31–40 of 148 posts
There's something ironic about a post on nerds being deliberately exclusionary which redirects IE browsers to a Safari download link.
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.
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,…
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.
There's something ironic about a post on nerds being deliberately exclusionary which redirects IE browsers to a Safari download link.
I wrote out a thoughtful little thing explaining why it was currently redirecting, then got a complaint from an IE6 tester that that page wasn't displaying, and decided "Fuck it, I'll wait until later to make my blog respectable." I'm in the middle of a big redesign/name change/shebang, and since this isn't the blog that'll be the center of that redesign, I'm not focusing very much on it until the other pieces are more ready.
"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 Zuckerbe…
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,…
As was said by another commenter, perhaps it's different everywhere you go. I was in a place where I realized later on in high school that all of the torment and suffering towards nerds had some sort of a logical pull. And my school wasn't some sort of utopia: one dweeby kid in marching band had a bag of shaving cream smashed against his face during lunch as part of a hazing routine. What I noticed from that incident was this: while perhaps that one thing was inevitable, a lot of the sympathy I had towards that poor bullied kid dissolved away when he turned that one single incident into a sort of theater for discussing how unloved he was - particularly since that was the sort of thing I did when I was younger, too.
I wish I'd focused more on the programming aspect of this thing, though, because to be honest high school isn't worth talking about in my mind, not in this context. This was a response to an article titled "Rails is (still) a ghetto", where the author took a similarly hyperobnoxious approach to looking at a problem that didn't require anything obnoxious, and the larger problem is that the world of programming is highly inaccessible to non-programmers.
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.
> 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 imp…
I was going to elaborate upon that but decided against it. Yes: nerds don't do things to be exclusive. They're not particularly snobby people. Their reactions tend to stem from alienation and paranoia: they act like that because they either don't think that other people like them at all, or because they want to maintain an image of some exclusivity on their own part.
The problem with that attitude is that it encourages people to be nasty back and to avoid your social group. And the people in a group of nerds that do notice that tend to start getting negative attitude from the rest of the group. I wasn't alone in this. One of my friends was part of the bookworm group of pretty people who studied too much, and I thought he was a twofaced backstabbing liar. That was eighth grade, and I'd like to think I've matured since then, but I certainly understand where you're coming from.
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 programmer…
The difference between a jock and a band geek is that the jock will resort to violence to defend himself. I've pranked jocks before with groups of band geeks. It often leads to a scuffle. When band geeks are strong enough to fight back, they don't get bullied either.
You don't torment people because of your own psychological past. Usually it's done out of irritation. The meek, quiet type usually gets ignored in favor of the one who talks too much in class, not because people hate smart people, but because there are certain sorts who are really jerks about it and that irritates people. That's also why bullies tend to be on the smarter side of the spectrum. I knew kids in the studies (low-level) courses and kids in the advanced courses, and the ones who were more likely to mock a kid was all in the advanced courses. I've been in the mocking situation before, so it all works.
> 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 imp…