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> It's one of the most prominent ways people socialize. Not programmers, people. So if you don't drink you're not a person? Alcohol is generally prohibited in

• michaelneale 15y ago
  > So if you don't drink you're not a person? ctide didn't say anything of the sort. I think ctide was trying to generalise from programmers -> people not implying all of humanity. I have seen this phenomena (?) of "binge conferences" in many other circles - medical, engineering, accounting, legal. Journalism.. the list goes on, so it is a fair point.
  • envex 15y ago
    I think the main reason it turns into "binge conferences" is because people treat them as a vacation. Away from home, why not have a few drinks. I'd bet $5 that the tap at GitHub isn't used to binge (as much as the author thinks). It's like a foosball table, used for a week straight, then forgot about.
• burke 15y ago
  No, then if you don't drink, you simply don't participate in one of the most prominent ways people socialize. There was no implication of sub-humanity there. Strawmen are bad. Even including Islamic countries in the set, drinking is still one of the most prominent ways people in general socialize on average.
  • pbiggar 15y ago
    > No, then if you don't drink, you simply don't participate in one of the most prominent ways people socialize. If that were true that would be bad - drinking at conferences would then truly alienate non-drinkers. But actually, non-drinkers can participate just fine in one of the most prominent ways people socialize.
• chc 15y ago
  When it sounds like somebody is saying something totally crazy, before you jump down their throat, try taking a step back and see if there's a more reasonable way to interpret it. Even exceptionally clear statements in English can often be taken two ways — this is one of the reasons that writing instruction manuals is so devilishly hard — and it's unreasonable to expect even that level of clarity from everyone all the time. In this particular case, it's more likely that the grandparent meant "this is something that most people do — programmers are not unusual in this regard, so it's weird to single them out."
• abduhl 15y ago
  Ignoring the whole leap to conclusions thing going on here, I'd just like to add that at least half of all Muslims I know drink socially. And, from what I've heard, alcohol in countries like Iran is much like marijuana in the USA.
• rcfox 15y ago
  Okay, I'll admit to being rather hyperbolic here. However, when you say things like, "This is something that people do." it sounds a lot like you're making a universal statement about people everywhere. Arguments of the type of "well, I've seen lots of people do this" just smell of availability bias. I can't argue that you're wrong, but you haven't given a good enough argument for me to conclude that you're correct.
  • chc 15y ago
    Are you really questioning that drinking is an enormously popular activity in most of the world? It's pretty common knowledge that drinking is popular, and its popularity is pretty close to universal. For example, according to the World Health Organization, drinkers are the vast majority of the adult population in most developed countries. Drinking as a common social activity is even mentioned in the Bible and other ancient texts. The OP, on the other hand, is much more of a "Well, I've seen lots of people do this" argument: It's explicitly based on his personal experience with conferences.
    • nknight 15y ago
      Sex is probably at least as common as alcohol consumption. Doesn't that mean it belongs in a professional environment too, then?