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The math majors in my upper-level math classes had significantly better social skills than the people in the CS classes I took. This is only an anecdote, but i

The math majors in my upper-level math classes had significantly better social skills than the people in the CS classes I took. This is only an anecdote, but it's not obvious to me that mathematics isn't more social than CS.

tptacek 8y ago
I don't know how true this is; I've also had the experience of sitting around a restaurant table with academic math nerds and other times with computer programmers, and the differences there was pretty stark as well. But another point: pay attention to the distinctions we're drawing, because "computer science is less social than other STEM fields" is not the same argument as "computer science is more forgiving of antisocial behavior". The latter statement is one I could easily be convinced of! We all know about dev cultures that thrive on toxic behavior, and a lot of us have seen firsthand how homogenized groups of developers have mistreated people from outside their narrow social experience. A lot of this is well-studied human behavior: you pay a different kind of attention to the only woman on your team, or the only black person, than you do to the nth 20-something male nerd from central casting, and that can cause people to falsely attribute things to the outsiders.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  We all know about dev cultures that thrive on toxic behavior, I think a part of the problem is that the programming field is immature and flubby with ideology masquerading as principles. I think the programming field inadvertently trains us to become ideologues and engage in behaviors reminiscent of sectarian religious conflicts of the past. and a lot of us have seen firsthand how homogenized groups of developers have mistreated people from outside their narrow social experience...that can cause people to falsely attribute things to the outsiders. Sure. I think one such event at Google recently was widely covered in news media, though it was ideological narrowness, not social narrowness. I saw a whole bunch of false attribution across social media.

tptacek 8y ago

I don't know how true this is; I've also had the experience of sitting around a restaurant table with academic math nerds and other times with computer programmers, and the differences there was pretty stark as well. But another point: pay attention to the distinctions we're drawing, because "computer science is less social than other STEM fields" is not the same argument as "computer science is more forgiving of antisocial behavior". The latter statement is one I could easily be convinced of! We all know about dev cultures that thrive on toxic behavior, and a lot of us have seen firsthand how homogenized groups of developers have mistreated people from outside their narrow social experience. A lot of this is well-studied human behavior: you pay a different kind of attention to the only woman on your team, or the only black person, than you do to the nth 20-something male nerd from central casting, and that can cause people to falsely attribute things to the outsiders.

stcredzero 8y ago
We all know about dev cultures that thrive on toxic behavior, I think a part of the problem is that the programming field is immature and flubby with ideology masquerading as principles. I think the programming field inadvertently trains us to become ideologues and engage in behaviors reminiscent of sectarian religious conflicts of the past. and a lot of us have seen firsthand how homogenized groups of developers have mistreated people from outside their narrow social experience...that can cause people to falsely attribute things to the outsiders. Sure. I think one such event at Google recently was widely covered in news media, though it was ideological narrowness, not social narrowness. I saw a whole bunch of false attribution across social media.