[m0ther]

I strongly believe consumers are blissfully unaware of how complex software can be (and what software is by nature more complex than what other software). It's not only a problem with the people you show your independent work to, it's a problem with non-technical management as well. I'd be very interested to understand a few of the ways non-technical people think programming works. If someone would put together some non-trivial demo, and get 100 non-technical people to speculate (in detail) on how they imagine it was made, I'd imagine the answers would be fascinating.

[wccrawford]

I'd agree, except for the word "blissfully". Go visit a games subreddit and you'll see tons of people who think programming is easy and are screaming that the devs are lazy money-grubbing idiots that should be doing things better. They aren't "blissful", just ignorant.

[Pica_soO]

I think part of the yelling is the subconcious painfull realization of ones own lack of capabilitys.

These guys want to participate- as they did in cowboys and indians, and are unable to do so with just a stick and imagination.

[sbarre]

> If someone would put together some non-trivial demo, and get 100 non-technical people to speculate (in detail) on how they imagine it was made, I'd imagine the answers would be fascinating.

I've done a similar thought experiment over the years with (some very patient) non-technical friends, usually using some kind of mobile game on their phone...

They all more or less worked out the high-level concepts (events and listeners, input controls, the game loop, objects/models, persistence, networking, etc) but that was about it..

No one could even start to explain how it worked beyond that..