Yeah, that was an odd start, given that Dr. Downey is a Professor of Computer Science. Even a charitable suggestion that he was looking to keep things as understandable as possible for a wide audience doesn't seem to give much defense.

I think he was trying to articulate how much more expressive/extensive programming languages and libraries (and tools?) have gotten over the years, so that a student can get to do something interesting with much less down-and-dirty arithmetic and arcana.