geek culture is an oxymoron
Jan. 22nd, 2002 12:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
substituteI was thinking tonight about Larry Wall's famous quote in which he says that the great virtues of a programmer are laziness, impatience and hubris. He's probably right: Larry is a smart guy.
Those three things are a big loser in just about every other area of life, however, from cooking to sex to financial planning or even just showering. And most geeks seem to carry their technical values over into every part of life with a determined consistency, as if all of our experiences and challenges were just special cases of software engineering.
This is disastrous. It's a kind of Slashdot mentality in which Geek Culture becomes an end to itself and a source for wisdom in all areas of life. I think we'd be better off if in most situations we asked "How could I do this in a non-geeky way?"
Those three things are a big loser in just about every other area of life, however, from cooking to sex to financial planning or even just showering. And most geeks seem to carry their technical values over into every part of life with a determined consistency, as if all of our experiences and challenges were just special cases of software engineering.
This is disastrous. It's a kind of Slashdot mentality in which Geek Culture becomes an end to itself and a source for wisdom in all areas of life. I think we'd be better off if in most situations we asked "How could I do this in a non-geeky way?"
