3 ms·

> nerds suck at communicating Well, it might start by not tarring other people as "normal" or "ordinary" and separating off "the normal world". Consider that

by jMyles 3y ago

> nerds suck at communicating Well, it might start by not tarring other people as "normal" or "ordinary" and separating off "the normal world". Consider that everybody has a unique life and story, and that each of us are normal (in a statistical sense) in some metrics, and an outlier in others. The whole "nerd vs normie" thing is just toxic from the word go.

lukan 3y ago
Erm, I am fine being considered a freak. But what I am talking about is, that a very high percentage of computer freaks do not go out and talk to people who do not have anything to do with computers. I remember the day I walked into my university and first IT classes and thought, "wow, they actually do live the cliché". I mean, that is fine by me, everyone should live the way they want. But if you want to make an impact beyond your circle of devs, you might want to learn to communicate with people who are happy, that they manage to turn their computer on. Because they are not dumb, they just have other priorities.
- sublinear 3y ago
  > you might want to learn to communicate with people who are happy, that they manage to turn their computer on. Because they are not dumb, they just have other priorities. Easier said than done. I think many, including myself, would argue that there's more than enough time and energy for it all. People who "have priorities" are simply not curious enough and often stubborn. That's a whole different topic, but definitely worth thinking about. Your typical "nerd" can balance a diverse set of interests well enough. That's precisely why they're not considered "dumb".
bitwize 3y ago
But when it comes to computer use and knowledge, there is a divide between techies and just about everyone else. It's not just about lack of knowledge but also lack of fucks to give. Techies just love to build and configure things to their liking. The rest of us have things to do, and would just rather buy the functionality they need in a ready-to-go and easy-to-use form. This is why when computers meet creative work, except maybe for programming, the best-of-breed professional tools are all proprietary. Nobody in those lines of work gives a shit about source availability. They will endure dark patterns techies find intolerable, just to have that functionality. Hello Adobe subscription model. It's not hard to find a Hackernews who will say "I'd rather pay that $23/month for Photoshop than have to endure GIMP." Speaking of, the above goes for technical professionals too: sooner or later, many of them will put their college kid tinkering hobbies aside and just buy a Mac, freeing up time they would have spent tinkering with a Linux distro to cook dinner for their spouse or play with their kids. I used to be like you and believed it was senseless and harmful to believe there was a divide between users and programmers. I was smoking that "any user could become a programmer" copium in my 20s. But there is a divide and it's a wide, wide gulf. One of the things that got me to put the programmer hopium/copium pipe down was getting married. She's very smart, but she buys 100% Apple kit and doesn't have to worry about maintaining or configuring anything after initial purchase.
- mostlylurks 3y ago
  > Techies just love to build and configure things to their liking. I don't, and I don't believe I'm even in the minority in that regard. What you are referencing is a stereotype that may reflect a minority of so called "techies", but even those are almost certainly only interested in building and configuring things within some specific field of interest, but still want everything outside of that to "just work". > The rest of us have things to do, and would just rather buy the functionality they need in a ready-to-go and easy-to-use form. A false dichotomy that is often repeated, but incorrect nevertheless, for it is the proprietary ecosystem that keeps breaking things over and over again, changing UIs, features, and even very basic settings you've set, dropping support for various things (apps, devices, etc.) you might still use and that still work fine. My linux installations have made everything work directly out of the box (unlike some properietary systems where you have to install things and fiddle with settings to make things work) and have stayed almost identical in terms of their UI and already-existing features for a decade now (and could have for quite a bit longer if I had adopted linux earlier). No properietary system could come even close to this level of "just works"-ness (though apple probably gets far closer than the others).
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  In the DAW space, Reaper's success would suggest that the gulf is nowhere nearly as wide as you suggest. This is a supremely "nerdy" DAW, and yet has found great rates of adoption and publicity (partly thanks to its enormously energetic user community). One of things that is easy to forget if you're not in this world all day every day is that audio engineering was already a pretty nerdy activity before DAWs came along, so the move to computer-based workflows doesn't really change the fundamental psychological qualities of a lot of the process.

by jMyles 3y ago

lukan 3y ago

Erm, I am fine being considered a freak. But what I am talking about is, that a very high percentage of computer freaks do not go out and talk to people who do not have anything to do with computers. I remember the day I walked into my university and first IT classes and thought, "wow, they actually do live the cliché". I mean, that is fine by me, everyone should live the way they want. But if you want to make an impact beyond your circle of devs, you might want to learn to communicate with people who are happy, that they manage to turn their computer on. Because they are not dumb, they just have other priorities.

sublinear 3y ago
> you might want to learn to communicate with people who are happy, that they manage to turn their computer on. Because they are not dumb, they just have other priorities. Easier said than done. I think many, including myself, would argue that there's more than enough time and energy for it all. People who "have priorities" are simply not curious enough and often stubborn. That's a whole different topic, but definitely worth thinking about. Your typical "nerd" can balance a diverse set of interests well enough. That's precisely why they're not considered "dumb".

bitwize 3y ago

But when it comes to computer use and knowledge, there is a divide between techies and just about everyone else. It's not just about lack of knowledge but also lack of fucks to give. Techies just love to build and configure things to their liking. The rest of us have things to do, and would just rather buy the functionality they need in a ready-to-go and easy-to-use form. This is why when computers meet creative work, except maybe for programming, the best-of-breed professional tools are all proprietary. Nobody in those lines of work gives a shit about source availability. They will endure dark patterns techies find intolerable, just to have that functionality. Hello Adobe subscription model. It's not hard to find a Hackernews who will say "I'd rather pay that $23/month for Photoshop than have to endure GIMP." Speaking of, the above goes for technical professionals too: sooner or later, many of them will put their college kid tinkering hobbies aside and just buy a Mac, freeing up time they would have spent tinkering with a Linux distro to cook dinner for their spouse or play with their kids. I used to be like you and believed it was senseless and harmful to believe there was a divide between users and programmers. I was smoking that "any user could become a programmer" copium in my 20s. But there is a divide and it's a wide, wide gulf. One of the things that got me to put the programmer hopium/copium pipe down was getting married. She's very smart, but she buys 100% Apple kit and doesn't have to worry about maintaining or configuring anything after initial purchase.

mostlylurks 3y ago
> Techies just love to build and configure things to their liking. I don't, and I don't believe I'm even in the minority in that regard. What you are referencing is a stereotype that may reflect a minority of so called "techies", but even those are almost certainly only interested in building and configuring things within some specific field of interest, but still want everything outside of that to "just work". > The rest of us have things to do, and would just rather buy the functionality they need in a ready-to-go and easy-to-use form. A false dichotomy that is often repeated, but incorrect nevertheless, for it is the proprietary ecosystem that keeps breaking things over and over again, changing UIs, features, and even very basic settings you've set, dropping support for various things (apps, devices, etc.) you might still use and that still work fine. My linux installations have made everything work directly out of the box (unlike some properietary systems where you have to install things and fiddle with settings to make things work) and have stayed almost identical in terms of their UI and already-existing features for a decade now (and could have for quite a bit longer if I had adopted linux earlier). No properietary system could come even close to this level of "just works"-ness (though apple probably gets far closer than the others).
PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
In the DAW space, Reaper's success would suggest that the gulf is nowhere nearly as wide as you suggest. This is a supremely "nerdy" DAW, and yet has found great rates of adoption and publicity (partly thanks to its enormously energetic user community). One of things that is easy to forget if you're not in this world all day every day is that audio engineering was already a pretty nerdy activity before DAWs came along, so the move to computer-based workflows doesn't really change the fundamental psychological qualities of a lot of the process.