A related question: Feynman's popular book QED claims to explain quantum electrodynamics enough that you could almost do calculations with it, just ridiculously inefficiently. After reading it, I can't: the details left out, I can't easily fill in from the grad-level texts, even with a pretty decent undergrad physics background. Shouldn't it be possible to explain QED to a programmer using a literate program? (Again, an inefficient one.) Was Feynman exaggerating? Or is it just the tininess of the market of programmers who want to understand what QED is really about who aren't out to become professional physicists?

(For others, QED is the part of the standard model about electrons and light -- the most relevant part for everyday physics and apparently the simplest part too.)