I’ve been in software development and operations for 25 years.
I still don’t want to have to understand everything I ever touch, even if I could.
I still don’t want to have to understand everything I ever touch, even if I could.
If you don't understand it, don't touch it. The default settings should work for most users. There can even be a warning against touching without understanding, like with Firefox's about:config. The offensive thing is preventing users from touching even if they do understand.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but the right mechanism is not straightforward to figure out, and you'll always be in a game of cat and mouse. One that sucks resources from whatever other useful stuff you might be spending your (or Mozilla's) time on.
I do think that in the future, it will be imperative for everyone to have some level of technological literacy above what is currently the average. And I'd like to work to get to that point, instead of taking all the tools away because they're too dangerous.
Also, sensible defaults are good! Hiding dangerous settings is also good! What's not okay is making those settings completely unavailable. At least in Firefox's case you have the option to recompile the source code, but that should not be the only recourse...
If we're going to be authoritarian I would rather ban anyone who doesn't understand that from connecting to the internet then have a broken walled garden.
That is absolutely complicated for the vast majority of the world's internet users. No one else is my family would understand what the hell "privileged code" means and shouldn't have to.
Adjust the qualifier at the end depending on your platform. On Windows, it might be apps that present a UAC dialogue—or maybe just remove the qualifier, since Windows doesn't do much sandboxing by default.