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So I tried to show this article to my mom and she had no idea what it was saying. When you introduce terms (and you are targeting non-"computer" people) you hav

So I tried to show this article to my mom and she had no idea what it was saying. When you introduce terms (and you are targeting non-"computer" people) you have to clearly define them right away. For instance she was really confused that hashing was used as both a verb and a noun.

bonoboTP 6y ago
It may also be unclear what "reversing" means here. You have to remember that most non-technical people don't think in the programmer style "input-output" way. Say "reversing a hash" and the may think of reversing the string like abc->cba. Often you cannot do better in explaining it without doing a mini course. And people would have to sit down, concentrate and work through the new concepts and that's tiring, looks like school, "I was never good at math", and you lost everyone. You can't make the average person understand hashing, mainly because the don't care and will glaze over. You can dress it up with engaging stories and metaphors, and they will remember the engaging story but not actually build the right mental model if you actually poke at their understanding.