The Nerd Handbook(randsinrepose.com) |
The Nerd Handbook(randsinrepose.com) |
I don't know the writer's background, so I can't figure out if this is a "non-technie looking in" or "techie explaining to the world" post. Neither is an excuse to assume that the hypothetical nerd has control issues, a cave, or an obsession with gathering knowledge.
I dearly hope no one attempts to interact with me based on this.
He explicitly uses the first person to make clear he is a nerd multiple times.
The interesting thing is that my wife has touches of nerdiness, and this article pins most of them. None of them are as clearly defined or extreme, but each is recognisable.
And this article has helped her understand a few things she formerly hadn't articulated.
For us - spot on. Thank you.
Should be good for my marriage - I think.
This article is a step towards understanding not just by people of nerds, but by nerds of themselves. I was 17 when someone recognised these aspects f the nerd in me, and made me see them myself. Net result was that I made it a project to make myself socially capable.
In the main I succeeded, although there are still occasions when I slip and fall, but it was recognising and accepting the truth that made it possible to change.
The article is right as it stands, as indeed you actually acknowledge when you say "Nerds have to realize ... they are performing a trade-off."
Of course, this is for the nerds who tend to over-analyze social situations for fear of screwing them up; there are also the kind who just have no idea what is considered "normal" behavior in the first place, so they don't have enough information to even choose to obey or disobey social mores. In the latter case, I'd advise "critical people-watching" to figure that kind of thing out; your nerd will then likely transition to the over-analyzing type once they have this large, novel corpus to pattern-recognize over.
In the days of my youth, nerds often were trapped in a high-school society that had no need for them at all, other than as targets. Many nerds only recognize the grown-up version of society as a continuation of this. To many, it's all just a system of oppression. The "cave" that they construct around them at work is just a refuge in the storm.
Note the highly escapist nature of many nerd pastimes. For many, programming is itself of of these.
I think the nurturing of a nerd to sociability has to do with power relationships. I think the problem is releasing a nerd from his enclosed "cave" into a larger world of social interaction, without unleashing his/her potential for tyranny. It's like contacting a race of fierce equestrienne nomads.
Do: Open trade relations. Mutual exchange & benefit! Gradually.
Don't: Open a breach in the wall and have the barbarian hordes pour through. (The charge can happen in both directions!)
His site's glossary is worth a skim: http://www.randsinrepose.com/glossary_alpha.html
Collaboration: A word used to convince you to work with people you'd rather avoid.
Office: The square box where you live. Some models come with windows.
Bingo. I work at a command line all day, and even use the "Terminal" GMail theme with plain-text formatting. I'm glad someone else recognizes that monospaced fonts are a hallmark of nerds.
Now that it’s established, of course, we’re all pretty much locked in. Most of the text on my screen right now is monospaced. I mean, good luck writing code in a proportional font: pretty much every language and text editor assumes you can align with spaces, tiny punctuation looks huge, etc.
But saying that monospace is inherently nerdy is like saying that, say, slashes are inherently path separators.
Monospace isn't entirely an accident.
iTerm and TextMate can't handle variable-width fonts, which makes me sad. At least I get my pointy serifs with CentSchBook Mono, though.
I work at a command-line all day but the 'Terminal' GMail theme makes my eyes bleed. :(
Often so-called "nerds" are just smart people working on projects which are too advanced or too abstract for most people to grok. And no, it's not always about computers either. You can find the same intellectual focus amongst many people - architects, surgeons, lawyers, artists, and so on.
The "nerd cave" takes many forms, but for those of us who know many nerds it is instantly recognisable. Yes, there are non-computer nerds, but they have equivalent forms. Yes, I know a surgeon and several artists who don't (significantly) use computers, and some of them exhibit most of the characteristics described. The description is close enough that already I've been thanked by a husband who now better understands his artist-nerd wife.
Perhaps you are unable to match the description given against a superficially different instance, or perhaps you really just don't know any nerds, but I believe you are mistaken.
If you believe the article to be silly, then perhaps you should just be relieved that you aren't a nerd.
This is really just semantics. Your definition of "nerd" apparently includes a dorkiness clause and a set of very specific idiosyncrasies. For me, a nerd is just someone who's extremely competent (or trying hard to become extremely competent) at some brainy craft.
The guys with the long line of abandoned projects behind them aren't true nerds, they're just dilettantes. Like raccoons, compelled to collect shiny things, but never doing anything useful with them.
I also watch one TV show at a time (OK maybe two, so I can avoid commercials), read one book at a time, and don't switch conversational topics in mid-sentence. Can non-ADD nerds like me get any props on the Internet, or are we hopelessly outnumbered?
Not exactly the same as me (same as RiderOfGiraffes' comment), but I think it helped her understand a lot of my day to day nerdiness.
Recommended if you're in a live-in relationship with someone not quite as nerdy as you. :).
My only fear is my fiancee discovering that 'cool' does actually mean I wasn't listening.
While it may talk about a few points in a joke-like manner, it is still a pretty realistic article.
Just try to :,$s/your nerd/kid with autism/g and :,$s/project/game/g
There must have been a quality bump somewhere around a year ago.
I could complain the same way about practically anything. Cement. Unix. C. The genitive absolute. But granted that great things are made out of hacks, some hacks are uglier than others, and monospace is pretty darn ugly.
C is an overgrown assembly language, and Unix doesn't have enough kitchen sinkery going on to make all of the tiny programs that do one thing well even marginally useful.
Perhaps it doesn't match your meaning, but it doesn't mean either of us is right. Or wrong. The article is describing a stereotype, giving it a label, and it happens to match very closely with people I know. And me.
Call it what you will. Perhaps "Geek" more closely fits with your model:
Instinctively, I would say yes.
The essence is being competent. All those other things are just side effects. Very common side effects, which is why they became part of the stereotype, but still optional.
In fact, I know Don Knuth peripherally, and I don't think he is a nerd.
<shrug>
The baggage you have for the word "nerd" is different from mine. The article is definitely describing mine. In essence you said it earlier: your semantics don't match mine. They obviously don't match the author's either. Or my wife's. Or my colleagues'.