I think "middle-aged college English teacher who couldn't code if her life depended on it" counts as non-technical. :-) The only thing that sets me >apart from most users is the fact that I actually do RTFM, but that's just because I'm one of those eccentric academics who thinks reading is a >really good way to learn.
Reading? But you are going to end up all cross-eyed, dear? Everything I know about programming I have learned from stories my parents told me as a kid. And they heard them from their parents and now I am passing it on to my 3-year old daughter. She is very much into the older Windows API:s right now and just wants to hear that story about oleacc.dll again and again and again.