I have this conversation about once a year.

gistfile1.txt

I show my parents whatever I've been working on lately.

Me:         So, saw that demo I just showed you?
Parents:    Yeah, that was pretty cool!
Me:         Okay, so what I do is I write the program that is used to do X at run time.
Parents:    Oh, you do Y!
Me:         No - that's not me. I work with people that do Y, but I don't do it myself. But I write the
        program that we use to do X while that thing I just showed you is running.
Parents:    Oh, sure! So you write the program for X that these other people create Y with!
Me:         No, that's not right either. They're using someone else's program that also does some form
        of X to make Y. But we can't use that at run time! So I write the program that does X in
        real time.
Parents:    So you do Y in real time?
Me:         Not really - I just write the program that does
        X so you get Y in real time.
Parents:    (completely puzzled) Hmm. Okay, I think we got it.
Me:         Sure.
            (beat)
Me:         *sigh*

Instances of this conversation that I've had: (these aren't straight textual substitutions of course,
but you get the idea)

* X = "music playback", Y = "music"
* X = "demo effects", Y = "pixel art"
* X = "3D rendering", Y = "animation"
* X = "level editing", Y = "game levels"
* X = "game engine code", Y = "game code"
* X = "cut-scene editing", Y = "cut scenes"
* X = "3D hardware drivers", Y = "3D hardware"
* X = "Game UI middleware", Y = "Windows Explorer" (I had to pick an example to explain what I mean
    by "user interface" and we never really got past that metaphor)
* X = "VR head tracking", Y = "wear a hybrid mocap/gimp suit and wave [your] hands around like a
    crazy person" (very slightly exaggerated)
* X = "video coding", Y = "videos"

I'm sure I missed a few.