[katamole]

[from the comments]

whenever I tried to explain anything technical to her, her eyes would cross and the she’d get impatient, flustered, and frustrated.

I keep hearing this bullshit, both on HN and on other news sites. Do you really choose to spend your time such vacuous people? Or is it just that most explanations given are needlessly complex, so that programming and computers appear magical?

If you can't explain something properly, you probably don't fully understand it yourself.

But anyway, computers are hard. Let's go shopping!

[jnovek]

My wife was very patient with technical explanations for about the first year of our marriage. I think she finally realized at that point that I'm ALWAYS explaining technical things and that if she seems interested, I'll keep going. So now she cuts me off.

She couldn't give two hoots about ruby or linux or some whiz-bang piece of hardware I'm all amped about. Sort of like how when she talks about women's life in the Victorian era my eyes glaze over.

Part of marriage is that sometimes you find each other boring.

[RyanMcGreal]

Some people care about how computers and software work, and some don't. Don't assume that someone is 'vacuous' just because they're not at all interested in the gory details of the classmethod you just refactored.

[bena]

I don't think it's that at all. She's not vacuous, and the explanations are probably not needlessly complex.

She doesn't care (to the extent that the husband does). She has other interests and areas where she is the expert. I'd experience the same thing with my wife. I would start talking about something I'm working on, and she would follow for a while. But after a certain amount of time or level of technical depth, she would lose interest. Not because she's stupid, but that I had passed the point of her interest.

At some level, our work is just plain boring to other people.

[steveklabnik]

It's very difficult to find a lot of people that aren't 'vacuous.' I mean, I just got out of college, so I have a handful of technical friends, but I'd be willing to say that most people I've known or met are like this.

It's sort of self selecting. Most people aren't hackers; they don't care how things work. They just want to use stuff, and... things. I don't even know. I can't understand that mindset, becuase I'm not one of those people. And neither are you, apparently. So yes, to you and me, it's pretty silly, because these things aren't that complicated, and we need to figure out how they work... but most people don't. Depressing, but true.

[scott_s]

Depressing is someone equating 'vacuous' with the lack of technical interest.

[steveklabnik]

Just to clarify; I find it depressing that more people don't want to learn about things and figure out how they work. I don't call them names. ;)

[bitwize]

My dad was a largely self-taught mechanical and manufacturing engineer. My mom failed high school algebra and had trouble with Microsoft Word when she first encountered it.

They've been married for forty years now.

My mother isn't vacuous, but she has appreciably little technical understanding. As it turns out there's quite a bit of complex decision making that goes into mate selection, competency in or appreciation of your technical field of choice being one small criterion of a myriad influencing such decision making.

[barry-cotter]

Computers aren't that hard, but fewer women than men will find them interesting for the same reason fewer women do anything involving math, because Math is boring, things are boring, equations are boring. Using language is interesting, people are interesting, jobs that require lots of social interaction are better than jobs that don't.

Most people hate this kind of systematising, abstract, logical thought. Fewer men hate it than women so there are more men in these fields.

[mmt]

Any study of this you could reference?

[barry-cotter]

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118600577/abstrac...

"For example, in the SMPY cohorts, although more mathematically precocious males than females entered math-science careers, this does not necessarily imply a loss of talent because the women secured similar proportions of advanced degrees and high-level careers in areas more correspondent with the multidimensionality of their ability-preference pattern (e.g., administration, law, medicine, and the social sciences). By their mid-30s, the men and women appeared to be happy with their life choices and viewed themselves as equally successful (and objective measures support these subjective impressions). Given the ever-increasing importance of quantitative and scientific reasoning skills in modern cultures, when mathematically gifted individuals choose to pursue careers outside engineering and the physical sciences, it should be seen as a contribution to society, not a loss of talent."

Or just think of the sex distribution of nerdery, which is to Asperger syndrome as AS is to autism, which Simon Baron Cohen has described as an extreme version of the male brain.

[mmt]

I don't see the connection to hating what you described less..

[katamole]

To clarify, 'vacuous' was describing the way these people are portrayed, rather than how I think about them.

Additionally, there are so many similar replies, I can't be bothered replying to them all.