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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
Bastiat articulated the Broken Window Fallacy in 1850, and here we are 159 years later shredding perfectly good cars to 'create jobs.' It certainly seems like some good ideas can't be repeated often enough.
1. I'm from the advertising industry. There's a reason Prada sells jeans for $300 and Old Navy's are $30, and we're not targeting Old Navy shoppers with this app.
2. I believe we're selling a rather niche product, therefore $.99 is simply unsustainable at the type of volume us and the other BB's are sold. We also increased the price by $1 with the release of 2.0, and we have plans for addressing the $.99-1.99 market.
3. Utility vs. Disposability. Most $.99 games (though often amazing) last about 30 days or less. We offer a product that we hope you'll use for much, much longer than that.
4. We're the Rolls Royce of black books from a design perspective, and outselling 3 competitors priced at $2.99, 1.99, and .99. We lack a few features to be able to claim total feat. domination, but we do have a few unique ones of our own.
5. We offer anonymous relationship advice and pricing it at .99 opens the door for all kinds of nasty UGC that drives away advertisers.
So in short, think about your product and market thoroughly before you set a price and don't give in simply because "everyone is pricing to $.99". As the AppStore continues to grow rapidly, $.99 doesn't leave much room for marketing expenditures either.
What is it about your tool that you need for the job? Is your tool specifically designed for your (type of) job? What trade-offs are you making with that tool versus other tools? Did you consider the long-term implications of your choice of tool? What if you wish to extend your job? Is your tool well-maintained? What if a customer comes back with questions about your job after a few years? Is it possible that more people will work on your job? Will they need to learn your tool? Will you still be happy about your choice of tool? (etc, etc, etc)
