Six More Tech Cults

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Dan Tynan takes a humorous look at six 'sects' of fanatical tech loyalists. 'Fandom, devotion, obsession — certain technologies have a way of inspiring an extremely loyal following. So committed are these devotees, you might as well call them technology cults,' Tynan writes in this update to last year's list, which included fans of the Newton, Commodore, and Ruby on Rails, among other technologies. 'Sometimes these cults are inspired by elegant lines of code. Other times it's dedication to an ideal. Some are looking to transform the way software is made. Others hope to transform humanity itself. And some just want to argue about it all — endlessly and at great length.'"

Comments

Not to be taken seriously

[MrHanky]

Apple isn't #1.

To be fair to the Jobsian cult, though, the most rabid extremists I've ever come across are old-skool SGI admins. Don't even try to suggest putting Linux on ancient SGI hardware; according to sacred lore, it will turn a venerable super computer into a PC. Then they'll send you an angry email as well, just to make sure the point gets across.

Re:Not to be taken seriously

[urusan]

Cults are small non-mainstream groups, so it is accurate. Apple is a religion.

"A delusion held by one person is a mental illness, held by a few is a cult, held by many is a religion."

Ruby's younger, sleeker sibling?

[Teckla]

From the article:

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

LOL

Such quality investigation and journalism!

Commodore 65

[Teckla]

Another gem from the article:

Sacred relic: Commodore C65

Ah, yes, I fondly remember my C65...

Wait, what?

(Did they even bother to proofread their work? It has dozens of mistakes.

Re:Commodore 65

[amaupin]

Commodore 65

(Did you even bother to read the article?)

What seems silly to me is including C64 users as a cult and only jokingly mentioning Amiga advocates in an aside. Hard to believe any tech observer including the former instead of the latter. Diehard AmigaOS advocates much more deserve "cult" status.

Well they might have a point

[Viol8]

"t will turn a venerable super computer into a PC."

SGI might not have had the best marketing but back in the day it had some of the best hardware designers and OS/driver writers in the world as far as graphics was concerned. What they didn't know at the time wasn't worth knowing. I'd be pretty amazed if Linux could get the same performance out of the hardware even if it used SGI written drivers.

Never met a Perl fanatic

[weston]

Sure, I've met people who were enthusiastic about Perl, but just about all of 'em know There's More Than One Way To Do It applies to language choice, too.

Re:What did you expect?

[Bing Tsher E]

It kind of irked me that the 'Commodorians' section droned on and on about the Commodore 64, whose enthusiasts are pretty much a group of modest hobbyists with a realistic view of the world, then only mentioned the real nutcase cultists, the Amiga cranks, at the end like an afterthought. Maybe it was viewed as too dangerous to bring up 'the A computer' prominently.

(And probably an Amiga crank or two will respond to this comment, or have one of their friends tag it flamebait.)

Re:Vi uber alles

[Anonymous Coward]

Or: Order of the unfunny irrelevant /. post

Why Ubuntu

[91degrees]

It's a pretty popular version of a pretty popular OS. Lots of people try it and most of the alleged cultists don't declare it the one true way. It's much closer to Buddhism than Scientology.