I so disagree. This is basic English: the "Explaining REST" part of the sentence is the part that implies that the explainee isn't technical (else why would they need to have it explained to them?).
Making the subject "brother", "sister", "mom", "dad", or "husband" has the exact same meaning to me--they are all anonymous relations and so the "non-technical" implication still carries. The subject the author chose was "wife", presumably because this was based on an actual conversation with his wife.
The subject does have a chance to turn the implication around. If your brother worked for 20 years as a DBA then the title would have to be "Explaining REST to a DBA" to get the correct implication.
> the "Explaining REST" part of the sentence is the part that implies that the explainee isn't technical (else why would they need to have it explained to them?).
Because you can be technically inclined without perfect knowledge of REST? As I wrote: lots of articles do that. This article was very popular exactly because of the "totally non-technical" aspect.
> The subject does have a chance to turn the implication around. If your brother worked for 20 years as a DBA then the title would have to be "Explaining REST to a DBA" to get the correct implication.
And this article could be equally clear with the title "How I Explained REST to someone completely non-technical" or even "How I Explained REST to My (non-technical) Wife" - but that is not the title it had.
Making the subject "brother", "sister", "mom", "dad", or "husband" has the exact same meaning to me--they are all anonymous relations and so the "non-technical" implication still carries. The subject the author chose was "wife", presumably because this was based on an actual conversation with his wife.
The subject does have a chance to turn the implication around. If your brother worked for 20 years as a DBA then the title would have to be "Explaining REST to a DBA" to get the correct implication.