
The programmer's wife - tzury
http://lbrandy.com/blog/2009/08/the-programmers-wife/
======
chime
I recently explained how speakers and microphones work to my wife. We were on
a long drive and the topic of bluetooth headsets came up. I have a Plantronics
520 headset and the audio quality is pretty good. I casually mentioned that
it's amazing how these tiny devices are able to create sound in such a wide
range of frequencies and barely use any power. She asked me what's the big
deal. I asked if she knew how speakers and microphones (dynamic) work and she
said no.

Aha! For the next twenty minutes, I went over the basics of electromagnetism,
diaphragms, and sound waves. I explained how so many different components work
together to make sure the sound is captured and recreated exceptionally well.
I felt pretty excited explaining something I had known since I was a tinkering
kid to someone listening intently. After I was done, I said "Isn't that
amazing?" and she said "Not as much as you" and smiled. That made my day.

~~~
nradov
That's funny, I have the same headset and consider the audio quality just
barely usable. In any kind of noisy environment I have to crank the volume all
the way up and jam the earpiece in, and even then it's still hard to hear and
be understood.

------
seshagiric
My wife actually likes me explaining technical things. She says it helps her
get a good sleep.

~~~
FraaJad
I thought that sounds very much like what an Indian would say. Then I looked
at your user name :)

~~~
seshagiric
Sorry no profiling please :)

~~~
FraaJad
it's tough not to.. Kannada or Tamil (or both)? :)

------
l0nwlf
Well sometimes my GF discusses her idea of future with me and it's like "we'll
have a big bedroom and two parallel 30'' screen and we'll code day and night,
we'll hack stuffs, we'll open startup together, our child will be a
prodigy..we'll make him learn programming at an early age...blah-blah-blah".
And i wonder why she is interested more in geeky stuffs and less in sex :P.
Before that I used to think girls as dumb..the opinion have changed now.She
codes in linux and is a big time evangelist of FOSS, was selected in google-
summer-of-code...blah-blah-blah. It's a pain-in-the-ass when your partner is
more technical than yours. I of all people can truly understand his wife's
pain ;)

~~~
ideamonk
Oh man, a visit to your house is always gonna make me feel jealous... damn
geek children too :)

------
ZeroGravitas
Something interesting in the comments:

 _"The screen on my Macbook Pro was trying to auto-adjust its brightness in a
semi-dark room. Because as the screen darkened, the light sensors sensed
darkness, it increased the screen brightness.. and so forth. So the screen was
basically glowing bright and dark on an interval.

She asks, “Why is your computer breathing???”_

Which is interesting because Mac laptops are designed to appear is if
"breathing" when in sleep mode, and this "breathing" is communicated via a
pulsing light. It appears she'd picked up this subtlety better than her
husband.

------
edw519
_guy (astonished): Wait.. are you serious? In Linux? Really?_

What a shame people still react like this. Three of the 5 best programmers I
ever met are women. They're out there. Just not here.

~~~
noaharc
Where are they?

------
olliesaunders
I wonder how the author's wife feels about being presented this way? For
programmers to judge?

~~~
mapleoin
I think she's presented for programmers to drool and think "how cute" and
admire her as a great wife rather than judge.

------
esila
I enjoy explaining technical things to my girlfriend. She has a habit (and
poker tell) of furrowing her brow whenever she has trouble grokking something
- this serves as a sign to me that I didn't explain a concept clear enough,
either through my communication or me just not knowing enough about a subject.
That's when I know I've got more learning to do!

------
jacquesm
What on earth are they doing with windows '95 in 2009 ?

------
gchpaco
For some reason things with similar names land in the same hash bucket in my
memory, and I say one when meaning the other. I usually catch myself about it,
but man it's embarassing.

~~~
mahmud
your brain uses soundex instead of strcmp.

------
cww
Very nice. I think my girlfriend of two years is catching on, although I could
easily see her making the KGB/KVM mistake... and it being useful because I'd
forgotten about it. :)

------
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!

~~~
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. ;)

------
restruct
This should be titled "The programmer's spouse" instead of the programmer's
wife. This makes it seem like being female is the cause of having a non-
technical perspective.

He says "She knows about as much as you’d expect an optometrist wife of a
programmer to know about computers", but are we supposed to expect something
different from an optometrist husband of a programmer?

There should be more links about programming and science at Hacker News, not
some heterosexual male programmer's anecdotes about his wife, with a title
which suggests that there is a pattern among the behaviour of wives of
programmers.

~~~
jimbokun
My guess is that it is entitled "The programmer's wife" because the author is
male and his spouse is female.

~~~
restruct
Then shouldn't it be "A programmer's wife"?

~~~
gloob
"The", as an article, is applied to individuals in all sorts of situations.
If, for instance, I say "The apple is red," I'm probably not making an
assertion that should be generalized to all apples, but rather speaking about
a specific one.

------
Evgeny
"her: Oh, wow, I do all programming in linux"

"His eyes were all lit up. "

So _that's_ how those who can not do _FizzBuzz_ get programming jobs ...

------
melipone
This post is sexist. I wish this constant stereotyping would stop.

------
radu_floricica
Am I the only one a bit unnerved by the easiness with which women bullshit?

~~~
d4nt
s/women/people

~~~
gaius
Men bullshit to aggrandize themselves. Women bullshit to entrap others.

~~~
unalone
That's a fair crock of bullshit you've got going. Both genders are human, and
do human things, and women aggrandize, and men entrap.

------
electronslave
After reading [insert technical field]'s [insert age-appropriate medium], I
found that there was a constant among them. You see, the representation of
females in [technical field] is limited, and anecdotes related to females in
[technical field] are largely the same.

They start with: "My [diminutive significant other] once asked me", "Jane Doe
isn't just hot, she's also [common rank in technical field]" or "The best
[common rank in technical field] I ever met was Jane Doe."

Replace [technical field] with cars, planes, motorcycles, programming and
cinematography. Adventure travel, graphic design, marine biology and non-
profit work tended to have more equal representation, and I saw less of this
patrician attitude being slung around there.

------
ahoyhere
You've got to be kidding me. 85 points? For worthless "ohh isn't the cute
dummy cute!" quotes?

Apparently, Programmer Wives Say The Darnedest Things.

And all you upvoters should feel the sting of embarrassment.

