No Longer A Geek
I’ve been coding since I was a kid and I’ve always loved computers, and I still love programming. I use to get all excited about new software and gadgets. Attending conferences and other geek gatherings used to fill me with excitement.
These days most of my inspiration to continue programming comes from elsewhere. It comes from listening to amazing people like desinger/artist James Victore. Having lunch with people like my friend Trond. Watching normal people go to work. Reading the early books on coding as art by John Maeda. Watching Discovery Channel where they visit the factories of Lamborghini and Ferrari. Learning how some weird guy in Denmark spend all his time recreating old wooden sailboats.
I have always said I’m a geek, but I don’t anymore. Geek culture is just not something I feel is a positive thing. Too much energy goes into pointless “cock waving”. We’re also experts at being know it alls. Just look at the classic “architect vs programmer ” bullshit discussions going on. “If we were just left alone everything would be awesome”. That’s usually a phrase uttered by those who are too scared to step up to responsibility and prefer the safety of bitching and complaining. These are the ones who always has an excuse for not being in a position of actually having an impact or saying in things. “I just wanna code” or similar statements would be the excuse. Naturally it is easier to be one in the crowd of developers and bitch about how things ought to be, than to step up and be in that same position. Hiding away in a corner of the source code repository carefully crafting your precious thing that nobody will ever see or use. These discussions and constant rivalry is not productive and it is not helping the industry get anywhere. I am not saying discussions are bad. The fact that Ivory Tower architects are less common is a good thing. However the behavior of talking down everyone who puts their ass on the line is cowardly and classic geek defensiveness.
Douglas Crockford puts this into context in his upcoming talk about “how to manage progranmers” (which he did a preview of at Framsia Meetup in Oslo) which is a talk supposedly a guide for those managing programmers. However it acts just as much as a mirror on how we are precieved. He says something like: whenever someone means something passionately related to programming that something is right or wrong it is usually just bullshit. It is subjective opinions from one individual portrayed as an absolute truth.
Too much time is used complaining about companies, frameworks or languages. Energy is spent talking down those who try to so something, while comfortably hiding away behind some social media handle doing nothing. Longing for some unimportant detail to rant about or to tweet about how much Thing X sucks (all the while totally disregarding the fact that Thing X is a big success which far exceeds anything you’ve ever been close to imagine) and that everyone involved in it are retarded. This is the traditional geek behavior at it’s worst.
This could of course be me being old and disenchanted by having worked in the industry for a while. Perhaps this is what those who’d been doing punch cards felt like when the world changes around them?
I think that geek culture in general suck, but what I love is the culture having grown out of the JSConf family of conferences. The positive energy and total disregard for all the bullshit I have mentioned above fills me with joy. People like Chris Williams who try really hard to make a difference all using positive energy is a true inspiration. I hope the old geek culture of flaming, trolling, bullying and hiding is dying and that the new generation is better than us. I have hope for the new generation, but then again I kind of have to.
But, I’m no longer a geek. Just a guy making a living by helping build stuff using web technology.