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My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

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Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#161

Post by Splatchar »

edw519 wrote: post #36

Condescending feedback says more about the speaker than the listener. It is almost invariably about their own insecurity. This is true is almost all fields of endeavor, not just programming. Just a few examples of my own: Insecure bridge player: The queen of spades was a stupid play. What's wrong with you? Excellent bridge player: The queen of spades would have been a great play against a 4/2 split. But since you had…

So true. And to develop the argument further, why are so many geeks insecure and nervous, as they then must be, assuming the OP is correct?

I think it's because they are smart. Smart minds make a lot of internal noise, commenting loudly on every experience, making it harder for geeks to 'hear' their own finer feelings, including conscience. This makes them nervous, insecure and guilty. The guilt is unbearable, and they unconsciously attempt to project it onto other geeks with things like condescending feedback.

However, the good news is that there is a minority of geeks who have broken through this barrier, e.g. by meditation. They are a formidable sect, possessing both Bene Gesserit and Mentat powers.

Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#162

Post by dkarl »

ahoyhere wrote: post #92
dkarl wrote: post #44

What would we think of an American who walked into an Egyptian coffeehouse or a Japanese board room and interpreted all the behavior he saw there as if he were seeing it in a church in Iowa? It's fine to demand that geeks develop some social sophistication, but it's also fine to expect that non-geeks will have enough social sophistication not to rush to judgment about behavior in an unfamiliar cultural context. Cultu…

This sounds like a good argument until you realize that the people the geeks most love are all level-headed and good-natured, people who promote the good of all. Often these are men/women who inspired the geeks to be geeks to start with. Example: Carl Sagan. So for all the geeks who were inspired to become geeks by Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Spock, etc., to fall so short of their ideal... clearly there is insecurit…

Feynman is an example of a guy who would be ruthless in a technical discussion but charming in a personal context. (Well, charming towards your wife, anyway.) Context is everything.

Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#163

Post by bgurupra »

DanI-S wrote: post #67
MrJagil wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone please explain the logic behind "condescending feedback = insecurity"? And I mean that sincerely. I have been thinking about this for a long time now, and I just cannot come up with any supporting evidence to explain the corelation. It might sound like a stupid request, but I think it is a hard argument to make totally water proof.

I see it this way: The only reason to give condescending feedback is to demonstrate your superiority over the person you're criticizing. If you truly wanted to be helpful, you'd be giving helpful feedback. If you were truly confident in your own abilities, you wouldn't feel the need to demonstrate your superiority.

I think condescending feedback = insecurity is a bit of a generalization.Maybe sometimes it is true but not all the time - for example Linus' "feedback" on CVS was pretty condescending but I doubt that was because he was insecure

Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#164

Post by grishick »

Partially responsible for the situation is the fact that many (if not most) of us (nerdy geeks) are to some extend autistic, or rather "aspergerish". Go read about Asperger Syndrome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome) and tell me that you don't recognize your own traits. Not only we enjoy being abrupt and critical, but we are also better fit for being around people who are like us and so we don't mind it as much as other people do. That said, it wouldn't hurt to learn some human interaction skills.

Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#165

Post by jarin »

timknauf wrote: post #146
HSO wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

judging from media reports/biographies, a lot of our "tech heroes" would then have counted as "insecure"?! don't know about that. i've gotten to know some people who i consider brilliant or at least very, very good at what they do and, judging from my own small sample, they've been all over the place in terms of manners/considerateness. i don't think this is a valid classification scheme...

You can be very, very good at what you do and still be insecure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome

Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#166

Post by nmaio »

khafra wrote: post #153
nmaio wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm probably in the minority with this, but... If someone's ignorance cannot be altered or at least reasonably discussed, I think that's perfectly okay. That just means it's time for me to move on. I don't see how attacking or embarrassing someone would make you feel better about your side of things. I'd much rather let that person enjoy their own ignorance. Note: I tend to lack/block out very strong emotions

Non-infectious ignorance can be left alone. A state senator with a PR platform, using it to spread ignorance of a sort that ruins millions of lives, cannot be left alone in good conscience. You have a moral obligation to be less wrong: http://www.wrongbot.com/2011/02/27/stop-being-wrong-a-moral-...

Regardless of reach, I still don't believe attacking or embarrassing someone is the answer.

My conscience is better off letting someone have a right to their own opinion (albeit a poor one), rather than attacking them for it.

In other words, I'd rather choose to understand where their point of view is coming from and accept it, than to try and change it.

Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#167

Post by tybris »

edw519 wrote: post #36

Condescending feedback says more about the speaker than the listener. It is almost invariably about their own insecurity. This is true is almost all fields of endeavor, not just programming. Just a few examples of my own: Insecure bridge player: The queen of spades was a stupid play. What's wrong with you? Excellent bridge player: The queen of spades would have been a great play against a 4/2 split. But since you had…

You could probably make your excellent personas a little less cynical. In cases where you want to point out a flaw it's best to not act as if you think you know everything. Start your sentences with "you could probably".

Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#168

Post by shaggyfrog »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #48
knowtheory wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vociferous opposition is not the same as condescension, though. There are some people who care deeply about a subject and just lack social tact. They'll jump on you for a variety of subjects, but they don't have ill intent. Then there are the people who are dicks and want to crush people who they disagree with. It's the point at which one starts displaying schadenfreude and denigrating others that the line has been c…

People who lack social tact need to be taught it. They aren't stupid, generally, they can be taught, if it's made clear that they must. Treating people badly is a great way to drive out those who don't have the ability to deal with flamewars and shoutiness. And many of those people have a lot to contribute.

Have you ever heard the song Your Friend Wil by MC Frontalot, nerd rapper extraordinaire? Your post is basically a perfect two-line summary of the lyrics!

http://frontalot.com/index.php/?page=lyrics&lyricid=68

Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#169

Post by Locke1689 »

ahoyhere wrote: post #92
dkarl wrote: post #44

What would we think of an American who walked into an Egyptian coffeehouse or a Japanese board room and interpreted all the behavior he saw there as if he were seeing it in a church in Iowa? It's fine to demand that geeks develop some social sophistication, but it's also fine to expect that non-geeks will have enough social sophistication not to rush to judgment about behavior in an unfamiliar cultural context. Cultu…

This sounds like a good argument until you realize that the people the geeks most love are all level-headed and good-natured, people who promote the good of all. Often these are men/women who inspired the geeks to be geeks to start with. Example: Carl Sagan. So for all the geeks who were inspired to become geeks by Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Spock, etc., to fall so short of their ideal... clearly there is insecurit…

I'm not sure you're actually being honest in your examples. Carl Sagan, sure, but Feynman was rumored to be extremely arrogant in his technical discussions. Linus is known for his giant flames on the mailing list. Dijkstra was impolite at best.

Maybe we just think our idols were always nice and helpful because we want them to be?

Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#170

Post by agentultra »

ZeroMinx wrote: post #27
agentultra wrote: post #11

It's true. I don't know how many times I've watched eager hackers get lambasted for "reinventing the wheel," or "don't bother doing it yourself, you'll just screw it up -- someone has probably done it already and did it better than you could." This happens most often at the intersection of technology and entrepreneurship. The business advice is that it's cheaper to buy it than build it. The engineer's perspective is…

> I don't know how many times I've watched eager hackers get lambasted for "reinventing the wheel," Depends on context.. If it's someone learning, or hacking on some personal project, go ahead! It's a great way to learn. However, if we're talking about a programmer in a commercial company, it's a different story. Your purpose is not to produce the most amount of your own code, your task is to produce a service of som…

I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to expect someone to use an available library for parsing dates.

It's not a terribly good example.

There are cases where "reinventing the wheel," is simply an ignorant statement. Perhaps the system in question has developed semantics for working with date-based data that the grammar of the existing date-parsing library's API doesn't match well with. This extremely contrived example may force the developers to write a lot of code for working around those inconsistencies which themselves can lead to bugs and maintenence headaches in the future.

What if your lack-wit developer who wrote his own date-parsing library saw these problems and wrote a library whose API resolved them? Or perhaps in another scenario the existing libraries are simply inefficient for some metric of acceptable performance in your system. Maybe this ignorant developer simply writes a better library that allows you to do more.

Either way, there is reason to believe that either scenario is valid. It is likely that writing a date parsing library is not going to be terribly useful. That doesn't mean it's impossible and so one must be willing to evaluate evidence and draw conclusions rather than hide behind blanket statements.

What I'm really talking about is the attitude people have when they think someone is "reinventing the wheel." While some people are helpful and will politely point out that there are existing date-parsing libraries, there are a great many more it seems who will assume that the person who is "reinventing the wheel" is a clueless loser who wouldn't make such a "stupid mistake" if they were worth their salt. That kind of reaction isn't helpful at all.

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