Ken Olson , the founder of DEC (Digital Equipment Corp.) was  famous for its statement:

  • "I can't imagine any good reason for someone to have a computer at his home"

 Similar in the late 1950ies IBM estimated the worldwide market for computers of 15..30 systems in total.

So lack of phantasy what could be in the future is quite common also for very successful people and companies.

I remember times when new programmers learned from their masters to use no matter what
programming language in her full beauty and elegance with all its features.
no matter if this was Assembler/360 or Macro32 or C, C++, C# or Bliss or PL/1 or Fortran, Algol, .... [list almost unlimitted]

All of them had their tricks and open and hidden features that inspired the creativity of developers
and allowed them to create artwork instead of stereotypic formulated phrases. By this approach,
developers get degraded from architects to monotone brick assemblers.

"users unfamiliar with the language" 
I'd recommend they should learn it to understand it before touching it.
If I want to read the Правда  I have to learn Cyrillic characters and the Russian language to understand it.
Nobody would accept any request for Latin letters.