I just wonder why software engineering is like this.
Everything is like this.
I have a brother who is in the energy business, another who is a lawyer, and a sister who is in the sports business. They all see the world through their eyes and can't understand why everyone else doesn't too. Every get-together is full of talk about deep drilling, legal precedents, taxpayer funded arenas, and, of course, politics. While I just have another beer and actually look forward to a debate about hashing algorithms and scaling strategies.
I know a lot of people, too: doctors, lawyers, businessmen, researchers, artists. And while all of them will fill dead conversational time with discussions about their day job, it's rarely their first preference. In my experience, most people are dying to have a conversation about something other than work.
Doctors, lawyers, and scientists hate talking about work, but they love talking about medicine, law, and science. Talking about a subject they love is different from talking about why their boss is mad at them and why their five o'clock meeting ran over.
But then again, maybe that's because there are a lot of nerds in medicine, law, and science.
There's a huge difference between talking about a subject in general, and talking about a subject that you work with all day long. The former is preferable to the latter. That's obvious.
But even so, you're still falling into the obsessive nerd trap: most people -- especially the really smart people -- love it when you talk with them about something other than what they do for a living, even if they're otherwise content to talk to you about the general aspects of their profession. It's the difference between being a forgettable conversationalist and a memorable one.
Even more importantly, I do think a lot of nerds don't get this.
I'm not picking at your grammar - the two sentences say different (although related) things. My version is stronger, and I think the stronger version is true.
Everything is like this.
I have a brother who is in the energy business, another who is a lawyer, and a sister who is in the sports business. They all see the world through their eyes and can't understand why everyone else doesn't too. Every get-together is full of talk about deep drilling, legal precedents, taxpayer funded arenas, and, of course, politics. While I just have another beer and actually look forward to a debate about hashing algorithms and scaling strategies.