
We expect too much of geeks - benatkin
http://threads2.scripting.com/2013/january/weExpectTooMuchOfGeeks
======
rodh
This article hits a nerve for me.

There's in particular a sentence right at the start. "If you're young and
think you're hot shit, and there's some reason to believe you are, you can go
far, very quickly."

When I think back at my time prior to going to University, I really did think
this way. And I had reason to. Even during my time at University, that feeling
never escaped me.

Once I entered full-time employment (almost by accident. I had started my own
limited company at this point), my attitude changed completely. I was
surrounded by so many people so unbelievably more clever than me, I was
humbled. It wasn't just their abilities, but their "maturity".

Now I cringe to think of my attitude as little as 5 years ago. And I think I
have reason to. Where I used to take pride in "fixing your 6-month problem in
4 days", I now realise I failed on a lot of aspects. I am now much more
focused on doing things _right_. I focus on listening and understanding, on
being tolerant and empathetic. I measure my work in quality, maintainability,
measurable evidence. Every day I try my hardest to learn and to be a pioneer.

I do think this is a positive improvement. But when I come across an article
like this one, and recall my youthful naivety and enthusiasm, I do worry if I
haven't perhaps lost something more important.

~~~
dpiers
| when I come across an article like this one, and recall my youthful naivety
and enthusiasm, I do worry if I haven't perhaps lost something more important.

A very skilled young carpenter spends 8 hours making a table, which is a
perfectly sound and functional, and is proud of his work.

A very skilled master carpenter spends 250 hours making a table, which is one
of the finest ever crafted, and is proud of his work.

Someone tasks both carpenters with creating a table in 10 hours. The first
carpenter does so and tells them it is the finest table he has ever made. The
second carpenter does so and tells them it was the best he could do in only 10
hours.

Which table do you believe will be of higher quality? Has the second carpenter
"lost something more important" along the way?

~~~
elliottkember
I think this is a terrible analogy and doesn't admit the possibility that the
master is able to build both kinds of tables - and that this is why he's the
master. In 10 hours he can probably still produce a sturdy, simple table just
like he used to. He now has the skill to take the craft to a new level.

~~~
dpiers
The analogy would be terrible if I claimed to know which carpenter would
produce a better table, but I intentionally left that conclusion to the
reader.

------
swombat
_When young people risk it all, it would be nice if there were people who
understood what they're going through, who could offer some perspective. Even
better, if there was an oldtimer around when the world is telling you you're a
god and can do no wrong, to tell you that's bullshit, to kick you in the butt,
in a friendly way, tell you you're a mortal human being, and you need to
understand that life has its ups and downs, and you're going to be around for
a long time, and this is just the beginning, part of the learning process, and
while it looks like everything is great now, or falling apart, or whatever
emotion is driving you at this moment, let's go for a walk, get a burger, see
a movie and hang out for a bit, watch a game, and notice all the other stuff
that's going on._

This seems appropriate: <http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_if.htm>

~~~
benatkin
Wonderful poem, and I like how it's presented. The public domain and the
inexpensiveness in hosting allows for this.

------
Anechoic
The title references "geeks" while the actual post references "programmers" -
I wish he had stuck with "geeks" as the challenges he describes are limited
just to programmer or tech types, but are faced by folks in a number of
scientific and engineering professions. Just think of what the EE's who worked
on the Boeing 787 are going through right now.

~~~
neltnerb
I'm not a programmer, but it's a little silly to expect someone to use
examples from outside their domain expertise. It did seem like he derailed his
own point into a weird cultural commentary on programmers though.

I like the comments about how to avoid being depressed and anxious about not
being perfect. No one likes admitting they're fallible initially... it takes
practice =) And I've had lots and lots of practice.

In grad school it sounds like it is not unlike his description of silicon
valley (minus the piles of cash, dominance of Caucasians, and lack of women,
of course). If you're confident, aggressive, and think you're good at what
you're doing, you will probably end up being so eventually. At least if you
are able to take your own fallibility in stride.

I remember trying to explain things to younger students (and often postdocs
too) and asking often "does that make sense?" and "do you know what I mean by
..." and getting rapid nods. I wasn't asking because I'm trying to make them
look stupid, I'm asking because the subject material is legitimately really
hard, and no one knows all of it offhand. No one. And then this is followed up
a week later by them clearly obviously definitively not having understood a
word I said. Whereas if they had admitted to not knowing what I was talking
about, I would have stepped back a bit further and explained it from an
earlier stage with no problem.

One of my biggest domain examples of my own was when I was like "oh, the
melting point of copper is really high, surely it will work okay as a
conductor at 500C". Do'h. Man that was stupid. On the plus side, now I know
_all_ about oxidative corrosion...

~~~
Anechoic
_it's a little silly to expect someone to use examples from outside their
domain expertise_

Right, I get that. But...

 _It did seem like he derailed his own point into a weird cultural commentary
on programmers though_

That's what I was commenting on - the way DW connected the initial thesis to
the commentary made it seem (to me anyway) that these expectations were
exclusive to programmers.

------
mimog
Strange article. I don't think its an innate geek property to feel almighty
and infallible. The author seems to be conufsing geek with silicon valley
megalomaniac/serial entrepremanur.

~~~
benatkin
Well as Anechoic said, in the post he keeps referencing programmers. This may
refer more closely to the silicon valley types. But I know there are many
outside silicon valley, and many within silicon valley who don't call
themselves entrepreneurs but have an entrepreneurial mindset. I think if you
look at the content and context of the article you can get a pretty good idea
of what he means by "geek".

------
jhuni
> _The other thing we all can do, if we love the product of technical minds,
> is stop thinking it's magic. There is magic in computers, but the magic
> isn't in the programmer or the tech writer or the visionary -- it's in the
> whole thing. The miracle isn't any one person, rather it's that humanity can
> collaborate to create something much greater than any one of us._

If you consider the "whole thing" most computers still have proprietary
programs put in place by profit-driven organizations to subjugate and control
the users. That isn't magic its witchcraft. It would be a miracle if computer
programs and all other forms of software were developed collaboratively rather
then secretively.

------
hakaaaaak
Here's my thing:

I've never been hot shit. The closest was the 90s when everyone who knew
anything about programming or networking was the bomb, maybe followed by
working at a startup for the first time and really digging it and feeling like
I was the man because they ran on code I wrote.

Since then, I've gotten older. And increasingly more depressed about my job.
I've changed workplaces and it doesn't help, if anything- it just changed the
nature of it all. After burning out working crazy hours at startup company #2,
I took a job that was way too easy. Fell into the trap and now I'm older, my
mind doesn't work, and I'm back at a startup in higher stress.

I've not learned much really except that I don't like it.

------
gregd
I expected the URL to work...so therefore, I must be one of the ones that
expect too much from geeks.

------
10dpd
The problem is that the level of abstraction in modern languages means that
the bar to becoming a programmer today is a lot lower than it was say in the
70s.

Can you imagine explaining to a programmer in the 70s that they'd be able to
determine someones precise location, place that location on an interactive
map, and share it with all their friends, all from a tiny device that they
keep in their pocket thats programmed using a simple, high-level API?

As a result, yes society does expect a lot from programmers, and rightly so.

~~~
davewiner
The languages haven't changed much, but the price of computers has gone down.

In the 80s there were much simpler development environments than we have now.
Turbo Pascal and Think C were the two I used.

It would be great to combine that level of ease of use and the browser or
server-side programming environment.

But no one has gotten there yet.

As far as envisioning today's world of computing in the 70s, I was a
programmer in the 70s and we envisioned this and a lot more. Read Ted Nelson's
book Dream Machines for an idea.

~~~
Vivtek
Yeah, any reader of Omni was right on board - I know I was. My mom worked at
the post office (rural carrier) and I blew her mind telling her that email
would largely supplant postal mail. She just reminded me of that last year,
actually.

We all knew it was coming.

Also - yeah. I kind of miss Turbo Pascal. But I'd never give up CPAN for it.
Ha.

------
davewiner
Sorry the server is getting swamped. Right now the best place to read this
piece is <http://scripting.com/>.

Update: Traffic seems to have abated a bit. Not going to move it.

------
btilly
I can't read this without wondering to what extent it is a response to the
death of Aaron Swartz. Particularly considering that Aaron's suicide brought
<http://scripting.com/2003/06/29.html#When:9:33:43PM> back to the attention of
a number of people.

In case you entirely missed this subtext, I recommend re-reading it, and
seeing how well the glove fits on a possible perspective of Aaron's life.

~~~
charlieok
...and things started off so well between them

<http://scripting.com/2001/02/19.html>

------
tsahyt
This was a very good article to read. Very thoughtful. It does somewhat hit a
nerve for me too. Ever since I started digging deeper into the complexity of
computing I've felt a bit dumber every time I learned something new. It's just
staggering how complex those things are. It somehow makes me, my knowledge,
feel insignificant. I know my way around software design. I can definitely
write some good code. I know some of the theoretical aspects of computer
science. In theory, I should have a grasp of all this and I probably do.
Somehow though, I feel as if there was just so much more to know that
declaring myself as "good" at this feels wrong. I've come to terms, that the
Dunning-Kruger effect is a powerful force. The more I learn, the more I
realize how much there's left to learn.

------
auggierose
So the article says in Silicon Valley you can go far if you are male and
young. I am male, but not as young as 15 years ago. Guess I have to make it
outside of Silicon Valley ...

~~~
swombat
Don't worry, outside is a lot bigger. :-)

------
joshuacc
"Even better, if there was an oldtimer around when the world is telling you
you're a god and can do no wrong, to tell you that's bullshit, to kick you in
the butt, in a friendly way, tell you you're a mortal human being, and you
need to understand that life has its ups and downs"

I know that it's pretty fashionable to hate on religion, but this is something
that religious wisdom literature and religious communities are often very good
at providing.

------
marshray
Writing computer programs is hard. Doing it for long hours, day in day out, is
unnatural. Nevertheless, 'Software Engineer' is nearly always at near the top
of those "best" careers listings. I'm not saying it shouldn't be, but don't
expect non-programmer family and friends to understand.

It's important to recognize the signs of burnout and acknowledge it before you
get to the point where you never want to touch a computer again.

------
kunai
Hmm. Perhaps if we expected more, then geeks wouldn't post up broken links for
fear of under-delivering.

Just go to <http://scripting.com/> if you want to see the article.

------
ww520
Funny thing. These days when I made a mistake, I kicked myself on my
proverbial butt and said, "damn, that's stupid ROOKIE mistake. How could you
miss that?"

------
mjbellantoni
This link works for me: 2jg.r2.ly (this is DW's link shortener.)

------
dakimov
When I was a Junior Developer I though I was a genius and knew everything
about programming itself, I was not even interested in improving my coding
skills, because I thought they were perfect, now after 8+ years I view myself
as a rather ignorant guy who can barely create working programs.

------
nerdfiles
This is exactly what I'm talking about.

You're overriding my dyslexic fonts with your inappropriate inline style just
like how most developers (Facebook, Reddit, and a whole laundry list of
others) fail to observe relative font-sizes or the good-sense settings of the
browser[1] .

Now what am I supposed to do? I'm ALREADY using Stylish WITH "!important";
just imagine how systematic this problem is[2]. And yet the only response I
typically get whenever I bring up this issue is that some know-it-all thinks I
don't know how to customize my browser or whatever else. Or snide comments
that such-and-such dyslexic font is "shit" or "ugly." Then I lose all of my
street cred when I'm the one being mindful of accessibility (even if it is at
the cost of garden variety aesthetic choices in the world of Helvetinauts).

Please, red flag me for irrelevance; I've taken this kind of flack before[3].
But I am getting absolutely sick of this. Stop overriding good design choices
with bad ones.

_Why_ are you using inline styles? I'm going to keep shouting this until I get
acknowledgment: no more fontwalls[4]!

I was in reading mode, and your poor development practices just ruined that.
Now I need a bloody cigarette.

[1]: <http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/font-size>

[2]: [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/opinion/the-reality-of-
dys...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/opinion/the-reality-of-dyslexia-
millions-struggle.html?_r=0)

[3]:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/css/comments/15q12g/youre_about_to_s...](http://www.reddit.com/r/css/comments/15q12g/youre_about_to_start_a_bloody_war_the_open/)

[4]: <http://webjournal.nerdfiles.net/no-more-fontwalls/>

~~~
crazygringo
Wait, since when are inline styles a poor development practice? Obviously
they're a bad choice for large sites, but for a simple webpage (like a blog)
that never needs to be extended and doesn't have repeating elements with lots
of formatting, it seems to be a justifiable choice. For blog post _content_ ,
especially.

Is "!important" in your custom stylesheet not overriding it? It's supposed to,
what is the technical problem?

Also, what are fontwalls? You link to a paragraph with a typeface that is
exceedingly difficult to read (is that the point?), and then the rest appears
to be in hieroglyphics.

~~~
nerdfiles
???

1\. Code bloat: "font-family: Crimson Text; font-size: 20px; font-weight: 400;
line-height: 135%;" appears 9 times. For the same reason in the CSS world
we're trying to eliminate unnecessary and unwieldy div-itis and non-semantic
classes. It's about reducing footprint:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-BX4N8egEc>. If you cannot see the logical
next step that each of his Web pages may be doing the exact same thing, and
thus his entire site; and further he might be using a plugin or theme that
perpetuates this bad practice... if you cannot see that, then fair. But those
are the kinds of problems I reflect on in my studies.

2\. I'm not even sure what you're getting at with your second question. I
wouldn't be posting this if my "!important" worked. If anything, Stylish may
not benefit from the well-noted point that !important overrides inline styles.
If that's the case: fascinating new problem we've discovered here. I am
overriding paragraph elements with "!important"; that is the fact of the
situation. Is there a technical problem? Perhaps.

3\. Fontwalls are situations like this: a dyslexic reader is incapable of
reading the content in place because the typesetting makes it inaccessible.
So, like with your criticism of my typesetting on my Website: the OP has used
"a typeface that is exceedingly difficult to read."

~~~
crazygringo
OK, I'm not really sure you understand CSS and blogs. Blog posts tend to be
self-contained documents where the styles _have_ to be inline, because each
post might have completely different formatting, and is often generated by a
WYSIWYG tool. It's not a problem, it's just how blogs usually work.

And yeah, the !important should be working. I've never used Stylish, but
something's clearly broken -- in any case, your beef should be with Stylish or
your browser, not with the author/developer of the blog. If you stick to a
user stylesheet in your browser it should be guaranteed to work -- after all,
that's the whole point of them, so that people with visual disabilities can
override default styling.

So, I don't really get what the problem is. Inline styles are an integral part
of the web (and are particularly, and correctly, suited to blog posts), and
user stylesheets generally allow you to override them, so you can use dyslexic
fonts if you choose.

~~~
nerdfiles
_Oh man_. You could've at least checked the YouTube video before venturing
into accusations of incompetence. I mean, what the BALLS, dude? I'm supposed
to keep my cool in communities like this? What is this baseless and graceless
intellectual bravado? And I'm the bad guy because I use an intimate style and
diction... Eesh, what I've been responding to in this thread, with this
particular user, I think it is absolutely fair to say, has just been careless
hubris. After I respond with, roughly: mitigating "div-itis and non-semantic
classes" he rails me with "I don't think you know what X and Y are". He might
as well have added "bro." Again,
[BALLS](<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7C8GWIV4jzA>).

You haven't even tested it, nor do you even really know what Stylish is, it
seems, and you're arguing with conviction.

 _What am I doing here_?

~~~
gfodor
Good question.

