
How to tell a geek - dragonquest
http://catherinedevlin.blogspot.com/2009/06/how-to-tell-geek.html
======
edw519
OK, let's get this straight once and for all...

Saying things like, "All geeks..." "Every geek..." "Geeks will always..." is
just wrong.

Makes no more sense than saying, "All lefthanders..." "Every woman..." or
"Nebraskans will always..."

There are as many kinds of geeks as there are geeks (NbrOfGeekCategories ==
NbrOfGeeks). Sure, there are a lot of generalizations, but we are all unique.

I bathe regularly, socialize often, have never watched Star Trek, don't play
video games, and enjoy sports.

OTOH, I plot out every trip on Google maps before leaving home, schedule my
day out in half hour increments, and place my things out in the morning to be
picked up in the proper order. I have to go through the supermarket counter-
clockwise to optimize filling the cart. If I learn a new fact, I'm looking for
the general rule about 6 seconds later, and am plotting out use cases within
an hour. I'll probably have some code written, too.

Is there anyone out there just like me? I didn't think so. (Thank goodness.)

~~~
dhimes
You are right- we are different. I go through the interior aisles of the
supermarket first before finishing with a perimeter swing (where the cold
stuff is kept). The perimeter swing is, of course, counter-clockwise. I like
to keep my angular momentum up.

~~~
CWuestefeld
Do you go in the opposite direction when you shop in the other hemisphere?

Seriously, are you suggesting that part of "geekiness" is a tendency to think
through and design an approach before doing anything? Or maybe that it's a
skill for rationalizing any approach afterwards?

~~~
aristus
I think there is a tendency to get bored by repetitive tasks an find ways to
do them better. No forward planning necessary.

One of my first jobs was maintaining a national phone book library: 50lbs of
new books in and 50lbs old books out every day, just the kind of thing to keep
a 15-year-old busy all day. Within a couple weeks I had redesigned my pipeline
to reduce labeling errors and speed the whole thing up by a factor of 2 or 3,
which meant I could do other work as well (which lead to me learning print
design, then animation, then programming).

I was not planning ahead, just bored, and it seemed normal to me. I was
shocked when I tried to train my replacement: she stared at me like I was from
Mars. I tried to explain how she should sort the new books first by state, not
size, rip through the label printing process in one shot, remember that the
list is now backwards when you apply the labels, spot-check every tenth book
(ie, when you hit a perforation in the label fan-fold)... etc. She just went
on with print-stick-shelf process for each book, and it took her all day.

------
jreposa
Came across this already today. In order for the creative director to view the
site on my local machine he asked for the IP address. I decided instead to
install a local DNS server. Am I crazy? Also, anyone else know of an easy way
to get PCs to recognize the computername.local address that Mac's have?
Otherwise, I'll just keep configuring the DNS.

~~~
davidw
Set up a dev server?

~~~
jreposa
Good call. Anyone willing to donate one? We're in the NYC area. Bootstrap
startup. All of our money goes towards keeping the site running.

~~~
brandnewlow
Why does your bootstrap startup have a creative director? What does this
person do?

~~~
jreposa
We are equal partners. Is it so strange? We come from the advertising world.
He is an award winning creative director. I was the CTO at our former
employer.

~~~
davidw
A cheapo box with Ubuntu on it could probably be had used for under $200. For
instance, this box is overkill for what you need:

<http://newyork.craigslist.org/que/sys/1229891889.html>

------
sili
The notion that a geek will always write a program instead of doing something
manually is becoming a cliche.

~~~
wizard_2
Honestly the 3rd or 4th time I have to do something I'll write a program for
it, and only if I know they're would be a 5th or a 6th. I've almost written
myself out of my job about 3 times now. I got hired to do IT and run manual
reports, after a few weeks our internal IT was up to speed (user support isn't
that high volume if their systems are in order), and a few weeks later I had
no more "manual" reports. Luckily for me I know how to drum up more projects,
I go and find "sore spots". Now I've got a trail of automation and reputation
for taking the pain out of our processes. I'm valued and it makes me happy.
And to think I could be doing manual reports instead..

I also know I'm responsible for work happening on days when I spend all my
time reading HN...

~~~
klahnako
I do not know how you can call yourself a geek if you can tolerate boredom 3
or 4 times before even considering making a program instead. For some reason,
you (and others here) assume efficiency is an attribute of geekdom. I suggest
that efficiency is actually a contraindicates geekdom.

Being a geek is more about fun, it is not about how well you can optimize.

~~~
wizard_2
My boss doesn't like me wasting my time on a program for one off reports. In
fact I had to sell him on the "let me program something for that" because he
can't program and doesn't want any major part of our "process" to be outside
his understanding. The way I program a project has to do with what technology
I want to try (and of course a bit of what fits) and I have tons of fun doing
it. Putting off programming my way out of work has more to do with not fully
understanding the requirements (ie, why said report should be run and how
often) then being lazy or bored.

------
zacharypinter
"I've heard it said that a good geek is lazy, but I think it's more precise to
say that a geek dreads boredom above all else. We'll move mountains to
accomplish a task, as long as it's interesting."

In my opinion, this is the largest problem with unit tests and TDD. Much of it
(though not all) is the type of boring work that lazy programmers dread.
Calling it "professionalism" and saying it's what good developers are supposed
to do doesn't help.

I'm not sure what the answer is for overcoming this. Dynamic languages help by
cutting down on the amount of code. However, it still seems like we need
better tools. Perhaps a way to convert a stack trace into a test? Or maybe a
repl-to-unit-test generator?

------
csomar
I can agree (and this is not only for GEeks), simply here's why

Creating an application is fun, there's no monotony on it, in fact you don't
repeat code, if you need it again, you can recall it.

Grease ebowl tasks are annoying and boring so no one wants them.

