Most people will do this for anything but computers, though, which is weird.
I'm not so sure about that. A majority of people (no data, sorry) confronted by danger or an accident will panic or freeze. People can have extensive familiarity with physical tools but be blind or even reject nonstandard configurations or uses when first proposed.
There are complex problems I can solve in my head and simple ones that make me go stupid; my wife is way faster at abstracting information from a 2d layout like a videogame or a map, I'm much better with 3d or data with multiple overlapping layers. So she kills me at Tetris, Scrabble and reading transit maps, whereas for me Space Giraffe, wire puzzles and tree scheduling come easy. She likes LISPs, I like assembler, and so on.
Your analogy confuses me. It seems that Lisp, and it's tree structure, would fit better with "multiple overlapping layers", and assembly would fit better with "2d layout", since it is so important to visualize the memory model, like a map in your head.
Oh, it wasn't an analogy - the only programming she liked in college was functional languages, and I enjoy assembler - don't program a lot anymore and not so fast at it, but find it more satisfying in a low level context.
I don't get it either. The only reason I can think of is maybe it's more interesting because it's less natural? She claims not to like geometry much either, which just baffles me.
I'm not so sure about that. A majority of people (no data, sorry) confronted by danger or an accident will panic or freeze. People can have extensive familiarity with physical tools but be blind or even reject nonstandard configurations or uses when first proposed.
There are complex problems I can solve in my head and simple ones that make me go stupid; my wife is way faster at abstracting information from a 2d layout like a videogame or a map, I'm much better with 3d or data with multiple overlapping layers. So she kills me at Tetris, Scrabble and reading transit maps, whereas for me Space Giraffe, wire puzzles and tree scheduling come easy. She likes LISPs, I like assembler, and so on.