Nerd culture idolizes the hyper focused and dedicated social maladept. That predates the common recognition of autism as a spectrum, but it fit into the stereotype.
That hero worship tells people that they're better programmers if they reject everything else. Not only is it not true, it's counterproductive.
Autism may be overrepresented among computer people but it's still rare. What's more common, I think, is neurotypical people trying to act autistic and failing.
Autistics do indeed need a different approach to a lot of things, but what most nerds need is to think of themselves as people who are fortunate to have a skill set that is well compensated even without being the 100x programmer who sleeps under his desk and eats only Soylent. That gives us the freedom to be interested in life outside of computers and jobs.
That's not easy when you have to see outside a culture that emulates a few highly successful individuals. Or worse, emulate the myth of their public persona without actually knowing their real lives.
The trick, I would say, is to stop telling each other that we're so different from other people, and that this is necessary to be good at our jobs.
If autism is a spectrum, I would say that at least 80% of the programmers I've come in contact with are noticeably further along it than average. Over 60% would be described as awkward.
This is in Scandinavia where people generally just work in a field they enjoy, nobody works in IT for the money, so it is probably different in a place like India or even the US.
I think you missed this excellent article that was posted to HN a few days ago. You are describing a gradient, not a spectrum. Autism spectrum means something different.
Thanks for the links, yes I did think that "spectrum" referred to a scale.
And I don't know much about autism in general, but it should be pretty uncontroversial to say that programmers and computer nerds are much more socially awkward than average.
Your comment seems to imply that non-asd folks entering tech are just in it for the money. Between the general popularity with Video Games, the changing Hollywood image of hackers (Neo, FSociety, Pied Pipper), the hero worship of Steve Jobs/Elon Musk, and the general societal acceptance of all things STEM we have a lot of people, especially young men, entering computer programming out of genuine interest.
Determining private medical data or motivations for a population is hard to do in any ethical empirical way.
I don't know what Neo or FSociety are, but almost all the programmer protagonists of Silicon Valley were more or less awkward. Young Steve Jobs was pretty awkward too, and Elon Musk is positively painful to watch. So I'm not sure these shows and people attract the average person.
I do think most people enter programming because of a genuine interest, hence the abundance of awkward introverts in the business. My point was just that in places like the US were there is such a strong focus on making money, there are probably more people getting in to IT for money, and hence more non-awkward people.
I do not feel convinced that there is a strong relationship between people’s interests and their level of social awkwardness or their position on the ASD. I understand that your attitude is that people interested in computers are more likely to be socially awkward. I wanted to challenge that position, and bring my own antidotal point of view into the discussion.
The protagonists of Silicon Valley were displayed in incredibly high positive light. They received fame, fortune, drugs and sex. They were portrayed as a modern personification of American Independence, living life on their own terms and bashing heads against authority. They showed very strong social connections. Even scenes where Richard experiences social anxiety are shown in a highly relatable way.
I don’t really understand what your point is. In some sense I guess they are portrayed positively, but they are still incredibly awkward. Richard can’t talk normally, Gilfoyle is incredibly weird, Dinesh is more normal but still needy and friendless, Jared is gloriously awkward and beta, Gavin is a sociopath, Peter and Laurie are cartoonishly autistic.
I don’t think any normal, social person watches Silicon Valley and walks away wanting to be like these.
The only normal people in the show are Dinesh’ cousin and Monica.
Ah, well i enjoyed Matrix back in the day but there’s little connection with programming isn’t there?
Mr Robot was fun too until it became too much of a Fight Club rip off, but I remember the protagonist as extremely awkward and weird, not someone that a mainstream person would aspire to be like.
That's the set of programmers you know personally - this sample is biased towards more socially-engaged programmers (the more social contacts they have, the more likely you are to know them).
I think there was probably a much greater correlation between computer science and nerdy people thirty years or so ago, which was progressively diluted by the steeply rising popularity of the field pulling in more and more less-nerdy people.
I am asking myself sometimes to what extend CS-based work increases autism-typical behaviour, simply by enforcing similar thinking patterns (maybe). I kind of get into a "tunnel" when having a well focused day of code and feel like Im on the spectrum afterwards. Maybe this enforces this stereotype even if there is no correlation..?
It's called "flow". Most people do it. It's how artists work and rock climbers climb and everyone else who gets focused on a moderately complex task. Programming is a great form of art, one that is more lucrative than other art forms, but it's not different from other human experience.
I have a similar observation. My motivation to start programming as a kid was to build cool stuff but it turned out that just learning to code was so crazy difficult and such a big effort. Eventually I became good at it but I feel like it took a toll from my creativity. Similar with studying, I studied Physics. This was a pragmatic choice since I was naturally good at math, curious about philosophical consequences and job perspectives were supposed to be solid. But the studies were really hard and eventually I started to not care about any philosophical aspect, just accepting everything is state of the (pragmatic) art. Not to mention how often I had to tell people I have to leave early because of studies. Also later on especially in some startups pressure can be insane, one boss once suggested I could work in nowhere land for some months to focus better. (Luckily I didn't do that) But yeah, this certainly does something to you I think. Good to not forget there's also this other life. (I think that's also the point in the pg article) Also I must say social life really became much more difficult over time. When I was younger not meeting anyone in a week felt strange, now I'm happy when I can socialize once a month.
I think it's 90% the other way around. Clearly people that are slightly (or very) autistic will gravitate towards computer work, since computers are like a wet dream for autistics.
I confirm (for my own case) this phenomenon - the circularity of the behavior. The more I think in a structured way at work, the more I do it outside, the more I do it at work, and so on. I'd say that there is simply a tendency to do that, that gets reinforced by the (work) conditions.
In my opinion, it's crucial, in these conditions, to be self-aware and get a certain degree of control, as one can easily slide into, let's say, some negative patterns of the behavior in the spectrum.
