10 ms·
Let's End Programmer Bigotry
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- phillyberg 16y agoYes!
- drivebyacct2 16y agoI don't understand this at all. I've never had a problem with communication. Maybe it's because I was always more social with adults than the annoying other middle/high school idiots, maybe it's because I did debate, but I have no problem chatting up CEOs and VPs on more than one occassion. Also, this is why some new schools are blending their business/communication/cs courses together to create projects that require the interuse of all three skills.
- stcredzero 16y agoIn a big company, any programmer is at most one link on the org chart away from the line of fire of corporate politics. If anything, communication and office political skills are more crucial to programmers than the average for most professions. It's the stereotype that obscures this fact.
- itg 16y ago>Maybe it's because I was always more social with adults than the annoying other middle/high school idiots Having good communication also means being able to relate to your peers, despite what you think about their intelligence.
- drivebyacct2 16y agoRelating and wanting to socialize with them are two different things. If I didn't socialize with adults and people with decent conversation skills that wanted to talk about something besides who in my highschool was a "wangster" or who was knocked up this week or what drugs he was doing etc then it would be different. I can communicate with peers, mentors and managers just fine both at school and at work. My point, relating to peers and being able to communicate with them when necessary is one thing, but as they say, you can lead a horse to water...
- joubert 16y agoI wouldn't want people who are (purely) programmers running congress either; why would they make more rational decisions than lawyers? However, I would put my money behind scientists and engineers, because on the continuum of rationality, they're probably the best experts to make decisions. Caveat: of course the nature of politics would still corrupt the integrity of a congress made up by scientists/engineers, because of (a) influence (b) psychological "imbalance" (c) ambition (d) uneducated public, and (e) sex scandals
- raganwald 16y agoI think we have different perceptions of the point of the OP. I read it as suggesting that basing decisions on stereotypes is flawed. It doesn't really matter whether few, some, or even most programmers would be poor politicians: The point of a democracy is to allow us to judge the one programmer running for office and elect them based on their actual characteristics. Are scientists really rational? I would like to think so, but have you looked at science lately? There's brutal infighting over the credit for research, outright corruption over licenses and patents, taking $250 an hour from BP to be "oil spill consultants" and agreeing to three years of silence, working for tobacco companies, and on and on. I am skeptical that all scientists are rational, but I certainly wouldn't dismiss any one scientist as irrational. I would like to judge her on her merits.
- joubert 16y agoI agree with you 100% that basing decisions on stereotypes is flawed. But I was of course replying in the context of, not only the poster's reply to the Gartner reply, but to his original post (http://infovegan.com/2010/07/19/why-developers-should-run-for-congress http://infovegan.com/2010/07/19/why-developers-should-run-fo...) In there he espouses programmers' (and for some reason he thinks web developers are higher up the totem pole than "regular" developers) knack for solving problems, looking for novel solutions, etc. etc., in the context of issues that are increasingly technical (which I think is debatable). I think one particular aspect of programmers, a stereotype if you will, is that they don't like to compromise and are generally quite independent of mind. Perhaps one could argue this would be a Good Thing™. But, if you look at all the disagreement amongst programmers, I don't see why their proposed solutions would be better than they are currently (in the end it is about politics). To your question: "Are scientists really rational?" - see my caveat :-) (PS: I think politicians should focus on creating policy, not try to solve problems that the free market solves better).
- hackermom 16y agoGood luck.
- agentultra 16y agoI dunno if I would replace politicians with programmers per se... I'd be afraid that they would be all too eager to replace congress with a monte-carlo simulation, replace themselves with shell-scripts and auto-responders, and introduce the use of 20-second slide-shows at press conferences. But of course being a programmer myself, I find the stereotype humorous at best. Although I will admit that there is a "tribe" mentality that does perpetuate the stereotype even amongst programmers. Most programmers I've met have some sort of eccentricity about them. Those who don't have a quirk or two are often regarded as outsiders or met with suspicion. It's kind of like porn... you know it when you see it. Awful I know, and I totally agree with your post. But good luck. Humans love simple classifications. It makes the big, bad world easier to deal with.
- bitwize 16y ago20-second slideshows? I think you mean hour-long talks with major points shown in Emacs Org-mode via a projector. If military strategy is under discussion, then a working version of the strategy in Dwarf Fortress will also be presented.
- lmaonade 16y ago"This is bigotry, plain and simple. Its taking sterotypical prejudices based on what may be real-life encounters with a relatively small sample group, and applying them to a wide class of people. It’s gross and it needs to end." this could be equally as well applied to dilbert comics. seriously, some random guy calls programmers autistic and this somehow deserves a blog post breaking down the argument? give me a break.
- KirinDave 16y agoYeah, most of us are crying ourselves to sleep every night sleeping on our giant dragon horde of money. You know who's actually facing significant persecution and bigotry? Gay people. We get a few odd jokes and have to endure the existence of “Big Bang Theory”. I had hoped this article would be about admonishing programmers to stop being bigots. The community has a lot of sexism and ageism in it (levied in all directions). It also has a lot of irrational wu in it. For example, there are people who think that if you don't use a certain text editor, you aren't fit to work.
- hugh3 16y agoYeah, most of us are crying ourselves to sleep every night sleeping on our giant dragon horde of money Man, I hope you meant "dragon hoard". A dragon horde just sounds dangerous.
- RodgerTheGreat 16y agoWho are you to question his investment in dragon-backed currency?
- KirinDave 16y agoI'm pretty much a perpetual motion machine of funny iPad typos. At this point I'm leaning into it. If the word substituted is funny and it doesn't totally ruin the meaning, I am down.
- WilliamLP 16y agoThat's fine as long as it's either Vim or Emacs.
- dgabriel 16y agoOh, I agree. It's misconceptions like these that keep very smart, talented people out of programming and development.
- shadowsun7 16y agoI can't decide if you're being sarcastic or not.
- dgabriel 16y agoI'm not being sarcastic at all. I know several people who would make excellent developers, but they went into teaching, or consulting, or marketing, or whatever. The pay is either equivalent or less, but the status for those positions is higher. Here's an anecdote: a friend of mine decided that the template blogs available were not what he wanted for a website to showcase his art. So he taught himself php, sql, html, javascript, and gimp, rolled his own site, and asked me to look at the code. It was completely fine -- on par with work I've seen from professionals with 2-3 years experience. He works at Starbucks, which is the kind of job you get with a BFA.
- mmelin 16y agoSorry, can you define BFA?
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- Psyonic 16y agoBachelors of Fine Arts.
- hugh3 16y agoIs it really a tragedy that the world is being deprived more software developers? Doesn't the world already have pretty much all the software developers it needs? Or, to put it another way, if the (relatively mild) stigma of software development keeps people out of the industry, it helps to raise the pay of those who are in it.
- moxiemk1 16y agoA lot of this problem is people's misconceptions of the idea of what kind of person a programmer is. The public at large has a big part of this problem. But another huge part of this problem is the people among us who try and propagate the stereotypes of the 'hacker' of yore. I was at my community hackerspace yesterday, and there were some visitors who were perfect embodiments of the "loud and obnoxious computer nerd who will talk your ear off about something even if you clearly don't understand" The enemy is us. We need the loudest and most opinionated voices among us to not be the ones who try and mystify computers and programming, the ones who love to use unnecessary jargon with the public. We need the most well known of us to be the smartest, the best spoken, the charming.
- simonsarris 16y agoI agree. Ideally we would have Richard Feynmans and Carl Sagans of programming and computing. Both these people did wonders for the public's perception (and understanding!) of science.
- axod 16y agoThe thing is, IMHO Programming to most people is boring. It's like telling them you're a builder. Yeah you lay some bricks and cement and build stuff. (Well actually, they ask you to fix their PC, since you must know about such things if you're a programmer). We're not on the cutting edge of science, we're often not inventing anything new, we're just doing boring grunt work shoving things together. We're factory workers. In 50 years our jobs will all be obsoleted by automation. We just happen to be in a time where there's still value in being able to manually translate 'what I want' into 'what computer understands'. The public doesn't want some 'stellar factory worker' championing assembly lines, because it's boring. I think we need to get real. Programming isn't something most people are interested in, it's not glamorous, it's factory work. Lets not delude ourselves that we're at the cutting edge of new discovery. Of course there are stereotypes that are very real here. Just like the average man in fashion is camp, the average sysadmin is scary. People who work with computers often do have real 'people' issues. Perhaps that's why they gravitated to computers in the first place. There's no point denying such things. Building companies, developing products, increasing revenue are all far more interesting to everyone.
- Tycho 16y agoI thought this was going to be about other nerds making fun of Visusl Basic programmers.
- younata 16y agoThey aren't programmers, though.
- robryan 16y agoPolitics has a way of becoming a popularity contest, I can see the programmer type presenting a rational, realistic and effective set of policies just to be beaten out by a more charismatic opponent who managed to visit more schools and old peoples homes during the campaign. I really hate in interviews when a politician will go off on a tangent with an answer to avoid and tough but direct question.
- pjscott 16y agoI also hate when the interviewers just let them get away with giving non-answers to questions. I once saw an interviewer -- I forget the name -- who, after hearing such an evasive tangent, calmly repeated the question, word for word. It was beautiful, and I've never seen it happen since.
- Kilimanjaro 16y agoIf the majority of people is shy an introvert in a sense, I say we have a lot of votes in our favor. And we don't need to be social to socialize, we can do it all on the web. Don't tempt us...
- qjz 16y agoI don't know, I think it's fair to say that computing is a field where really smart, but shy, individuals can participate and excel, compared to many other fields of work. That doesn't mean that everyone in computing fits that description, but it does suggest this group will be overrepresented. He goes on to say, "Every developer I’ve ever worked with, for instance, is probably more qualified to be a member of Congress than most of the members of Congress we have now." I could say the same about almost everyone I've ever known. The problem is that politics isn't appealing to the type of individuals we consider exemplary, regardless of background. Just look at local politics, where you'll often find aimless drifters or self-serving candidates on the ballot among others who understand that government is complicated machine that needs to be run competently for everyone's benefit. But back on topic, how many of your school board or city council members are also software developers? My guess is few or none, because they just aren't interested or feel that it's too challenging to promote logical solutions in an environment of irrational rivalry.
- hugh3 16y agoWhat did the socially malformed do before computers were invented, anyway? (And I don't mean the Erdoses of the world, I mean the socially-malformed non-geniuses.) Or has the invention of computers increased the number of socially malformed people out there?
- philwelch 16y agoRead books. Tinkered with machines.
- bitwize 16y agoBecame amateur scientists. Sherlock Holmes is pretty archetypal of a hyper-focused Asperger's type; the recent 2009 movie with Tony Stark in it probably does a better job than most film adaptations of conveying these aspects of his character.
- francoisdevlin 16y ago
- mfukar 16y agoThis blog post is filled with the same amount of stereotypical bullshit it supposedly is furious about. And it's not helping anybody. The real question here is, how many will read it a second time while actually thinking about what it says?
- barryfandango 16y agoAs an upper class western white male, I am thrilled to consider the possibility of feeling oppressed.
- cousin_it 16y agoThis is like saying it's okay to steal from rich people because they have a lot of money.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- api 16y agoEvery vocation has its stereotypes. Politicians, marketers, and other "people professions" are slimy and superficial fast-talkers. Businessmen are sociopaths. Neither of those is any more flattering than "engineers are autistic."
- pg 16y agoActually it's a sign of strength when it's not unPC to make fun of a group. I wouldn't want that to change. (I wrote about the phenomenon in "What You Can't Say." Search for "English.")
- francoisdevlin 16y agohttp://paulgraham.com/say.html http://paulgraham.com/say.html
- frossie 16y agoI don't know about that. It's not unPC to make fun of lawyers, but I sure wouldn't like for programmers to be the butt of those kind of jokes. I actually personally witnessed a trainer on Sexual Harassment Avoidance say "You can't make fun of somebody because they are black, or a woman, but you can make fun of them if they are wearing a pocket protector because nerds are not a legally protected class". Strangely, my reaction to this was not joy that we are not a historically oppressed protected class. It was more like "Why can't we teach people to treat all their colleagues with respect"?
- hugh3 16y agoRelax. Every profession is stereotyped by every other profession. Programmers are boring nerds who only care about Star Trek. Lawyers are soul-sucking bastards. Plumbers are filthy and walk around with their butt cracks hanging out. Politicians are also soul-sucking bastards. Engineers are like programmers, only drunk. And so forth. Most people are quite capable of distinguishing between the professional stereotype and any individuals they may meet, though.
- Kaizyn 16y agoMost politicians are lawyers by trade, never ever forget that. When you really realize the implications of this, it starts making way more sense why things are as screwed up as they are.
- rortian 16y ago
- omouse 16y agoWhy are we paying attention to Gartner?
- moomba 16y agoNot sure why this guy has such a livid response to those columns. I think he say's that kind of talk is "ugly" several times. Ok... well, I don't really see a problem with stereotyping programmers to add a little spice to your column. It wouldn't be the first time, and I got a laugh in at those two columns at several points.
- Goosey 16y agoI like your word choice. I think next time someone casually reiterates programmer stereotypes in conversation I will calmly assert they are being a bigot (and pick my battles, take context and social relations into account, etc). It sounds much more effective to just drop the B-word than to launch into a counter-effective "let me prove to you this is incorrect" conversation.
- c00p3r 16y agoThe real differences begins when some prefer, choice (because one wants, enjoys it) to stay home coding instead of go out and socialize. This is how great software projects, like nginx, created and evolved. Find and take a look of a video of lectures given by Igor (nginx's author) and you will, probably, understand - he isn't a public person. You should be a little bit autistic (say, near Asperger's) in order to produce something extraordinary. It is just a mater of time, energy and concentration. And practicing, practicing, practicing. Analogy with public activity, like a politics is rather stupid. You need totally different skill set for any public relations, while those skills are requiring a lot of time of practicing, practicing and practicing. Professional communication is as difficult as professional programming, btw. man NLP. ^_^
- enneff 16y ago"The stereotype of the antisocial developer has been untrue for decades" It has _never_ been true.