
Why People Don't Like Nerds or Programmers (In School) - inglorian
http://rorymarinich.tumblr.com/post/100927259/why-people-dont-like-nerds-or-programmers
======
derefr
> Cheerleader come over and ask about programming? Shot down. Invitation to a
> study group? Rejected. The most bitingly ironic comes when a person in a
> group of nerds gets an invitation to a party. If you’re one of the more
> social people in your scene, try it. Invite an anime person or a programmer
> - one of those people - out to an event. Chances are you’ll be declined.
> There’s every possibility you’ll be rejected impolitely.

I agree completely that nerds do this. I did this. But I never did it to be
"elite", or to keep the other person "below" me. Instead, I always assumed
that the cheerleader (or whomever it was) was playing a very nasty practical
joke on me—that if I accepted, they'd laugh in my face and wander away, or
worse, I'd show up at the party to find myself a scapegoat for some random act
of civil unrest previously committed that night by the partygoers. And yes, I
even made friends only with other nerds—but only because I could tell, by the
fear they showed toward the other groups, that they were a prey, not a
predator, species, and were thus unlikely to harm me if I associated with
them.

(If you can't tell, I was bullied for my entire elementary school life before
entering high-school; I imagine I would have had quite a different outlook
otherwise. Thankfully, by grade 11 or so, the concept of "clique" had
dissolved in my high-school, so I did get to discover what a mentally-healthy
high-school experience was like.)

~~~
amalcon
Indeed.

I'd also done things that might _appear_ like this on occasion, even though I
trusted that the person asking wasn't playing some sort of practical joke or
simply trying to get me to do their work for them. The reason is that the
questions were often things like "How do I make a web page on geocities?" or
"How do I program DOS?"

In the former case, after establishing that they didn't want me to actually
sit down in the computer lab after school and give an hour or two of
instruction, all I could really say is that "It's really not something I can
just explain in ten minutes." That comes off as a bit of a brush-off.

In the latter case, the question actually doesn't make sense. One can't
"program DOS" any more than one can "perform a photograph". People became
offended more than once by my genuine attempts to figure out what they were
actually trying to ask. When I do get down to it, it seems they're usually
asking "how do I make a game like Wolfenstein? That's kind of an old game so
it should be easy!". That is just a more egregious example of the first case.

But yeah, this is the reason geeks don't accept invitations to parties.
They've been burnt by requests like this before, and are worried about being
burnt again.

~~~
derefr
Just because the person didn't know enough about the domain to use the correct
terminology is no reason to belittle them by thinking they "want to do
something stupid," though (and yes, that's why they're angry); half of
software engineering is figuring out what the heck people mean with their
requirements, and the usual best first assumption, no matter who your
client/student is, is that they want to do something _cool_ :)

I like to give anyone who asks me to teach them "to make games" or anything
similar this test first, though: I take a pen and put it down on a page of
paper, and tell them to tell _me_ to draw a happy face on it, without
expecting me to know what a happy face, or even a circle, is. I take
everything they say literally, and tell them "this is how the computer would
react to that." Clears up any misconceptions pretty quickly. :)

~~~
amalcon
My problem is that people often think you're trying to belittle them when
you're _just trying to figure out what they want to do_. Maybe this is because
people do belittle each other for not knowing proper terminology. It still
causes problems.

I have had people ask me "how do you program DOS", when they were in fact
looking for (among other things):

\- How do I write a batch file (easy to explain)

\- How do I make a simple console program (slightly tougher, but I could at
least point them in the right direction, or show them if they are willing to
take the time)

\- How do I program my calculator to do trigonometry for me (This was my
absolute favorite one, because I could actually show them the basics on the
spot! Back in the day, I showed a few people how to do this, who actually
turned out to really enjoy doing it!)

\- How do I make a game (this is the worst one)

------
quoderat
This writer is really clueless as to what high school is like for those on the
bottom of the heap -- I mean, really, no idea at all.

For that reason, it's hard to listen to what else he has to say, no matter how
relevant or (potentially) awesome.

Obvious that he's never been the low end of the totem pole. It may be
different now, but when I was in high school, geeks and nerds got shit on by
every group -- the jocks, the actors and actresses. Everyone.

~~~
njoubert
It definitely varies. I was not all that invested in programming at all,
spending most of my time biking and playing music, but as a "smart kid" there
was lots of ostracizing going around, just because I didn't play the main
sport that _everyone_ plays.

What I take away from this is the importance of growing up - you get through
those stages and move into a more nurturing community of people that support
what you create, not the details of how you created it.

~~~
eru
"Sir Michael Marmot, of University College London, and his intellectual
successors have shown repeatedly that people at the bottom of social
hierarchies experience much more stress in their daily lives than those at the
top—and suffer the consequences in their health. Even quite young children are
socially sensitive beings and aware of such things."

Growing up is important. But early stress does have long-term consequences.

------
noonespecial
Many good points but missing one important observation. The cliques in school
are hierarchical in nature. All groups may be exclusive toward other members
but a band geek cannot make a jock's life miserable as a pastime. Members of
each clique can torment those in the "lower castes" with virtually no social
cost for those actions. For fun, to fit in, because daddy never hugged them,
whatever.

The Nerds and programmers almost always find themselves on the bottom. Things
look different when you're a Dalit.

~~~
dasil003
It really depends on the school. In my high school there was no dominant
clique, so the situation was somewhat as the author described. Sure people
made fun of nerds, mostly because they left themselves open to it by being
different and socially awkward, but there was definitely no strict hierarchy
amongst cliques. I think there is some truth to the idea that certain nerds
create a sense of superiority as a defense mechanism (think Comic Book Guy),
but that is not the root cause of the nerd's social status.

After the opening section I think the rant goes completely off the deep end
with a rapid succession of wrong-headed generalizations. It reads like an
18-year-old who just finished high school and now thinks he's got it all
figured out. The idea that programmers define themselves by what they are not,
or by nitpicking inconsequential details is laughable. Sure programmers may be
a bit more prone to nasty protracted flamewars over subtle issues, but we
don't define ourselves that way. Sure our communities form around tools moreso
than ideas (though not exclusively), but that's simply a matter of necessity
given the detail of using any particular tool well. Personally I find the
notion that "I define myself as a programmer" offensive. Programming is
something I do, and I do it reasonably well, but at the end of the day it's
only one of many things I do, and it's certainly not "who I am."

~~~
HalcyonMuse
Judging by the rest of Mr. Marinich's content, I'd be surprised if you're very
far off the mark. Here's what I found particularly ironic: most of the online
stuff of his I read (well, skimmed) was pretty negative, hostile and generally
involved lashing out at people.

After about five minutes I couldn't help but think of Maddox.

~~~
rorymarinich
That's not irony. Irony would be if this piece was telling people not to be
negative and hostile. I'm merely informing people that their negativity stems
from bad places.

I've written an explanation as to why I write the way I do before, but
unfortunately with my "unalone" account noprocrasted for the next 2 months and
my blog URL and theme changed it doesn't connect with how things were before.
Here's a basic summary: on this blog, I write essentially everything that
comes to mind. So yesterday, I wrote blurbs about passionate argument, the
importance of efficient coding, misanthropy, Samuel Beckett, this particular
piece, an update on my design progress. Two days ago it was on capitalism,
pick-up artists (inspired by an HN post, actually), ADD, and the problems of
young people dating?

I'm not a particularly negative person. I love the life I have and the people
I know. At the same time, however, I made a pretty conscious decision a little
while ago that I'm writing this blog for myself rather than for other people.
Back in January I rather expected this blog to fade away and be ignored
entirely, once I started basically writing lengthy pieces on impulse, several
times a day. The fact that readers have increased makes me a little
uncomfortable. It means that I find pieces like this one on web sites I'd
rather they weren't. This is not a good piece. It's dashed out in 20 minutes
and posted without a look back. And yes, it's a negative piece; yes, I find
myself writing a lot of lashy things. It's by no means the majority of what I
write - my average post tends to be more optimistic in nature. But those lashy
things are a part of my existing, and I've learned through the last few months
that a lot of people go through certain experiences I used to think were mine
and mine alone.

So I write about things like young entrepreneurs in a way that could be seen
as lashing out at them. I write about people with bad taste and people with no
social skills and _ugly_ people. That's a pretty big breach of polite writing,
when I spend time talking about my dislike of people who aren't physically
attractive. But that's kind of the point: I don't _want_ this to be a polite
blog. I'm in the process of creating a tech blog for my revised, good pieces,
because I hate being put on Hacker News for shitty pieces. This is not a blog
for hackers. It is a blog for myself and for every irrelevant thought that
hits my head during the day, and the people who've assembled to read it are a
ragtag bunch of personalities that I'd never expect to all center around a
blog like mine. I'm grateful for that, and I love the people I've met through
it, and I'm not going to be changing the format of the blog. Just keep in mind
that what you're reading is written in a very specific style, one that leads
to negativity and hostility, and that I'm very aware of the quality level of
this stuff, which is why this didn't come as a link directly from me.

------
rue
Americans have a fundamentally different relationship with their High School
days from anyone else. Popular culture certainly is not helping shed the
obsession, the sense that High School is the defining time in one's life[1].

Somehow it seems that all these stories tie into that theme: the expectations,
the sense that one must live their High School role thenceforth, the
contemporary judgments made based on factors from High School and so on.

[1] Adolescence is obviously formative just like anything else; I trust you
can make the distinction.

------
mmiller
I think he makes a good point in that nerds tend to exclude themselves, but I
think it's a defense mechanism from being rejected. Believe me, when I was in
jr. high and high school (more than 20 years ago, now) I wanted to "join the
crowd" badly. I wasn't allowed in, and I felt awkward every time I tried to
join in. I just didn't fit the social milieu. I didn't feel the need to
exclude others (there's a difference between this and excluding yourself). If
someone else wanted to be my friend I gladly accepted them. So I don't get
this whole thing about how "nerds exclude everyone else." That wasn't my
experience.

------
shalmanese
There's something ironic about a post on nerds being deliberately exclusionary
which redirects IE browsers to a Safari download link.

~~~
tlrobinson
This bit is particularly appropriate:

 _Hell, programmers argue over web browsers. There is an elitist and closed-
off system among hardcore coders that says certain things are better than
others, usually for no reason, often for bad reasons._

~~~
Psyonic
Right.... as opposed to the rest of the population arguing over which
(baseball team, basketball team, hockey team, football team, soccer team,
nascar driver, music group, shoe label, clothing label) is better, which while
I guess isn't "elitist and closed-off" definitely says certain things are
better than others, usually for no reason, and often for bad reasons.

Or in other words, so-called nerds have different interests than the rest of
the population, and they act completely normal about those interests within
their peer group.

~~~
dkarl
Everybody hates dorks who insist on talking about music labels or shoe brands
to people who don't want to, but those types are pretty rare. Tech and gaming
geeks are massively overrepresented here, and sports geeks to a lesser extent.
When one guy goes on and on about his special interest to one or more people
who are obviously not interested, but he doesn't get it, it's usually about
technology, computer games, or sports.

Despite the massive popular appeal of celebrities and fashion, I've _never_
been stuck in a one-on-one conversation with somebody who couldn't figure out
that those topics bored me. I've been stranded in group conversations as the
lone person who wasn't interested, but that's entirely different. People even
figure out pretty quickly that I don't know anything about "Lost" despite how
improbably that is. You have to give "normal" people credit for being much,
much better than the average computer nerd when it comes to talking your ear
off about stuff you don't care about.

(I guess there's another stereotypical dork: the middle-aged businessman who
only know how to talk to other middle-aged businessmen, and who talks
obsessively about cars, golf, or politics. I only encounter him at weddings,
but you entrepreneurial types might run into him more often.)

------
andreyf
I don't get it. I went to a public school, and it was nothing like this -
sure, we had our little tribes, and our little dramas, but most people
belonged to several of them - I took lots of business and marketing classes
_and_ was a programmer nerd. Many other programmer nerds were actors, in
marching band, and in the choir. The class president and swim team captain
took AP CompSci, wasn't too bad of a programmer himself, and an exceptionally
nice guy, to absolutely everyone. Sure, there were dicks, but who cares about
them?

~~~
jimbokun
"Sure, there were dicks, but who cares about them?"

The real problem seems to be school violence and bullying, and it seems that
in the U.S., at least, this is a non-trivial problem.

Dicks you can just ignore are one thing. Dicks who beat up kids smaller than
them or pick out kids to ambush with their buddies, cannot be ignored. Sounds
like this was not the case at your school, which is great. But it changes
everything when violence is involved, and explains why unpopular "nerds" could
display exclusion and paranoia, literally as a survival mechanism.

In schools where violence is not widespread, I think Rory's comments have more
validity.

------
yef
I'm frustrated that the #2 link on Hacker News right now is a rambling rehash
of How To Win Friends and Influence People, the first book listed here:
<http://ycombinator.com/lib.html>

~~~
rorymarinich
Is that what HTWFAIP is about? I've never read it. (Also: is it a good read,
or is it overrated?) (Also also: I agree. This should not be here.)

~~~
tvon
It's pretty much a universal top 10 book on the subject of general success for
people whose top 10 books anyone cares about.

I want to read it, so far I've just used the audio book and enjoyed it, but
didn't really focus on it as much as I would have if I had read it.

~~~
asciilifeform
My question is, where can I get the uncensored version of this book mentioned
by Paul Graham?

------
jmtame
What makes a great writer? Someone who understands both angles, someone who
has been both popular and a nerd. See Paul Graham's Why Nerds Are Unpopular,
which was the first essay I ever read of Paul's in high school as a sophomore
and that got me hooked on reading the rest of his:
<http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html>

~~~
thi
Having just come from there _(it made for an interesting experience on my
end)_ , I can say that his article is indeed very well written.

------
ighost
He makes a few decent points, but it really doesn't seem like he understands
nerds or complex social interactions between different personality types very
well.

~~~
rorymarinich
Elaborate, if you don't mind.

------
Dalziel
I'm sorry that's complete BS. Yes there are arrogant nerds and especially more
on the internet where the 'geeky' have held sway for longer. But the simple
fact is that as noonespecial pointed out, the sporty 'popular' will be more
confident in a group of nerds than the other way around because there is no
risk for them. The nerds can't make their day-to-day life in school a living
hell.

~~~
rorymarinich
What's the risk for nerds?

When I developed the attitude I've got now, the one that accepts my faults and
doesn't immediately get nasty, the change in people was almost immediate. Most
people really would rather like you than dislike you, and the instant you
start accepting them, they start liking you back. The people who are real
jerks and tormentors drop it after it stops affecting you - and that doesn't
mean your responding harshly or ignoring it, it means your ignoring the fact
that they're attempting to be tormentors. If you ask a bullying jock a
question about his sports team, and start just talking to him about the stuff
he does, they're completely nonplussed, and after just a little bit, they
start treating you like a normal human being.

There is an imaginary risk, and I agree with you that it's terrifying as hell
to think that people are against you. I've been there. But it's not a real
risk, and once you overcome that nonexistent worry - and that's absolutely not
an easy thing to do - you realize that nobody is any more at risk than anybody
else.

~~~
chairface
> What's the risk for nerds?

The risk, of course, is that they'll screw something up and the tormentors
will continue to torment. These are generally socially awkward people we're
talking about. You're being rather silly to suggest that someone who isn't at
home in social situations to begin with and has been ostracized for pretty
much their entire life is not at risk of real failure in a social environment.

I'm glad that you were successful in your social ladder climb. But you are
pretending that _everyone_ will be successful. It's simply not a foregone
conclusion - there are losers in this game, even among those who try their
hardest not to be.

> you realize that nobody is any more at risk than anybody else

This is so very false that I don't even know where to begin. Are you saying
that there are not real advantages and disadvantages in social situations? Can
you not see that the captain of the football team is way less likely to be
harassed than the math dweeb?

~~~
rorymarinich
It's a false dichotomy, because people don't care if you're socially awkward.
I personally love shy people. Lots of people do. So I know the fear exists,
but it's a false fear. The risk is nonexistent because social failure doesn't
mean what nerds think it does.

 _Can you not see that the captain of the football team is way less likely to
be harassed than the math dweeb?_

I'm saying that if math was cool and football wasn't, the captain of the
modern football team would probably still be really popular. He might be
really into math. I know the sorts of people who were football captains, and
they're inherently likable partly because they're not obnoxious assholes in
the same way. They're the sorts of assholes people like.

As I said earlier: when a football player joined a group of nerds he'd start
talking to us and we'd all start to really like him. If I joined a group of
football players I would turn quiet and snappy. If I was willing to risk being
more social, I have no doubts that I'd have been accepted.

Everybody who attempts to climb the social ladder succeeds, because people
above you really would prefer you climb up.

~~~
chairface
You've got a lot of living to do if you believe all that, pal. Particularly
that last sentence.

~~~
rorymarinich
I've been invited to meet people I respect deeply because they liked some of
the stuff I did. One of my close friends opened for Kimya Dawson; another
friend of mine won a national poetry award. I find that the people I know who
have succeeded are the people who don't doubt for an instant that people want
them to succeed, and I have seen no reason to doubt that. The sorts of people
who are bitter enough to push down lower people are the sorts of people who
themselves are not really high up.

~~~
chairface
> I find that the people I know who have succeeded are the people who don't
> doubt for an instant that people want them to succeed

This is not the same as "Everyone who attempts to climb the social ladder
succeeds", what you are saying here is more like "Everyone who succeeds at
climbing the social ladder attempts it". The latter is true, the former is
what I objected to. You are ignoring the people who attempted and failed.

~~~
rorymarinich
We could have a whole lengthy discussion about this, but I still disagree. I
think that success is easy enough that somebody who's willing to try and try
again will succeed sooner rather than later.

------
strlen
This is rambling and seems to be entirely empirically false. On top of it
makes a vice out of "nerdiness" and a virtue of "coolness" ("uncool asshole")
without any sort of argument to back it.

------
endlessvoid94
Most (not all) of the responses here seem to absolutely confirm this essay's
main points.

The posters here generally are taking some kind of offense to this, and feel
the need to shoot it full of holes. In the meantime, this behavior is only
reinforcing the point to anyone who happens to not be a programmer.

It's actually quite striking.

~~~
bena
If someone came on here and said something blatantly false such as "Gravity
doesn't exist. Here's a bunch of technobabble explaining why it doesn't.
Anyone who doesn't agree is a douche and part of the conspiracy to hide the
truth." Would the multitudes of people coming to refute his points confirm his
point that there is a conspiracy to hide the truth?

Or would it mean that he just may be wrong.

~~~
rorymarinich
Bullshit. Gravity is a provable part of science. The social sciences are
harder to deal with. Meanwhile, you want proof? I'll offer myself and _every
single person I know who's willing to be social_ as proof. I'm friends with
guys with weird hair and glasses who use Digg and they were an accepted part
of high school because they didn't go out of their way to be exclusive and
closed-off. When I decided to stop being a dick to people just to preempt
their disliking me, I found out that I was rarely disliked. (In fact, I went
to a further extreme, because I'm quick to call people out for saying stupid
things and I like colorful insults, and yet people didn't mind so much as I
continued to get along with them.)

Show me the person who makes an active attempt to stop being hated - not by
being "cool" but by starting to act friendly towards people - and fails after
a few weeks' effort and I'll consider your experiment a potential refutation.

 _Would the multitudes of people coming to refute his points confirm his point
that there is a conspiracy to hide the truth?_

I said "Nerds are in denial" and a lot of people jumped on board to deny it.
I'm not saying that proves it either way, because I don't presume to judge
people by their comments online, but it's not exactly evidence of my
wrongdoing.

~~~
bena
Don't argue the example. I chose the example as an obviously wrong opinion.

I know lots of people who are hated simply because they try to hard to be
liked. Annoyingly friendly to the point of aggravation. They wind up being
hated because they don't want to be hated.

And of course if I say something like "Nerds will deny their love of the music
stylings of Britney Spears", I will get a ton of "nerds" who don't like
Britney Spears at all and say so. But that isn't proof that they secretly like
Britney Spears because you correctly predicted the response to an inflammatory
statement.

A lot of people are coming up to say that they weren't assholes, that when
they were nice they were still victimized, etc., etc. But to you that is only
proof of your statement that they are in denial. You are refusing to consider
that maybe, you are just wrong, extrapolating from yourself conclusions that
don't hold in the larger context.

------
illustraden
One time, this guy at my school made it to Hollywood in American Idol and the
school paper did a bit on that and a friend at that time became irate. Like,
RAGING, throwing things against the wall. He said he did cooler things in
programming-he had hurricane coding skills. As opposed to something as utterly
inane as American Idol and nobody wrote an article on him. After graduating, I
make it a point to avoid people like that. I'm completely traumatized from
being surrounded by those people every day for 4 years. My friends now don't
know what the heck i'm talking about when something triggers those memories
and I marvel about how obnoxious those people were. Then she sent me this
article, and she asked me, you mean like this? And I said YES!

------
gne1963
If you guys have never seen the Dilbert cartoon "The Knack", have a look...
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmYDgncMhXw> It will lighten your mood after
reading this post...

------
tutwabee
"The response that I try to lob into these discussions, reduced to its crudest
form, is: Mark Zuckerberg is the CEO of one of the largest web sites on the
planet, and his web site is beautiful, and it brings joy to a lot of people,
so apparently being a good programmer isn’t what makes you design beautiful
things that make people happy, in which case being a good programmer sounds
like a fucking waste."

Mark Zuckerberg is the CEO of Facebook. His coding abilities cannot be judged
unless it is known how much of the Facebook code he actually wrote. I assume
the majority of it was not written by him.

~~~
noamsml
Also, though Facebook is clearly a resounding success, I'm not sure I'd use
the words "beautiful" and "makes people happy". More like "useful" and "makes
people connected".

~~~
rorymarinich
It makes people happy. My mother has found old high school friends - old high
school _crushes_ , even - and met up with people who left her life a long time
ago. A friend of mine in Washington D.C. uses it to organize all her groups of
friends for her homecoming party. I used Facebook for writing my notes before
I decided to make everything I wrote public, and I bonded with a lot of people
over issues I'd never thought other people cared about. It's used for
organizing protests and finding phone numbers and occasionally hooking up.
Connections lead largely to happiness.

I think Facebook is one of the best-looking sites that's ever been, though the
last two redesigns haven't been too tight. The original layout, with the links
on the side and the two-column profile, was one of those things that vastly
inspired me when I was younger. The level of order it forced on its users was
stunning, especially compared to MySpace. Now it's been tuning down some of
the things I liked - especially the "How do you know this person" syntax - but
it's still more usable than any other site that huge. The fact that people can
intuitively figure out how to post photos, videos, events, groups, notes,
friend people, fan pages, add applications, all without any advice - my
grandfather figured it all out without help - is one of those things that's
_so_ impressive that it's easy to ignore because you take it for granted.
Meanwhile, a lot of the things that have become common in sites - the thing
that stands out to me is the resizing textfields - were first popularly used
in Facebook. When I wrote for AllFacebook my main interest was scouring the
site, clicking everything I could, looking for those finesses. So it's
beautiful in terms of dedication to usability if nothing else.

~~~
Psyonic
Facebook also causes anxiety. Now that older people are joining, its getting
more complicated. My aunt just added me... I like my aunt, but do I really
want her up-to-date on my day to day life? That said, I don't want to deny
her... This is becoming a more pressing problem every day, as friends' parents
add me, etc.

~~~
rorymarinich
I'd think the anxiety are outnumbered by the things that Facebook makes
simpler. (I just add my relatives, and hope they don't mind that I
occasionally use foul language. They usually don't.)

------
sachmanb
seems as if he has a problem with introverts

~~~
jeffesp
Him and the rest of our society.

Edit: Not to seem too negative, but I have just run into this attitude in most
people that aren't introverts. There are advantages and disadvantages to both
sides of that coin, but I feel like the introvert side gets labeled as the bad
one.

~~~
TheAmazingIdiot
I had a good talk about introvert/extrovert differences with my philosophy
professor. He explained that different cultures had differences in which one
was perceived better.

In places like the US, extroversion is accepted and liked. However, in places
like Germany, introversion is well respected and as an equal to extroversion.

I asked why and he said that he really didn't know. It's just the difference
in culture.

------
mikedouglas
Ugh, typography on that page is a mess. The title shadow is distracting, and
the leading feels cramped.

Off topic, but please fix.

~~~
rorymarinich
What browser/OS are you using? The shadows have been tricky - on Safari they
look vastly better than on other browsers, and I've been trying to get it not
to look tacky. I might disable them entirely for non-Safari browsers.

Agree with you about the leading. This is the first thing I've written where
the title has dropped to two lines, and it looks icky compared to with one.
This theme is very much a work in progress - just started coding it in early
last week - so I'll tidy those things up.

------
noamsml
Can't say this mirrors my experience of geeks at all, but then again, I went
to a school where all cliques were extremely loose-knit and accepting (it was
just part of the school culture).

------
ideamonk
I think his problem is with the people who label themselves as nerds and
programmers. The author should go by a person's _work_ to decide how good one
is. Not by the air, debates and the talks!

~~~
rorymarinich
I do. My particular group of friends includes nerds and hipsters and radical
liberals and libertarians and volleyball players and a whole bunch of people
who I hang out with because of who they are and what they do.

This isn't my writing about a dislike of nerds. This is my writing _to_
certain nerds explaining why their situation is what it is.

------
chanux
Hehe the guy missed the point. It's those nerds & programmers who made the
world for him (people like him) to do their cheesy things on top of.

------
volida
"you need to be smart in order to be a part of the group"

This is a wrong assumption, because there are people who are smart but are not
(computer) nerds.

~~~
andylei
the argument "you need to be smart in order to be part of the group" is the
not the same as "being smart means you are in the group".

~~~
volida
On its own yes. But in the phrase used:

"Cheerleader come over and ask about programming? Shot down. Invitation to a
study group? Rejected. The most bitingly ironic comes when a person in a group
of nerds gets an invitation to a party. If you’re one of the more social
people in your scene, try it. Invite an anime person or a programmer - one of
those people - out to an event. Chances are you’ll be declined. There’s every
possibility you’ll be rejected impolitely. The whole concept of the nerd
clique is based on elitism: you need to be smart in order to be a part of the
group."

I've read once about a cheerleader who became a rocket scientist.

The article is based on wrong assumptions. People don't reject you because you
belong to a "smart" group but rather because "computer nerds" tend to lack
social skills (at some point in their early life at least), that make seem
akward. or themselves reject specific attitude/people who they don't feel
combatible, so it's a human behaviour thing that you should expect that those
you reject they will reject you.

~~~
rorymarinich
...That's almost exactly what my article was about. It was that smart people
exist in _every_ group, and so by trying to use intelligence as an excuse for
rejection you're causing trouble where there shouldn't be any.

I mean, considering I'm criticizing the nerd social atmosphere in a lengthy
post, it's unlikely that I'm saying nerds suck because they're smart.

------
jgoosdh
what a sad, angry little man...

~~~
rorymarinich
Perhaps it's not my place to say this, since this is an attack on me, but it's
sad that something like this got 4 points on Hacker News. It adds nothing to
the conversation and is roundly negative.

Now that you've insulted me and called me both angry and sad, I'd like you to
explain yourself further so I can respond in kind.

~~~
TheAmazingIdiot
I cannot vouch for the "angry little man" comment, but you've run aground with
massive sweeping generalizations that do not hold very true with many geeks.

We all wern't made fun of in high school. Some of us even had plenty of jock
friends and stayed away from the "introvert hate everybody clueless
programmers group".

And there's one really cool thing about being a "nerd": You learn a lot about
a multitude of subjects. Because of that, you can learn of the
interconnectedness between subjects. It's what I did, and I was able to help,
say, a few cheerleaders on their advanced chemistry course, or watch a film
while "critiquing" it.

I also taught a few of these students biology... no no no, not sex (no, that
would be a bit later). Winemaking. I mean, if you want to be popular, you
stand out. Even if it is a 'little bit', you make yourself memorable. People
of all sorts will look past general quirkiness if you're a cool guy.

The toughest group to join was that nerd group, at least in my HS. I assume it
was a mixture of not trusting or they thought I was too stupid. My SO however
had a completely difference experience, in which there was really no real
cliques (there were, in name usually).

~~~
rorymarinich
That's largely what I was trying to say. I use "nerd" in a very narrow sense:
most nerdy people I don't consider to be nerds. I don't think I'm a nerd, for
instance.

 _The toughest group to join was that nerd group, at least in my HS. I assume
it was a mixture of not trusting or they thought I was too stupid._

That's what I was trying to say. If "popular" really meant "exclusive", then
nerds would be the most popular people around.

As I said in my essay: everybody nowadays is a nerd. Doesn't matter what you
get involved in, you're a nerd. I suspect that was true 50 years ago, because
Lennon/McCartney were as nerdy brilliant as they come and they still became
sex icons. So when I refer to nerds I refer not to people who do nerdy things,
but to the nerds that aggressively classify themselves as nerds and invite
persecution and antagonizing by doing do.

------
rbanffy
"Cheerleader come over and ask about programming? Shot down"

In what planet did you grow up?

------
jodrellblank
_When you go online and want to learn programming, you run into the uncool
assholes. The ones who’ll take "How to I make a web site that people can join"
not as an admission of some guy who doesn’t care about the details but as a
sign of weakness. I’ve seen responses to that question that range from "You
obviously aren’t ready" to "It depends on how you want the site to scale."
What bullshit!_

No no no. That's me, but it's not because of anything to do with spotting "a
sign of weakness".

Let me try to use a non-car analogy: Imagine I'm a carpenter (I'm not) and you
come up to me and ask "how do I build a staircase?". The kinds of thoughts
going through my head might be:

1) A staircase is obviously wood, cut to shape, then fixed together. It's also
obviously quite a big thing. There's no need to answer with the low level
"obvious" things like "you will need a large workshop", if you want to build a
staircase you probably already have woodworking tools and experience and now
want a bigger project, so an answer telling you basic outline steps would be
insultingly patronising and unhelpful.

Also, an answer covering enough steps from scratch would take far too long for
a forum post or discussion reply, so if I make the judgement that you don't
have any of the experience and haven't considered it _at all_ then you might
get a dismissive "with a lot of work" reply.

(OK, maybe if we met informally and you asked, you might be just making
conversation, but nobody goes to a technical forum and asks how to build a
website just to make friends, do they, so that doesn't apply).

2) On the other hand, if you have spotted the obvious then you're asking one
question but meaning another - maybe what kind of wood can I use to make it
look nice, what building regs must it comply to, how can I reinforce it, what
fireproofing treatments work well? What styles of bannister were popular in
Victorian times?

There could be a lot of fun stuff, but again too many directions to go in all
in one answer - this is where you get the "it depends what style you want"
answer. It's not _bullshit_ , it's better than that, it's skipping straight to
acknowledgement, acceptance and directed at whichever obstacle or major design
consideration comes to mind first.

So, "how do you build a website that people can join" leads me to think
something like:

A website people can join means giving them a form to fill in, keeping their
details, and providing a login prompt later. This is obvious to anyone who has
used a couple of websites with signup forms.

So either you understand the steps of a site you can signup to and would have
Googled until you found out more about those steps and asked a more specific
question (What's HTML? What's a webhost? What happens to information in a form
once I click submit? How can I keep it around?), or you're really asking for
design and obstacle avoidance suggestions, e.g. scaling, security, server
load, etc.

Hence the replies: You haven't Googled for the basics, that suggests you
aren't ready for the amount of work involved, or you aren't really asking such
a basic question so you don't get a basic answer.

~~~
Jem
Or, in the case of someone who asked me that exact question recently, what
they really want is for you to provide them with code for free.

~~~
jodrellblank
They can have the code for free - Joomla, for instance or Drupal, that's not
the issue, it's something deeper than that.

I wouldn't go to an exotic plant center and ask how to grow a sequoia tree and
when they ask if I have any gardening experience, say no. Have any tools? No.
Have anywhere to grow one? No. Do I want to read a book on them? No. I don't
want to go through all this growing a tree bullshit, I just want to grow a
sequoia tree! It'll need a lot of space. Don't give me this scaling crap.
It'll need a tropical soil makeup. I don't care about soil chemistry you nerd,
I just want to grow a big tree!

If I wanted to jump into a big project, why not? I'd research to find out
where they normally grow, where seeds for unusual plants can be obtained, how
to germinate and care for similar (tree, tropical, whatever) seeds and what
kinds of soils and watering they might require, and arrange a big space to
grow it in - then I'd contact someone appropriate and describe my plan, make
it clear I was determined and ask for their advice.

I'm having trouble putting my finger on what's annoying me, it's not the
request for free code - you can have it. It's not the asking for help - I'll
help when I can (if I'm interested).

There's something about the questioner being unwilling to help themselves. Not
a lack of understanding about a topic, but a lack of understanding about
_understanding_ in general. A kind of feeling that some people think things
are _literally magic_ , not just a chain of connections that anyone learn
about and manipulate.

It's probably because I'm a nerd who likes details (in areas I'm interested
in, at least), but it's puzzling.

~~~
rorymarinich
I was actually going to mention Drupal, because it's what I've spent a good
five years playing around with. I love it.

 _There's something about the questioner being unwilling to help themselves.
Not a lack of understanding about a topic, but a lack of understanding about
understanding in general. A kind of feeling that some people think things are
literally magic, not just a chain of connections that anyone learn about and
manipulate._

That's not the vibe I get from a lot of the more arrogant types. If somebody
asks "How do I make a custom forum" and somebody says "Well, you're going to
need to know a lot of things, so if you don't know X Y and Z it's going to
take you a lot of learning", that makes a lot of sense, agreed. But the
attitude that comes off of a lot of programmers is "Yeah, you can't, don't
bother," and I feel that hurts a lot of curious-but-ignorant people.

