You get many of the same problems these days, but they're a bit harder to diagnose. You have to go looking at system monitors to see what's going on. Whereas, if the computer just communicated to you what it was doing, in an ambient way, this stuff would be immediately obvious.
I've heard stories like this where people worked on older computers that were loud, and then you could actually hear what it was doing. If it got stuck in an infinite loop, you'd literally hear it.
That seems like very much a feature to me.
I sometimes think about what a modern analogy would be for some of the operations work I do — translate a graph of status codes into a steady hum at 440hz for 200s, then cacophonous jolts as the 500s start to arrive? As you mentioned, no perfect analogy as you get farther and farther from moving parts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_Anyone_Builds_It,_Everyone_...