I don't wear unisex t-shirts. They tend to "gap" and just hang all wrong on me. Makeup? Eh. It depends. More interested in coding than parties? Nope. I'd much rather be at a party, assuming party means "a group of friends having food and drinks, talking and laughing late into the night". People are far more interesting than these computers.
I don't like "because it's there" as a reason to do something. You expressed it as "it is hard and considered hard", but I think it's the same basic idea. I build things because I need the result to solve a problem of mine, or a problem for someone I care about.
Where does that leave me? I don't know. I hope these things wouldn't exclude me from a conversation you were having at a conference.
I'm kind of confused by your last sentence about being excluded from a conversation.
My points of similarity were about wanting to find someone with this arbitrary, absurd set of surface-level similarities because it would make me feel less different/unique. You don't fit them, which is totally cool, and really doesn't mean anything. Your post sounded a little bit defensive (as I read it), and I'm sorry if I made you feel excluded or anything by listing properties that we happen to differ on.
I guess we just disagree on reasons to do things. The process of solving problems tends to be what interests me, more than the final product. Needing the solution is a good way to make sure a project actually gets finished, but its the process of solving/building that is more interesting to me. If a tool/language/etc is considered hard, then I want to use it because that might mean it's more powerful or it's mind-expanding in some way (for the right kind of hard). I wouldn't phrase it as "because it's there", but I guess that's also reasonable.
> but its the process of solving/building that is more interesting to me.
I'm with you on that one. I got into programming because I saw it as solving problems distilled down to its purest form. Whether the result of what I'm working on is interesting or useful in its own right was a distant concern. Its the process of exercising your creative capacity and coming up with fresh insights that motivates me (coming up with a novel elegant solution is better than any drug).
I often feel out of place on HN because of the huge focus on thing that's being built, rather than the process itself. It's completely foreign to me to think of the programming aspect as a means to an end. But I see that sentiment around here all the time. Just goes to show that there are many reasons to get into CS. Unfortunately those that do it for the sheer enjoyment of solving problems (whether useful or the project euler variety) seem to be a dying breed.
I don't like "because it's there" as a reason to do something. You expressed it as "it is hard and considered hard", but I think it's the same basic idea. I build things because I need the result to solve a problem of mine, or a problem for someone I care about.
Where does that leave me? I don't know. I hope these things wouldn't exclude me from a conversation you were having at a conference.