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I don't expect much traction with this opinion, but I'd say this change also includes the slow takeover by "brogrammers". It was horrifying watching it start, p

by 1_2__3 10y ago

I don't expect much traction with this opinion, but I'd say this change also includes the slow takeover by "brogrammers". It was horrifying watching it start, people who had no real intuitive understanding of technology or interest in it who nonetheless learned enough of the vocation to be able to be effective and get a job. No love for it, no yearn for it, no calling to it. I remember talking to a Google intern who said, "I went into dance but I didn't think it would make a good living so I switched to CS.". On one hand, I don't want to discourage those people - some of them will find it's their calling and they become passionate about it. Most of them though just clutter up companies with people who can't think all that creatively and are way more interested in their next game of Ultimate or the new bar they're trying tonight than learning a new language or exploring technology. There's no 'itch' when it comes to tech work, just money. I also feel like it's infected the rest of programming culture in general. Programmers have not traditionally been the sort of people who think you need meetups, whatever-a-thons, code camps, and other social-events-masquerading-as-hacking/tech. And if you apply occam's razor it's much less likely that they've discovered a new, better way of being a hacker/programmer, and more likely they were predisposed to backslapping, social drinking and partying already, so of course that's the kind of stuff they're going to try and spread more of in the industry - just as if you had a more technically-minded person in, say, Sales, who would have a hard time breaking their habits of thinking of things in engineering terms. It sucks. I thought hacker & nerd culture would grow up and mature, instead it just got squashed out by the brogrammers.

amyjess 10y ago
> Most of them though just clutter up companies with people who can't think all that creatively and are way more interested in their next game of Ultimate or the new bar they're trying tonight than learning a new language or exploring technology. Welcome to being just like every other profession out there. Most people don't like talking about work when they're not on the job. Honestly, the "you can't have a life outside work" attitude is far more toxic to our profession than any kind of "brogrammers". I remember someone on HN saying they like living in SV because they can go to a bar and end up talking about JavaScript frameworks with some random stranger there. That just horrifies me--the last thing I want to do when I'm relaxing after work is to talk shop! (and, to be fair, there were a number of comments replying to them expressing the same sentiment)
zaidf 10y ago
Your post is a little confusing because: a) you complain of the brogrammers b) you complain of the google intern that switched from dance to CS even though one might argue we need many of more of them to respond to (a) c) you complain of hackathons which have done much to make tech more inviting precisely to people other than brogrammers d) finally, your view that the person who switched from dance to CS for better job prospects is mostly a menace...this precisely is a bro-perspective...that very thing you complain of! I can't help but feel you just seem nostalgic of the good old days.
jowiar 10y ago
I almost always find the most interesting people I work with aren't the ones who are "nerds for nerds sake". I was at CMU SCS, but the two best engineers I know from undergrad studied Philosophy and Political Science. I've worked with some fantastic converted-lawyers over the years. Writing code is a skill, and it's as much writing as code. Different life experiences give you different advantages in applying a particular skill to a particular problem, and the inability to recognize that is your shortcoming. > I thought hacker & nerd culture would grow up and mature, instead it just got squashed out by the brogrammers. It got squashed by both ends. A friend of mine in school wrote an op/ed in the newspaper on how "Geek culture" and "Greek culture" were two sides of the same coin, and I can't help but notice how this repeats itself constantly.
qwertyuiop924 10y ago
I agree and disagree: Agree that it is frustrating to see people who don't have to same calling and passion, who see programming and software as just a 9-5, in some ways, but I disagree that is necessarily evil or toxic. Many people come to computing from other fields, just wanting to get stuff done, scripting, etc. They don't necessarily share the passion some of us posess, but that's true in any job. The problem is that people in power decided to frown upon those people, instead of teaching them, forcing them to relive 50 years of programming history to get the knowledge they need: it wasn't until the left-pad incident that I understood the cost of dependancies, and the importance of vetting them, and avoiding them of possible. Nobody made it clear, because they were too busy glaring down at newbs, and bikeshedding about js as a language (newsflash: it's here, we're stuck with it, it's not as bad as you think, you can write good code in it, so just thank Jesus f@$%# Christ that you're stuck with it, and not something like QuakeC. God). Frankly, nerd and hacker culture is growing the same as always, it's just that programming isn't exclusive to us anymore. We haven't gotten smaller, the playground's gotten bigger. So for god's sake show some of the smaller kids how the zipline works before they fall off and break their arm.

by 1_2__3 10y ago

amyjess 10y ago

> Most of them though just clutter up companies with people who can't think all that creatively and are way more interested in their next game of Ultimate or the new bar they're trying tonight than learning a new language or exploring technology. Welcome to being just like every other profession out there. Most people don't like talking about work when they're not on the job. Honestly, the "you can't have a life outside work" attitude is far more toxic to our profession than any kind of "brogrammers". I remember someone on HN saying they like living in SV because they can go to a bar and end up talking about JavaScript frameworks with some random stranger there. That just horrifies me--the last thing I want to do when I'm relaxing after work is to talk shop! (and, to be fair, there were a number of comments replying to them expressing the same sentiment)

zaidf 10y ago

Your post is a little confusing because: a) you complain of the brogrammers b) you complain of the google intern that switched from dance to CS even though one might argue we need many of more of them to respond to (a) c) you complain of hackathons which have done much to make tech more inviting precisely to people other than brogrammers d) finally, your view that the person who switched from dance to CS for better job prospects is mostly a menace...this precisely is a bro-perspective...that very thing you complain of! I can't help but feel you just seem nostalgic of the good old days.

jowiar 10y ago

I almost always find the most interesting people I work with aren't the ones who are "nerds for nerds sake". I was at CMU SCS, but the two best engineers I know from undergrad studied Philosophy and Political Science. I've worked with some fantastic converted-lawyers over the years. Writing code is a skill, and it's as much writing as code. Different life experiences give you different advantages in applying a particular skill to a particular problem, and the inability to recognize that is your shortcoming. > I thought hacker & nerd culture would grow up and mature, instead it just got squashed out by the brogrammers. It got squashed by both ends. A friend of mine in school wrote an op/ed in the newspaper on how "Geek culture" and "Greek culture" were two sides of the same coin, and I can't help but notice how this repeats itself constantly.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago

I agree and disagree: Agree that it is frustrating to see people who don't have to same calling and passion, who see programming and software as just a 9-5, in some ways, but I disagree that is necessarily evil or toxic. Many people come to computing from other fields, just wanting to get stuff done, scripting, etc. They don't necessarily share the passion some of us posess, but that's true in any job. The problem is that people in power decided to frown upon those people, instead of teaching them, forcing them to relive 50 years of programming history to get the knowledge they need: it wasn't until the left-pad incident that I understood the cost of dependancies, and the importance of vetting them, and avoiding them of possible. Nobody made it clear, because they were too busy glaring down at newbs, and bikeshedding about js as a language (newsflash: it's here, we're stuck with it, it's not as bad as you think, you can write good code in it, so just thank Jesus f@$%# Christ that you're stuck with it, and not something like QuakeC. God). Frankly, nerd and hacker culture is growing the same as always, it's just that programming isn't exclusive to us anymore. We haven't gotten smaller, the playground's gotten bigger. So for god's sake show some of the smaller kids how the zipline works before they fall off and break their arm.