[blotter_paper]

I don't have kids, but am involved in the lives of young relatives and am generally interested in questions about how to raise a child in ways that lead to them being competent, well adjusted humans. To me, parent talk seems to fall into two broad categories: discussions about raising children in general, and anecdotes about some supposedly funny thing that a particular child did last week. The former I find interesting, and I can engage in these conversations for hours. The latter bores me to death (and when the child being described is present I actively try to derail the conversation, as I hated listening to embarrassing stories about myself as a child and imagine most children feel the same way even if they lack the courage to voice that opinion to their parents). This is the difference between discussing the mechanics of a blockchain and discussing some anecdote about Coinye West rebranding as Coinye. I'm not too knowledgeable about or even particularly interested in cars, but I can listen to a mechanic talk about different types of engines and be genuinely engaged. I can't be genuinely engaged by somebody talking about the new paint job they put on their muscle car last week. I can recognise that others seem more engaged by anecdotal narratives than discussions of underlying systems, but I still think this distinction is different than simply being interested in one broad topic like "children" or "blockchains" over another.

[bcrosby95]

It's just random small talk. It's the equivalent of talking about goofy stuff you run across at work. Or that you really like programming language X for <these subjective reasons>. A lot of people use sports for this too.

A good portion of the discussions on even this website are on the level of "I painted my car red last weekend". The articles are oftentimes better than this, but not always. Any fashionable piece of tech tends to have articles devoid of intellectual effort. E.g. back when NoSQL first came around, or just about any article about microservices.

[my_usernam3]

Huh, I have the opposite opinion. For context. I am relatively young in the workforce, and also don't have kids nor immediate plans to have any.

I find general discussions about child development less interesting than humorous personal antidotes while parenting. Specifically when talking to my coworkers over lunch. Kids do stupid things, and hearing about the stupid things of the newest generation from my coworkers perspective can be a fun and interesting break from software engineering work we usually engage in. Where as a technical (some might say "deep") discussion about parenting and child development as a process feels more similar to the stuff I already grind at day to day.