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The Biggest Cults In Tech

bobby f. writes "Infoworld has published its list of the biggest cults in tech — including Palmists, Newtonians, Commodorians, the Brotherhood of the Ruby, IBM power systems fanboys, Ubuntu-ists, and Lispers. A pretty fun read (unless you really are a cult member)." Although I think it's pretty clear that the Apple camp isn't an opinionated cult, they're just always right. Fire away.

16 of 397 comments (clear)

  1. Cults in tech? by fatboyslack · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Strange to have 'cults in tech' and no mention of gamers, console vs pc, mmorpgers in WoW etc.

    If anything was a cult it would be WoW and Evercrack.

    --
    Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. -- Leo Tolstoy
  2. Pretty absurd Apple is absent by calmofthestorm · · Score: 4, Insightful

    especially if we're mentioning Ubuntu. Seems like windows is missing too.

    A fanboi is a fanboi, even if their product actually is better.

    --
    93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
  3. slashdotters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    very big mistake - the author forgot to mention slashdotters

  4. Re:Cult #1 by Chris+Acheson · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Windows isn't a cult.

    It's a religion.

  5. Clueless by burris · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Programming language Ruby and its younger, sleeker sibling, Ruby on Rails

    I stopped reading after this.

  6. Tech Cults? by Shadow+Wrought · · Score: 2, Insightful

    They mention the Commodore fans, but not the Amiga fans. Newton Fans, but not the Apple Fanbois. That'd be like listing the World's religions and failing to mention Catholicism and Mormons.

    --
    If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
  7. Why Windows isn't a cult by Cajun+Hell · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Quantity has a quality all its own." -- Joseph Stalin

    Size matters. Within the topic of mysticism, when you get to the mainstream stuff like Christianity/Judaism/Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, they're not cults, regardless of any of the beliefs within them. Likewise, neither is Windows, for the same exact reason. You have to be a persecuted minority to be a cult. Being crazy isn't enough; if you have enough votes, insanity is irrelevant.

    Apple is approaching loss of its culty flavor as well. Sure, they're still minority, but they're a big rich one, and certainly not persecuted (except maybe the gamers).

    --
    "Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
  8. Re:Perl? by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ah yes, perl. one of those 'write-only' languages. much like c++ in that regard.

    both perl and C++ are langs I dread to read others' code in.

    --

    --
    "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
  9. Re:Oracle DBAs by abigor · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You can always tell because they believe all of the business logic should be migrated from your current app framework to stored procedures, there to bitrot in PL/SQL hell forever.

  10. Re:Cult #1 by bigngamer92 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The only difference between a cult and religion is one has political power. And that's why Apple is also a religion as it has commercials.

  11. Missed the biggest of all by Brett+Buck · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Object-oriented programming. And yes, I expected to get done for heresy.

            Brett

  12. Re:Fun Read? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    It's because story links to the second page

    Yours, Captain Obvious

  13. Re:Cult #1 by commodore64_love · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Name: Commodore Amiga OS
    Established: 1985
    Gathering of the tribe: various E.U. discoteks
    Major Deity: Jay Butterfield
    Sacred Relic: a red-and-white "boing" ball.
    Believed Antichrist: Commodore management
    True Antichrist: Wintel empire
    Major religious rituals: Multitasking 100 programs at once, Instant off shutdown (flip the power switch), rapid bootup (10 seconds), balancing Chip RAM versus Fast RAM, and Guru Meditation errors

    --
    "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
  14. Re:Cult #1 by mark-t · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The primary difference between a cult and a religion is that in a religion, all of the information about it is openly and freely exchanged to the maximum extent that anyone who believes in the religion is capable. A cult, however, keeps some aspects of their beliefs and practices to themselves, revealing certain details only to trusted associates that are also within the cult.

  15. Re:BeOS left off? by Fallingcow · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Oh, BeOS. Wow. I don't get clingy and fanboy-ish over many tech things, but that's one of them. If it had modern drivers and could run at least most of my software, I'd use BeOS over anything else--Linux, Windows, OSX, *BSD, you name it.

    Hell, I've even begun to need some future-proof, extensive, filesystem-level metadata for my ever-growing collections of various things; if only BeOS were still alive & kicking with a bright future, I could just use BFS. Wish the other operating systems would catch up with where BeOS was years ago. For that matter, I wish they'd act as responsive on a 2GHz dual-core system as BeOS did on a Pentium 166Mhz...

  16. Re:Best Cult by Late+Adopter · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Man, you guys must fucking hate Sony =)