people in IT are loners, lone wolfs, lone sharks, sometimes lone and also self centered. for the reasons in the article, and then for so many other reasons. for

people in IT are loners, lone wolfs, lone sharks, sometimes lone and also self centered. for the reasons in the article, and then for so many other reasons. for the reason that the online education favors 'am top learner on my own' principle. etc. the under-35-thing is just another reason. another is the ever-so-new technologies that obliterate all previous knowledge of obvious stuff. another is the fact that 'history of computing' is not something that you need to learn to start doing shiny webpages. then there's the reason that so many ppl bash at universities, at in-person schooling, at work-together places (a.k.a offices). and because someone is going to ask me what I did to change it - here's what: for almost 20 years now i've been teaching introductory or intermediate classes in-person to hundreds of students, and observing what helps them learn as fast as possible. trying to speed it up, to assist the process. i cana tell you one thing - working together and understanding that you can always learn from someone that is next to your shoulder is of paramount importance. after all - what good is gender or race diversity in the workplace, if you effectively do not know how to work along these people...? but this is too long for just a post here. the ability, the skill, to be able to work with someone, with everyone, is what the vast majority of IT top-coders lack. and lack badly and painfully (for those around mostly). look around yourself for examples... ... the day before I was thinking, that Larry Wall's timtoady principle is really about celebrating diversity in IT, about different approaches to the same problem. and not about celebrating diversity in Perl or any other language.