Idioms have to be learned by everyone.

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I have read that people with autism often do not understand idioms and expressions.
I don't really get that.

Most idioms make no logical sense, so in order to understand their non-literal meaning you have to learn them.
If you have not learned or heard an idiom yet, you will not understand it.
Surely that is the case for all people and not just for autistics?

For instance, if one would say:
'That is the icing on the cake.'
If you have never heard that phrase before, you will think, logically, that they are talking about putting actual icing on an actual cake.
Of course it may be that the topic on hand has nothing to do with cakes, and there are no cakes or icing nearby,
and in that case you would still not know the meaning, but you may suspect that it is an idiom.
Although its also possible that the speaker has suddenly changed subject to cakes... .

Once you have learned the meaning (which is: When you already have it good and get something on top of what you already have.) then you may be able to recognize it as an idiom next time someone uses it.

Or not?
Are people with autism completely unable to learn the meaning of idioms?
Or do neurotypical people understand the meaning of an idiom even if they have never heard it before?

Neither of those seem very plausible to me...

I think some people with autism can not learn this, whether this is to do with processing speed, I am not sure. Some people do not make the connections that are necessary, I'm not one of those people.

Others can learn this as do typical types too.

Often these phrases have a local, cultural or historical context.

I think it's to do with the speed of interpretation and thought process. When someone says an idiom, such as 'like water off a duck's back', the thought process goes:
1. it makes no sense in current context, therefore they are not talking literally
2. they are trying to refer to something difficult to explain normally, or using a colloquialism
3. ducks can swim, I know their feathers are treated to prevent becoming completely waterlogged
4. therefore, the feathers of a duck are water-resistant, including the feathers on its back
5. the water therefore easily slips off the feathers on a duck's back
6. the ease of the water slipping off a duck's back is the likely intended interpretation, and because the topic is not about water or ducks, it muse be about 'the ease'
7. They are suggesting that what they are talking about is easy or natural.

It takes a while and repeated usage for me to learn and remember just that 'water off a duck's back' = 'easy or natural'. Perhaps it is faster for neurotypical people to understand them in context, with cues that those with autism might miss.
Ones with semi-logical roots are easier to remember and use than illogical ones. 'Easy as pie', what? As a result I'm usually slower than most people on picking these things up and I get distracted by ones I don't know. I also have issues using them, as I tend to mix them up together.

Totally agree "Water off a ducks back" makes sense to me where as "Easy as pie" does not.

I did used to look up things like this when I was confused.

I worked on a traditional sailing vessel, I used to love relating how many sayings had nautical origins, often completely lost on the teenagers.

"You can't have your cake and eat it" What's the point of having some cake if you can't eat it?

You can’t eat it and still have it afterwards

Cakes, and pies, crop up in English language idioms alot for some reason.

"A little more icing on the cake" is a good a vivid image that even I as a small child could grasp immediately when I first heard it as a child ( I actually remember the first time I heard it- when Jackie Gleason used it in a cute song on TV).

But ever since I was I child I was always also peaved by "have your cake and eat it too". Though I could figure out what it meant -it was puzzling as to why it meant what it meant.

Like tallyman said "what other way of 'having' a cake is there but eating it?".

But after emcing at wedding receptions as a party deejay for a few years it occured to me that maybe some folks are sentimental about their elaborately archetectured wedding cakes.- and long to "have" their wedding cakes to look at (as works of art, or as mementos of their weddings) for a while. And are forced to abstain from eating them. Maybe.

"Easy as pie" is a shortened version of "easy as eating a piece of pie".

I hate 'easy as pie", and prefer "piece of cake!" With one less syllable it makes the same point with less ambiguity

Young people I work with are starting to say "easy as a cakewalk". I suspect that thats a conflation of "easy as eating cake"- and "walk in the park".

Both eating cake and walking in the park are easy- but when you hybridize the two expressions you get something that is not so obviously easy.

A "cakewalk" is a highly stylized dance. It originated with slaves on plantations competing to win a cake from the master in public dance contests.

Who says its 'easy'?

Ive never tried doing a cake walk- so who Im I to judge?

Cake, including bread, and pies were standard fayre for a decent living, compared to the diet of the poor. So this became the thing to measure against for common people.

The Olde Worlde version makes more sense, "wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?" first recorded in 1546 by John Haywood.

Some sayings where I understand what they mean but don't really make sense to me.

Eats like a bird. I guess it means you peck at your food but if it's supposed to mean you don't eat much birds eat a lot for their body weight.

Quiet as a mouse. I've have pet mice and wild mice in my house and they weren't very quiet.

It's like riding a bike. If that's supposed to mean something easy to do or something you never forget how to do that's a bit lost on me. I don't know how to ride a bike.

I didn't know that 'easy as pie' was short for 'easy as eating pie'! I thought it must be hard to make pie, although eating it isn't easy either, but pleasurable maybe.

Although I have a bit of difficulty with phrases like that, I like the ones that I do get. Double meanings are interesting and funny, but it sometimes takes me a while to get the joke. I like phrases like 'across the pond' (to refer to America from England) because the ocean is obviously not a pond, and 'taking the biscuit' because it is annoying when someone takes your food!

One I had to look up was "safe as houses". That's a British saying and I'm not British.

When you’ve never ridden a bike, it usually seems all but impossible that people can keep their balance on top of it. When you start doing it, you immediately realize it is actually much steadier—as long as it’s moving—than it looked, by virtue of some results of Newtonian mechanics which aren’t particularly intuitive.

I understand idioms, but I interpret them as literal first ,and then, only after seconds to a min, do I understand that it was an idiom. I always miss the context first time around, even though I already know the idiom. It's the context which doesn't occur to me.

To OP, it's my understanding that idoms have to be learned, they are a bit too cultural dependent to understand over time.

It's not an Aspie/NT thing in and of itself, because I've met plenty of NTs who did'nt understand whatever common idom was in use that day. It's much more of a cultural thing.