From scratch is relative. To a python programmer, from scratch may mean starting with dictionaries but a non-programmer will have to learn what python dicts are first.
To someone who already knows excel, from scratch with excel sheets instead of python may work with them.
For the record, if you do not know what a dict actually is, and how it works, it is impossible to use it effectively.
Although if your claim is then that most programmers do not care about being effective, that I would tend to agree with given the 64 gigs of ram my basic text editors need these days.
>For the record, if you do not know what a dict actually is, and how it works, it is impossible to use it effectively.
While I agree it's good to know how your collections work. "Efficient key-value store" may be enough to use it effectively 80% of the time for somebody dabbling in Python.
Sadly I've met enough people that call themselves programmers that didn't even have such a surface level understanding of it.
To someone who already knows excel, from scratch with excel sheets instead of python may work with them.