It seems to me that farmers spend a long time agonizing over what to feed their pigs, but don't often get to talk with people who are interested in hearing what they feed their pigs. To have someone to braindump to is a delight.
For programmers, everyone is trying constantly to braindump to everyone else; that's half of what the blog posts on HN consist of. And everyone wants their braindumps analyzed, and, more importantly, debugged. "I'm feeding my pigs horse meat--did I make the right decision?"
When you're exposed to it so often, it's hard not to get tired of telling people about the benefits of grain over horse meat.
See, I've always really liked explaining how things worked in the abstract to people, and most of the time, they also enjoy it. There is a logic that flows through programming that is beautiful and I feel innately understandable, even for the most abstract of programs. However, it often requires a lot of explanation and of laying out an intellectual base on which to build your mental construct. That's hard, but I've always found it so worth it:
The person listening learns something new, and is able to see something beautiful in the way that someone else sees it. Additionally, the person who's doing the explaining gains the experience of trying to relate their idea to another person, an exercise that often expands the explainers understanding of the idea.
I really wish more people explained what they love and find interesting!
I think that kind of explanation--explaining what you want to explain, with whatever tangents you like, just to get the other person to feel passion about the topic--is great, and can leave you feeling more invigorated than when you started.
But it's a very different kind of explanation than "here are all the building blocks you need to put together in order to understand how wrong the way you're currently doing things is." The second kind is pretty much what all "innocent programming questions" require in response.
I love these kind of interactions; both listening and explaining equally! I find I can elicit these kinds of explanations from others by being actively interested, reading how they react and what they emphasize, and asking the right questions to really get at their passion.
I exhort everyone to strike up these kinds of conversions especially with strangers as often as possible - I guarantee you will learn something interesting :) Ever since I got the hang of it, it has really enriched my life.
I have a great mentor who will often lead me up the garden path and get me nodding with him, then scuttle his own argument and let me know why it's bad. It's part entertainment for him (and me), part making me think before blindly agreeing, and partly history lesson/why they went this way.
Done properly, it's fun, though you do need some form of ongoing trust - it's not something you should do to someone piping up for the first time on IRC.
I'm a midwest boy who grew up on a farm, including working it from a very young age. Don't underestimate the farmer. Farmers will talk shop as much or more than programmers.
Feeding pigs is the tip of the iceberg. If you want to see some sparks fly, just sit down at the local cafe and talk about the comparative yield of soybeans and corn, and why anyone growing X percentage this year with the weather pattern is just plain nuts.
It's not quite the same as the family-farm days (most are now corporate owned), but those were the first debug sessions I listened in on as my grandfather held court among his colleagues.
For programmers, everyone is trying constantly to braindump to everyone else; that's half of what the blog posts on HN consist of. And everyone wants their braindumps analyzed, and, more importantly, debugged. "I'm feeding my pigs horse meat--did I make the right decision?"
When you're exposed to it so often, it's hard not to get tired of telling people about the benefits of grain over horse meat.