To continue the analogies, think of silverware and related instruments.
Notepad and TextEdit are like plastic utensils. They do the job (albeit not very well) and you can't really mess up.
Word, Pages and WordPerfect are like regular forks and knives. Not too much harder to use although they do require a bit more discipline.
TeX (and its derivatives/predecessors - Troff, Eqn, Grap) are like scalpels. Extremely powerful, but if you mess up, it can be hard to recover.
This doesn't even get into the fact that the last category must be compiled into a document, and making sure that everything gets into the funnel can be a real challenge for the uninitiated.
Notepad and TextEdit are like plastic utensils. They do the job (albeit not very well) and you can't really mess up.
Word, Pages and WordPerfect are like regular forks and knives. Not too much harder to use although they do require a bit more discipline.
TeX (and its derivatives/predecessors - Troff, Eqn, Grap) are like scalpels. Extremely powerful, but if you mess up, it can be hard to recover.
This doesn't even get into the fact that the last category must be compiled into a document, and making sure that everything gets into the funnel can be a real challenge for the uninitiated.