Slashdot Mirror
A Profile of Coders
Zito writes "'The stereotypical programmer is a shy young man who works in a darkened room, intensely concentrating on magical incantations that coax the computer to do his bidding. He can concentrate 12-16 hours at a time, often working through the night to realize his artistic vision. He subsists on pizza and Twinkies,'
Steve McConnell writes for gamasutra about profiles of software developers. "
These things really piss me off. Many of us don't fit this profile at all. I know alot of geeks, myself included, who have a life, a steady relationship, have hobbies outside of their computer, and many friends. Yes, I like to play on my computer, but I'm also into sports, I go to football games, I play pickup games, I go to the gym. Can't they figure out that many of us are actually well rounded people?
Sounds a lot like the premeds at my college.
But seriously folks, if we want a REAL profile of "J. Random Hacker" (Programmer), we should look at the Jargon file, Appendix B. It's got about the best description there is.
-Chris
I remember those days. Wake up around 2pm, code until 4am, stopping only to order a pizza or go take a piss. Burning up cubes of Dew every day with the refrigerator set to Siberian Mode to cool it faster.
Now I'm a network engineer. Same hours, same pizza, same dew consumption, but sometimes I have to go kick a switch or replug a router. *sigh*
"To err is human, to forgive is simply not my policy." --root
They know we're well rounded. We gain that shape because of our insistent cravings for slacking and junk food, and utter loathing for anything that requires physical movement of more than fingers.
What about those suffering Too-Many-Hours-Close-To-The-Vending-Machine syndrome? The people know just how to jiggle each machine, and which machine has the best stuff on each day.
In Japan they sell beer in the vending machines. I don't know how the hell they get any coding done.
I wish, my attention span is only...
Wait. What was I writing about?
I am a SysAdmin, but I code in C, a little Java, HTML, Perl, thisthatwhatever. I like programming for myself and do it at home, making my little apps to make the life easier, but full time programming is not my thing and avoid going at it at work.
I am a falconer (drop the chihuahua!), and often go out on weekends hiking around the mountains in Arizona or the desert. My home is a little small, but I keep the desk clean and my systems look as good as they run. I eat well, but supplement my caffine and sugar intake with Mountain Dew.
musthavemountaindewmountaindewmountaindewmountaind ewmountaindewmountaindew....
We have to devote our hearts and souls to the trade in order to learn how to write good code.
The logical, non judgemental nature of computers tends to be a friendlier environment for shy folks who cannot figure out the whimsical, inconsistent and often childish and pointless rules of 'social skills'. In a world where Tommy Lee can beat Pamela Lee to a pulp and still remain a popular star, maybe computers are the only darned things that make any real sense.
I find it rather hypocritical that anyone can stand around laughing at a geek programmer's "lack of social skills". He's not the one hiding in the trunk of a car trying to evade police after murdering his girlfriend. (That would be you, Rae Carruth.) The devastating consequences of the excesses of those socially skilled 'alpha male' types make headline news all the time.
The image of this dashing Don Juan who can code up a clean version of Netscape overnight while weightlifting his way to tomorrow's Mister Universe competition while knowing all the slick lines that make the chicks swoon, is a myth. You put someone like that into a real honest to god developer's job and he'll be flat out crushed by the kind of tasks that the four-eyed geeks drink up like orange juice.
I've seen it happen on my job too many times. The witty funny dashing fellow gets his head handed to him time after time by the fat guy down the hall who spends half a day cleaning up the first guy's code with bug fixes and speed enhancements and then finally getting him fired for being a (relatively) crappy programmer.
Heh, this should really piss the moderators off...lol.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
16 hours a day? On a light day maybe, pizza and twinkies? Well burgers and caffine is more like it. But more or less this is pretty much correct. These days I'm a little more sane, the all nighters are only when necisary and I've even be seen outside during the day (shock!).
The issue I have is why is this seen as so bad! Football fans doing nothing but drink beer and talk about football, many music fan's are the same, the list goes on. This language is a hangover from the dark years of geekdom. What needs to be understood about us is that we live for the challenge, it's a way of life.
All these posts about sterotypeing are mundane, there is nothing wrong with being like this, and there is nothing wrong with not being like this it's a choice, it's what you enjoy and want.
Axiom #1: Steve McConnell is the author of (among other things) "Code Complete" where he advocates good engineering practices for software developers. In that book he specifically debunks the myth that "real programmers stay up all night coding and eating cold pizza".
Axiom #2: The quote taken from the story says "stereotypical programmer".
Axiom #3: The full story seems to be unavailable (/. effect?).
Axiom #4: Many posts on slashdot are already using the quote as fodder both for and against the notion that "programmers are misfits". Lemma 1: Putting Axioms 1 and 2 together we can conclude that this story will be a further debunking of the "Real Programmers are Social Misfits" myth.
Lemma 2: Axiom #3 and #4 allow us to conclude that the quote is the sole source of fodder.
Conclusion: Lemma 1 and 2 show us that maybe we should read the article before responding.
---
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Well, lessee, let's profile geeks. How do we know they are geeks? Take the steretype: male programmers, low social skills, spend 16+ hours plugged into the computer, sleep till noon, code till dawn, caffeine is a basic food group, etc. etc. Pick the people that match the stereotype and now profile them. Surprise! It turns out that geeks tend to be male programmers, low social skills, spend 16+ hours..... etc.
;) are lawyers. Not all lawyers, though -- not litigation lawyers and not small-office lawyers. But corporate lawyers working for big law firms tend to be very very smart people, and very geeky as well. Tax people are the geekiest, by the way.
I'll define a geek as a person who can think cleanly and can deal with very complicated systems. If you start from this point, the profiles are probably going to look very different. For example, in my limited experience, the best and smartest geeks (besides, the Slashdot crowd, of course
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Ignoring the fact that your post was most likely an attempt at trolling, you are correct, in a way.
Unfortunately, the kind of person you're talking about (and I've known a few of that type) often has difficulty in communicating with other people on anything other than a technical level, meaning that they get jack shit in the way of promotions, etc., in any medium-to-large corporate structure. They're usually best at coding alone or in a small team, limiting their usefulness in a larger organization.
Of course, not many geeks really give a shit about corporate thinking...
In the end, you have to ask yourself what the costs have been and what you have gained. Do you want to have a family to support you in your old age? Sure it's great to make things work, and accomplishemnts are a source of pride. The endless persuit of someone else's proffit just plain sucks. Don't get sucked into something that seems rewarding without really knowing what you want. The only way to know is to try it out. What's the use of developing cool code or anything else if you die single at age 50? Leaving behind a wife and kids is not to fun either.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
True communication is only possible among equals. The project managers I encountered played a big role indeed, but more akin to Dilbert's PHB than to anything positive. Whenever I work with competent, the needed communication is minimal. No minutes, no formalities, no political correctness, no BS. When you take that out, only the relevant remains, and it's not that much, really. It is heaven.
Testing is of course fundamental, and QA should be done by other people than the programmers, with the only problem that they become VERY bitter after some time if they do only QA. We solved it doing 'peer review': You tested other programmer's soft, and they tested yours. Then you do both things with more care and forgiveness, assuming of course comparable skills...
I put up a quick mirror of the article at http://sam.wood.tripod.com/mcconnell_01.htm
:-)
The site is under some heavy traffic or something.. Anyway, there's 4 pages in the article, and I've got the first 3.. working on the fourth..
Sorry about it being tripod.. I know tripod sucks (that popup is annoying as hell), but it's quick, easy, and free.
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- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
From The Tao Of Programming:
T h e A n c i e n t M a s t e r s
B o o k T w o
Thus spake the master programmer:
"After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless."
More I cannot say. The tao must be experienced for true understanding to dawn.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
A few lines after the quoted bit, we have this:
"How much of the stereotype is true, and what effect does it have on the programming occupation? To find out, let's look first at the programmer's personality then at the other elements of the stereotype."
Kinda changes the meaning of the part that Slashdot quoted, doesn't it? Maybe they could try reading the links before they actually post them...
Girlie programmer here! Not only am I a geek girl, I'm a (cute)gay geek girl, and I spend my weekends hanging out at bars with REAL people and playing gigs (I'm a musician).... Most people consider me to be VERY social (i.e. I never shut up!)and easy to get along with.... they are usually shocked when I reveal my coding alter ego! Though I will admit to large chunks of time holed up in my apartment, splitting my time equally between programming and recording my music....
Actually, I think my severe case of ADD lends itself well to programming, as when I get "in the zone" I am so well focused that nothing can disturb me. But when I'm hyper, I just go out and party.... or something
Oh, since I'm trying to stay on topic (snort!)... I hate pr0n!
Siobahn
www.siobahn.com
USA Today reported that the techie nerd stereotype is so well entrenched that students in every grade ranked computer jobs near the bottom of their lists of career choices. This quote is taken from the body of the article... is it any wonder there is a shortage of technology workers in an economy becoming increasingly dependent on this very technology when they perpetuate such stereotypes in the mass media?
Do most geeks truly spend most of their time in the dark, only coming out for sunlight when they either a) need more caffeine or b) when they go through the wrong door, or are we truly a diurnal (that means daytime-lovin', kiddos) species?
I know that I, for one, do not like working on my computer with large amounts of light on. In fact, I prefer the dark as I can see better (no glare, tunnel vision, etc.). Where I work, everyone who codes does so in dark rooms. If they're in an office with windows, they pull the shades. It has nothing to do with introversion or anything like that; it's purely a lighting mechanism.
Is this an anomaly, or is the stereotype an anomaly? Are you reading Slashdot in the dark right now? Do you normally read it in the dark?
Oh, and I'm not a 'stereotypical' geek. I have a life. I didn't major in CS or EECS. I have social graces. I tend to keep my dietary intake at a reasonable lev -- did someone say 'Twinkie'?
*gurgle*
I took a MBTI test a while back (when it was actually free on some site), and I was an INTJ. I have to say it is dead on.
/love/ to /design/ things...I love to draw diagrams on whiteboards (heh, I have UML diagram syntax sheets pinned to my cube!), map out conceptualizations, and hypothesize about optimal configurations at the abstract design level. However I find very often that I grind to a standstill very fast when 'dirty' implementation details are brought up, because my mind is stuck in the theoretical optimization mode, and at his fine-grained implementation level, I get hung up on stuff others wouldn't; e.g. a matter of an unnecessary byte or cycle.
/give/ you. ("All I ever needed to know I learned from manuals" ;)
"An example of an N is a designer who considers wide-ranging possibilities and shrugs off low-level technical issues as "implementation details."
I
I usually find that if I am assigned one project, I might take a bit longer than normal to complete that project, but only because I've spawned five more in the process of working on it. (I have lost count of how many partially started projects I have...last time I looked in my dev folder it was over 40).
This article also gives me a bit more confidence, knowing that at least a fifth of us out there are in my "Some college, no degree" boat. I expect that number to rise as people realize that software engineering requires things like a sharp mind, dogged persistence, and a lot of flexibility and creativity...things that knowledge-stuffing colleges can't
Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I won't comment much on the long hours of work thing. As Steve McConnell correctly pointed out in his article, this mostly happens because the programmers involved don't have a clue how to do good engineering and therefore put in 16 and 20 hour days trying to debug something that could have been avoided in the first place.
But the bit about the Meyers/Briggs personality inventory thing sure rings true. I am an INTP (and very good with UI designs and architecture, plus a fair coder), which is a fairly rare type. But all of the good programmers I have ever worked with were 'NT's or 'ST's. And the examples he gave of the 'S' versus 'N' conflicts were right on as well.
Personally, if I was hiring, I would apply two major criteria to weed out the dross. First I would require the Meyers/Briggs type on the application and second I would have them list the magazines they read reguarily (I call this the 'Toilet Tank Test'). If it mostly things like Golf Digest I pass. If it includes Dr. Dobbs I invite them in for an interview.
I also liked the description of 'Programming Heroes and Ball Hogs'. Very true according to my own experience!
But I sure wish people would get off this rip about programming being a young man's game. First off you really don't have to be a man. And second off, what about the old geeks like myself? At least the article goes so far as to point out that this will change over time. I sure hope so! So far as I can tell, old programmers tend to be either shoved aside or promoted to management. Either possibility seems equally like Purgatory to me!
Jack
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
They feel the need to classify because classifications work. I wouldn't be surprised if you did a fair amount of classification yourself - after all, it is a fundamental cognitive process.
...
As for the personality typing, well, I know a few things about that. And while it has its share of skeptics, the tedium (as opposed to the glory) of software development has overwhelming appeal to only a few personality types. I don't belong to one of them. Software design, on the other hand
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There is no premature anti-fascism. -Ernest Hemingway
My best schedule (I was doing this about 2 years ago while telecommuting) goes something like this:
- 10 am - wake. Breakfast while reading email. Think about today's hacking plans while showering.
- 11 am - start hacking.
- 3 pm - break. Play with dogs, hit heavy bag, do kata, talk a walk, whatever.
- 4 pm - hack
- 7 pm - dinner. Then Go Out And Play.
- Midnight - come home. Hack.
- 2 am - go to sleep.
This is what makes me healthy, happy, and productive, and I wish I could be getting paid to follow it now. Your mileage may vary.Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
- ...dashing Don Juan who can code up a clean version of Netscape overnight while weightlifting his way to tomorrow's Mister Universe competition while knowing all the slick lines that make the chicks swoon, [will] be flat out crushed by the kind of tasks that the four-eyed geeks drink up like orange juice.
It's a shame you feel you can't be witty. It's a shame you don't have the confidence to talk charmingly to MOTAS. It's a shame that you are intimidated by exersize activities. It's a shame that you seem to feel that being overweight is an unsolvable condition that isolates one from society.The witty funny dashing fellow gets his head handed to him time after time by the fat guy down the hall...
A few years ago, I worked with a guy, Tom, who developed a stellar C++ object library for doing 3D rendering. He is one of the smartest people I've met (and this includes the likes of Stallman, Chomsky and Minsky); he has a PhD. He is a very good looking and in great shape (3rd Degree Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do). He has a gorgeous wife (also PhD/Black Belt etc.) and managed his development schedule succefully enough to be a great father to his two precocious daughters.
One could resent a guy like that. Instead, I realize that the differences between Tom and me are due to different choices we've made. I never pursued an advanced degree. I've stayed single. I quit Tae Kwon Do when I got a brown belt. It must be great to be Tom, but obviously I don't want to be him -- or I probably would be.
You feel that you are a great coder. That's wonderful. Now go ahead and be the witty, dashing fellow, too, because you clearly consider that to be desirable in some way. The only thing really stopping you is the equally visible belief that you can't.
Current and recent reading includes Another Roadside Attraction, The Compass of Zen, Phillip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing, The Tick - Luny Bin, and Planet of the Apes - which despite the visions of bad monkey suits it conjures to those who've seen the movies it inspired is actually a satire of some merit.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
That guy working 16-hour days and subsisting on pizza and twinkies is not necessarily more productive (especially in the long run) than the guy whose leaving at 5:30. Stressing out your employees to the point where they're leaving the field and not just your company is dumb. "Gee, he's irreplacable- let's work him till he quits."
Wit isn't detrimental to coding. But the hours you spend learning karate will put the other guy way ahead of you if he's doing what doctors and researchers do in their fields: namely spending that same time mastering their trade.
And creativity manifests itself in ways that most people don't appreciate for a long time. Since when did Albert Einstein win any awards for stand up comedy?
Also, most of the hard core types I know aren't fat, they're the exact opposite - wiry. The fat guy who got the 'dashing programmer' fired was simply a more efficient programmer. So were the much thinner programmers around him who outshone the unfortunate 'other' guy. These shy quiet techno monks work with stuff like Real Time Java and Java/GL, while Mr. Dashing was great with Java, C and custom database coding, but man, he was stumped trying to keep up with that 'real time extension' stuff. Once he was done doing the database work, his prowess hit a wall and he couldn't go any further and he wasn't needed anymore. (Merry Christmas, yer contract won't be renewed.) These ubermonks, though, had what it takes. I don't have that level of skill. I couldn't talk shop with the likes of Greg Bollella. But on the other hand I have a steady girlfriend.
And aside from one fat guy, as I said, I don't know any geeks who are 'losing their health, hating fitness or indulging in rude behavior' (to quote you closely). Most shy geeks try their best to AVOID being rude and they try to avoid saying the wrong things. Many shy geeks are conditioned to believe everything they say is going to be taken as rude crude or witless, so they keep the number of words that they might get hung by, to a bare minimum. Hence, they don't communicate very well.
And I'm just talking about shy geeks here. I'm not talking about geeks in general.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Allow me to paraphrase (and thoroughly mangle) a Zen koan. A student asks his master how long it will take him to achieve enlightenment if he spends an hour a day. The master says "A year".
"And if I spend four hours a day?"
"Ten years."
"And if I spend all my waking hours?"
"Then you will never achieve enlightenment."
To a certain extent, persuits outside of one's major field helps one inside that major field. While this is counterintuitive, it is true. Who can find a true expert in any field who is totally dedicated to that field?
--The basis of all love is respect
I think if you have read the authorized biography of William Henry Gates III (GATES by Stephen Manes and Paul Andrews), the mentality of programmers in 1975 to 1978 at Microsoft was come in at noon, program until 8 pm, go out for a meal at a fast food joint, then see a movie, then back for nocturnal coding until the wee hours, then home to crash and back again at noon to start the cycle all over again. Alas, that work, work and work mentality meant that personal hygiene and personal appearances were way down on the priority scale.
My brother (who works at a computer animation company) has done all-nighters, but then, he does keep a sleeping bag in his office and the restrooms in the offices also have shower facilities.
Indeed, if you work at the really big high tech firms like Microsoft, Cisco, Yahoo!, etc., most of them usually have a built in cafeteria, a constantly-restocked supply of soft drinks, and definitely got to have shower facilities for those folks who sometimes do all-nighters but of course want to keep up their personal hygiene.
Given you work at home, of course that's a different story; you have the bedroom and bathroom nearby, not to mention an obvious supply of food.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
One of the things I hate about the world is stereotyping. Everybody and their sister seems to think people fit into catagories, like kiddie blocks, we're supposed to fit into square pegs. This is not true, especially not anymore.
Firstly, the image that "Computers == Geeks || Nerds || Dorks" does not apply anymore. Everybody is on the internet, and everybody has (or to the very least) wants a computer. All that crap you see in the movies of jocks beating up on computer dorks saying 'Go watch your star trek and play with your computer dork' just isn't true, and most likely, that same jock will be making fun of the same person over icq or irc.
Now with the article's point, I have to bite at it for personal reasons. I fit the above description of a coder who sometimes works looooong hours too meet a deadline or just because I'm in the 'mood' for coding whena all my ideas are just coming out one after the other and sleep can wait till later.
Just as an example from something that happened personally, during my first year in university, I had the pleasure of meeting a lot of new people. At one time, one person asked me what I do for work
But what people don't get is that coders and techies don't need to to be skinny, pale, with ugly glasses and bad posture. I'm know I'm not, want an example ? Take Linus Torvalds. I like to think I have good social skills since I have quite a lot of friends, I go clubbing and raving as often as I can. And I love the wimmen : )
And I don't feel as if I'm an exception either. A lot people whom I've met who typically ten or twenty years ago would have nothing to do with computers or networking, or even linux in general are nowadays wanting to learn about that 'stuff'.
People should really stop stereotyping, its just a bad thing and will get you into trouble later on. So the next time you see that jock in high school that bugged you all the time, be carefull cause he might be able to code circles in ASM around ya ; )
That's all fine and well for spiritual enlightenment. But would you rather ride in an airplane piloted by someone who has flown 1 hour in the simulator a day for a year, or 4 hours a day for a year?
Would you rather be operated on by a surgeon who spent 1 hour a day learning medicine or someone who spent 8 hours a day or 16 (or quite often, 36
Likewise I'd rather entrust my vital electronic infrastructure with geeks who spend all day, or 4 hours a day, learning code, vs 1 hour a day. They might not get high marks as Zen Buddhist monks, but the planes won't crash into each other, the L.E.O. satellites will keep beaming bandwidth to the masses without interruption, and the power will stay on. And maybe, just maybe - Windows 2001 will be less buggy
Frankly I like the AC's idea of social skills fitness training. Do you know how many millions of geek men would flock to such a thing?
BTW: the fat dude is witty. In his own way. Not the way most people appreciate it, though.
peace!
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
I think you're both right, and are looking at the same thing from different angles.
Everyone has a "life" capacity, and that capacity varies from person to person. Call it intelligence, or charm, or something else for which there is no word yet - it's clear that some people can accomplish great things with seemingly less effort than their peers. It also seems to be something that is, at least partially, under our control through our choice of diet, exercise, etc. (e.g., if you're already physically active it is an energizer, but if you've fallen out of shape it is a huge drain/investment to get back into shape.)
Tom sounds like one of those lucky people who has a huge capacity, whether innate or developed. However, I also agree with the first poster that *most* people seem to fall into the "you can be pretty or you can be right" trap and there's an inverse relationship between technical skills and other skills. It's not absolute, but it's a direct enough correlation that I'm always suspicious of the tech expert wearing an expensive suit.
Hmm; this sounds like an "ask slashdot" topic. What do people which expands their capacity? E.g., I found a tremendous benefit in moving my lifecycle rides from the gym after work to my own house before taking my morning shower. It takes less time, but I'm energized during those unholy pre-noon hours.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
If you play with the on-line version consider taking it multiple times. My type changed before and after coding. This got me interested in why it did and by playing with the back button, changing a few answers, and resubmitting it is possible to create a set to produce any of the 16 types.
Banfield
No-one gets paid to write software. You get paid because you have a knowledge base about computer science that you can offer in addition to some programming on the side. There are simply too many programmers, it's too easy to program, and you can't put a market value on something which costs nothing to distribute.
so I became a coder
happy cubicle
oh no, a round peg
push, cut, beat, hammer, pull, wedge
we will make him fit
No Zen is good zen
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Well, I have found a satisfactory definition of "geek" that applies not only to software people. When someone asks aloud "Who cares!", the geek is the one in the back of the room who raises his hand.
And quite frankly, I find the one who *doesn't* care really disturbing. It is as if nothing is important than their own bailiwick, or worse, their pesky social life. The difference is that caring about computers doesn't seem fun until you are *into* it. While everyone likes the life of the party or the class clown. While I have nnothing against the "popular" people as long as they don't treat me derogatorily for caring. Even worse are the many wannabees who do nothing more than *trying* to be like the popular ones.
I would really like to make a statement to the remaining high schoolers reading this (which I am one). If you spend an abnormal amount of time at the computer... don't give it up or lie about it for anything. I know there is a lot of pressure to comform but its not worth it. In fact, pretending to be something you aren't makes the rest of us look back.
We may be geeks, we may be obsessed, but we are not wannabees. A wannabee is the saddest type of human being.
Oh, and one more thing. Be secure about yourself. It takes a while but beleive me, it is well worth it.
Hey, if a guy looks like Mr. Universe, he doesn't have to know any slick lines to make chicks swoon.
;), is what I look for. I also want it to be with someone that is mutually attractive.
(But if he doesn't he should have the sense to keep his mouth shut lest he frighten them off.)
Of course, I doubt anyone could code a clean duplicate of Netscape version >1.1 from scratch within a 24 hour period. Bodybuilder or not.
>;)
Personally, I don't want a "relationship" with a chick that lets the hunk-factor dominate her decisions in where she's going to sleep that night.
A meaningful relationship with someone that that shares my common interests, even if she can code my pants off (pardon the pun...ok, don't
Of course, my failure on this quest falls primarily on my shoulders. I am incredibly shy around people. ESPECIALLY women I find physically attractive...this little quirk in my personality has and is my demise in this area.
Can I communicate? I like to think I can. I talk to Nz and Greyhaunt quite often and I've talked a little bit with Corrinne as well. What can I say? We share an interest in physics/mathematics/CS *and* Omaha steaks...oops, there I go again saying something dumb...*sigh* oh well...
Catch is: its all been via e-mail. There is a level of comfort there, a mask that I can hide behind.
Why do I find such an "unhealthy" comfort in that mask? I don't know. Perhaps its all the negative reinforcement while in grades K-12 of me being ugly, unattractive, not accepted. Perhaps growing up having been given the nicknames "Pee" and "P-land" by your peers didn't help. Could be partly genetic too. My mother is a fairly quiet person. Great speaker, but quiet. For some reason, my mother's claims that I was a beautiful person didn't seem to hold water compared to the old addage, "A face only a mother could love," and opinions of my peers. I can list my teacher's names from K-6th grade with ease. Why? They were the best friends I had each year.
Am I a geek? I don't know. I started programming on an Apple][ when I was 12. I graduated from college with degrees in Physics, Math, and Computer Science(emp. in Comp. Graphics) by the time I was 22 simply because I felt I had nothing better to do than to learn. College introduced me to role-playing, Star Trek, and TBS Bond Marathons. (Dad wouldn't allow tv at home.) The most important thing I got was a relatively close network of good friends. I even had a relationship with a girl! 4.5 years later I found myself disillusioned from my friends, my family and myself. We're still friends but we really didn't like each other for the right reasons. (She was the first real woman to seem to take an interest with me. No one's perfect, especially not me.)
Am I a jock? Hmm, nothing outstanding, IMO. I'm a little like Al Bundy in that respect. My athletic highlight was running a 5:00 mile when I was 13. By the time I turned 14 I gained about 2 inches and 20 pounds. That 20 turned into 40 by graduation and I put an additional 70 on top of that since. My chances of being exceptional at it are dead. I do it for fun/exercise now. Between the weight and the asthma I developed, it feels as if my lungs are getting ripped out if I push a pace any faster than 7 minutes...I push it sometimes but less and less as time passes.
Do I fit within the stereotypes of geekdom? Yes and no. I'm a relatively nonobvious person. I've found that I don't really stand out from any crowd but I don't fit in with any of them either. You could pass me on the street and not give me a second thought. I guess that's my hidden talent. I'm adept at blending in and going unnoticed. Or at least, that's how it seems.
>;)
-Vel
One thing I've witnessed with grim regularity, is the exploitation of nerds' work ethic. All those long hours are part of your life, what's your life worth to you? If you have some sort of ownership over what you code (either through equity, or GPL or something)and "coding is life," then fine. Too often, geeks slave away for some kind of "geek pride," while all they are really doing is making the guys with founder-stock insanely rich.
Geeks Unite!
...anyone care to finish this one off?
--
Xenu loves you!
Complain all you want, there is such a strong subculture of people obsessed with technology, gadgets, and the 'future' it blinds them from enjoying the present real world.
/. techies give a shit about IPOs and get quick fast schemes, which puts them on the lowest rung of the ladder called 'capitalist greed.' The real 'techies' are scientists working for a better tomarrow through green solutions and medical technology, not some zit-faced 17 year old developing faster ways of downloading .gifs of Sarah Michelle Geller and hoping for a cushy corporate job or praying to be a CEO.
From what I can tell many techies are disillusioned with the present world and dream up fantasies of a new and improved future which of course is always BS. The constant production new useless crap (look at your average Sharper Image catalog for great example) and throw away lifestyles only help the future become that much more crappy and inhospitable.
Give it up, get your head off the screen or the latest SF book and *gasp* enjoy the few parts of life that are still enjoyable. Nothing forces techies to be anti-social but their own attitudes towards others and the typical futurist solutions to life's problems are fiction, and those who truly believe them define pathetic.
In the end
Yes, people who are driven passionatly are usually an anti-social lot but the slashdot consesus is driven for useless consumerist crap with the possible exception of Linux, which will never come close to MS's home market share. But as a coder's OS plaything its perfect and might have the fastest Sarah Michelle Geller download times in the world. Congrats.
That's all fine and well for spiritual enlightenment. But would you rather ride in an airplane piloted by someone who has flown 1 hour in the simulator a day for a year, or 4 hours a day for a year?
I would prefer to ride an airplane piloted by someone who has flown a simulator 4 hours a day than 1 hour a day. But on the other hand, I wouldn't get into an airplane with a pilot who practiced 16 hours a day, every day - I would seriously question the sanity of such a person.
Likewise I'd rather entrust my vital electronic infrastructure with geeks who spend all day, or 4 hours a day, learning code, vs 1 hour a day.
Coding isn't difficult. If you just want to be a coder, perhaps you should go ahead and spend all day coding. But if you want to be more than a coder - if you want to be an innovator, a creative scientist, etc. then you need a broader perspective - which requires going out and doing things other than coding.
(Disclaimer: This post is entirely IMHO...)
As I see it, while by no means is the average programmer neccessarily a white male junkfood-addicted recluse, there are certain trends a programmer tends towards, because of the mindset involved in programming:
Programming encourages logical, structured thinking. If you weren't thinking this way to start, odds are you are after years of programming, because good programming requires it.
The logical train of thought tends to spill over to the rest of your life. You start to carefully consider political candidites, rather then voting a party ticket, (and likely decide not to vote in disgust, or go third party). Nitpicking becomes a way of life, after constant exposure to a compiler that throws a fit over a misplaced semicolon (or similar events).
More generally, you tend to apply logic to all of your decisions to a certain extent. I'm not neccessary saying all programmers will be Mr. Spock-like. On the contrary, debugging requires quite a bit of your intuitive side. Thus, if programmers are taking after Spock, it is more the Spock of the later movies, who was willing to swear if the situation warrented it, and seemed to take his emotions and intuition into account, while logic prevailed...
A corrillary of this would be that most programmers, having observed a lack of logic or structure in most other peoples decisions, tend to become more of an individualist, and avoid most popular(or mainstream) trends, and any attempt to classify them in a group (and are even now trying to come up with rebuttals to this post... )
In religious areas, programmers will likely highly analyse it, and either: reject all religion in disgust (atheism), decide that with a lack of data, no decision can be made on the whole issue (agnostism), or opt for a non-mainstream religion (paganism, for example.) Some will stay Christian, but if you ask them why, they will generally have a quite well-thought out reason.
Because of the nature of programming tending towards hours of frustration, with one brief moment of enlightenment that makes it all worthwhile, programmers tend towards other, similar pursuits: adventure games, logic puzzles of all types, zen and other mind disciplines, and martial arts. This combined with the individualism tends towards very Thoreau-like attitudes...
A lot of this really depends which areas of a programmers life the discipine tends to spill over to, of course. In other areas, there is a tendency to minimise neccessary thinking, esp. in areas of fashion & eating habits...
As such, the situation tends to be that the extremes and the norms reverse when applied to us...
Only my opinion, of course, but I and other programmers I've known seem to bear it out...
--Arcum
Hence, they don't communicate very well.
/. being one of those atypical places, USENET (or what remains after spamfilters and killfiling) being another.
We communicate very well. Just not in the most typical places or in the most usual ways.
Happy new year!
Your Working Boy,
But there's a danger to this. Many managers want people who fit a particular stereotype. They feel that anybody who doesn't fit their particular stereotype won't fit in at the office. As a rather non-stereotypical person, I'm at a disadvantage with such managers -- prior to hiring, that is. After hiring, well, I seem to always end up in charge of the most important projects in the business after the first couple of months of routine stuff... I suspect that a lot of people who are really good at what they do have the same problem, at least until they build a reputation in the industry.
Oh -- being able to communicate technical ideas clearly helps too. Volunteer to be the keeper of the design document, and you end up being the lead project designer by default (grin).
_E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
I am surprised that you got a lot of ESTJ's. I haven't met too many extroverts in the computer field, though my office is just down the hall from one (to be fair, his major was EE in college, not CS).
_E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Programming isn't like flying a plane. When flying a plane, you have to intuitively know the correct response at any one moment, to be able to handle the situation as it arises; being able to think nonlinearly, to make logical leaps and come up with novel solutions isn't very important. However, if you approach programming from the same point of view, your code is going to be very ordinary and mediocre. To be a good programmer involves the ability to think nonlinearly and creatively.
It's a reference to pulp-erotica novelist turned sex-cult messiah P. Ron Huddard. In his heyday, he was so successful, the term "pronography" was coined after him, and only mutated into "pornography" after the phonographic industry filed mass lawsuits against dictionary publishers, on the grounds that the term produced defamatory search-engine results.
In religious areas, programmers will likely highly analyse it, and either: reject all
religion in disgust (atheism), decide that with a lack of data, no decision can be made
on the whole issue (agnostism), or opt for a non-mainstream religion (paganism, for
example.) Some will stay Christian, but if you ask them why, they will generally have
a quite well-thought out reason.
The Christian geeks I know of tend to also be theology geeks, who rather than accept a prepackaged Christianity, delve into all manner of arcane theological arguments.
This could be a universal phenomenon concerning religious geeks tending to be more into the arcana and metaphysics of their religions. I've encountered a number of Jewish programmers who were really into the Cabbala, for example.