad libraries is the part of KiCad that provides the separation between the user and they filesystem, by the means of databse.
This means, user can use KICAD effectively, and find items (symbols, footprints) without even knowing where the actual files are stored.
The opposite is direct manipulation of files, like with the Projects for example.
When I was in elementary school in the late 1950s and early 1960s, reading a clock face was one skill which was pounded into our brains over and over. By the time I was in 5th or 6th grade I was wondering who did not know this already?
But I realize now some irony…I am now a “senior” and as part of an American “wellness” exam (to see if I have “lost my marbles”) my physician asks me to draw a clock face. 
Soon they will have to change their diagnostic methods or they will draw the wrong conclusions 
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It looks that the faster clock computers have the more time they need to start
This has nothing to do with age. I know many people in all age categories that don’t understand how folders and directories works.
Well maybe 10-20 years. I have noticed that my wife and I have no analog clock faces in our home. Our last battery powered analog clock (I had on the bedroom office wall) wore out a few years ago. It was eating batteries so I powered it from an AC/DC power supply and hung it in the garage. That lasted for about 1 week (seriously) when I realized that the gears were worn. I guess that children now might no longer be taught how to read an analog clock…
It wasn’t just the clock face.
Remember maths. tables and punctuation and spelling and grammar.
A couple of years following my class, the powers in Australia decided to follow the then new UK syllabus where it was assumed children would just automatically learn stuff if they saw and used it. I think this was the beginning of the downfall. Computers arrived when this system (which is still in use) was firmly entrenched in society.
“You just do it, you don’t have to ask or know why”… that is only for specialists.
I know this is going further from the topic but this reminds me of following instructions from a navigator instead of reading a map. I think that someone who always uses the navigator might never learn their way around.
Ah I should have hung onto my 4-figure log tables (https://archive.org/details/fourfiguremathem00bottuoft). That’s how we did maths calculations in high school. Then when I went to uni scientific calculators became cheap. Before that happened I had procedures for calculating scientific functions on a 4/5 function calculator. Today I have a free HP42 app on my phone that emulates something that cost hundreds of dollars in the day. No way you could convince anybody that school needs to teach how to use log tables.
Skills and tools become obsolete. Even a GUI isn’t needed for giving commands to IoT devices.
As part of that same screening, you are probably asked to reverse the order of digits in a decimal number. Try responding with (e.g.) “If the big-endian representation is four-seven-five-two, the little-endian form is two-five-seven-four.”. Report back to us with your results.
(And I won’t go into all the creative havoc you can wreak with the story of Jill, the security salesman, and her handsome husband Jack.)
Dale
If you are not familiar with the reputation and legacy of Jim Williams, please take a moment to self-educate. Williams wrote about half the App Notes published by Linear Technology over the company’s history.
Following his death in 2011, his workbench was moved - intact - to become an exhibit at the Computer History Museum.
Dale
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You lost me on several points of your post (I have seen big endian and little endian somewhere [in the KiCad version info?]) But I wonder about your version of Jack and Jill. Does that somehow fit in with “Mary had a little lamb, a cob of corn, and a slice of ham”?
Regarding Jim William’s desk; I have heard that Einstein was quite sloppy also. But Einstein did not work with electronics…
I can see nested folders right behind Jim’s back.
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Hey, while we fret over folks who can’t navigate a nested file structure, how many of them have ever seen a genuine FILE CABINET, organized and used to store (paper) documents?
Dale
Yeah, my dad was a great fan of steel filing cabinets. He was an accountant.
You referred to “drawing a clock face” - one of the exercises in the U.S. standard tool for dementia screening. In one version of that tool, there is a short (one or two paragraph) narrative about “Jill” (a mom and stockbroker), her husband “Jack” (handsome and charming), their kids, and careers. The screener reads the story, then asks you questions about details from the story.
I have stood by, observing that screening (including the Jack-and-Jill story) three or four times a year for the last five years or so in conjunction with my wife’s Alzheimer’s progression. Last spring I was hospitalized for four days while they looked for a stroke that simply wasn’t there. Two different medical entourages - one from psychiatry, and one from neurology - sprung that dementia screening tool on me. Drawing on all the restraint I could muster, I cooperated and gave the expected answers to all the questions, until the last question on the second time through. The beautiful, brainy, brunette, neurology intern (with her mentor standing by) asked “What state did Jack and Jill live in?”. You are supposed to infer “Illinois”, since the story mentioned Jill’s office in “downtown Chicago”. I responded, “A state of married bliss.” - and, after a pause, cited the story’s conclusion “They lived happily ever after.”.
The intern was visibly perplexed, and finally asked her supervising physician, “How do I score that?”. She was really cute when she was frustrated!
Dale
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