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.

Comments

Cult #1

[alain94040]

It's been a very long time since I met a Newton or Palm cult member! Time to update the list.

Allow me to change the definition of "cult" slightly to "whatever belief your smart friends want you to give up". Then cult #1 is:

Name: Windows
Established: 1995
Gathering of the Tribe: InfoWorld and other magazines that pretend that everything except Windows is a "cult"
Major Deity: Bill Gates
Sacred Relic: 30-letter authorization keys
The Antichrist: Linus Torvalds

Re:Cult #1

[areusche]

Oh I can do this:

Name: Mac OS

Established: 1984

Gathering of the tribe: Apple WWDC

Major Deity: Steve Jobs, Woz

Sacred Relic: A half eaten apple.

Believed Antichrist: IBM

True Antichrist: Bill Gates.

Re:Cult #1

[RiotingPacifist]

why would the cult of apple curse IBM!? did IBM not cometh and deliverith the sacred PC of power?

Name: cult of free software
Established: 1985
Major Deity: RMS
Sacred document: GPL
Antichrist: !GPL'd software

and

Name: cult of debian
Established: 1993
Major Deity(s): Bruce Perens & people called Ian
Sacred relic: Debian 1.0 discs
Antichrist: ubuntu

Re:Cult #1

[Anonymous Coward]

did IBM not cometh and deliverith the sacred PC of power?

You're forgetting the next verse of the Book of Jobs...

And thus did the people of Apple rejoice for their Chips of Power were great and mighty, and Altivec did cause their enemies to quake in fear. But lo! There were cries from within the camp of Apple, for the faithful had placed the Chips of Power upon their lap and they were terribly burned. The people cast down their Chips of Power and took up the Chips of Core which merely singed their pants, and so the fallen IBM was cast out from the camp of Apple.

Re:Cult #1

[SpitfireSMS]

Windows isn't a cult.

It's a religion.

Exactly, just like scientology

Re:Cult #1

[BluBrick]

Religion: A large popular cult
Cult: A small unpopular religion

Fun Read?

[Anonymous Coward]

A pretty fun read (unless you really are a cult member).

I belong to the Cult of Single Page Views, not 8-page clickfests.

Not so much fun, actually.

Re:Fun Read?

[Anonymous Coward]

And I belong to the cult of "why the fuck you can not see the "print" link, you ass?" cult.

http://www.infoworld.com/print/73433

Re:Fun Read?

[LaskoVortex]

Ah, the cult of grammar Nazi's.

Name: Grammar Nazi Cult
Established: 1383
Gathering of the Tribe: Internet Comment Forums
Major Diety: Geoffrey Chaucer
Sacred Relic: Strunk and White
The Antichrist: The Apostrophe Between "t" and "s" in the Word "it's" When "it's" is used as a posessive
Purpose: Annoy Everyone not in the Cult

Re:Fun Read?

[earlymon]

Kindly have the decency to identify us correctly by our Sacred Relic - Strunk and White's Elements of Style, First Edition.

I hope you did not mean for us to lump us in the Later Editioners - who eat off of their bellies, when there are perfectly good tables about for use of that function.

In any case, your abbreviation of the Holy Name of our Sacred Relic may well have been alleviated by the acceptable, yet colloquial (although arcane), use of et cetera, hereby illustrated as per Rule 2, as you are but no doubt aware of so to do: Stunk and White, etc.

(And yes, I thank you in advance for the opportunity of scoring points with my peers to compact my typography by ending a sentence with the abbreviated form of et cetera, thereby saving a full period. My deep appreciation is also given for the bonus points scored as well that the word period preceded it's synonymously named punctuation mark in the previous sentence. It is for this alone that I defer to kindness and not rag upon the lack of calendar year reference, similarly missing.

After all, a good Grammar Nazi is never a quibbling Sematics Nazi, nor worse, a Syntax Nazi (this last reference having been given, quite naturally, with highest reverence to the ghosts of alt.syntax).) *

Kindly remember, and please never forget: if something can be said with few words, it's worth saying very well; therefore, it worth saying with a great many words, in order to be at one's best, if for no other reason. (N.B., it is well and good that initiates question the validity of verbosity over being succinct, as an object lesson that the admonishment for clarity overrides.)

In closing, I am further compelled to compliment you upon the quite deft class-naming used for our gathering place, indicating, as it does, this modern forum while simultaneously not excluding Usenet, that is, as goes without saying, our one true Kobol, with the codex modification as it applies, naturally, to the mythology presented only in the contempory BattleStar Gallactica.

* Note the parenthetical salvation of the egregious Usenet syntax error had the sentence been constructed to end thus: alt.syntax.

Cults in tech?

[fatboyslack]

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.

Re:Cults in tech?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always considered myself a Quaker.

Lispers AND Apple Users?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did they list the same group twice?

In my head I transposed the 'n' for a 'l' in cults

[Anonymous Coward]

Strangely enough the article read much the same.

TFA In One Page

[BabyDuckHat]

http://www.infoworld.com/print/73433

slashdotters

[Anonymous Coward]

very big mistake - the author forgot to mention slashdotters

Forth

[Dr. Eggman]

We friars of Forth our outraged at your constant disre...Hey, I'm talking here. Hey, pay attention, I'm talking here! Hrmph, Forth gets no respect. No respect at all.

Re:Forth

[PCM2]

1 CONSTANT Funny
Funny Moderation +!

Re:Perl?

[Anonymous Coward]

Name: Perl
Established: 1987
Gathering of the tribe: USENET
Major Deity: Larry Wall
Sacred Relic: All those O'rielly books
The Anti-Christ: Ruby

Oracle DBAs

[jimjamjoh]

Anyone who's ever worked in an org w/ full-time Oracle DBAs can attest to how fanatical they are in allegiance to Oracle, even to the point of ruin.

And it's funny, too, because you think they're interested in databases, relational concepts, data integrity, and all of this in general, but they're not, they interested in Oracle products, period. They'd quit before they managed a SQL Server or PostgreSQL database for you.

Cultists.

Re:Pretty absurd Apple is absent

[maxume]

As yes, The Cult of Loose.

Their won cult that never should of ben allowed.

They missed out C programmers

[BikeHelmet]

Those guys seem to think everything should be coded in C, even if it takes 10 times longer than coding it in another language, and results in a program filled with memory leaks.

C is great, but lets be honest - at least 80% of C programmers shouldn't be programming, let alone programming in a low level language!

I've seen more horribly malformed C than VB!