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Comment by bradleyjg | Hacker News Reader

I don't care if it is supposed to have been reclaimed. To me 'nerd' is a nasty, derogatory word that I don't use myself and I take offense when other people use.

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Very interesting to hear that. The opposite is true for me and I never would have thought people are still offended by that word. Very good to know that a word that's fun and light hearted to me might still offend others.

It's very common for a word to be OK for in-groups to use and not OK for out-groups to use. When someone in the in-group uses it, it's acceptable because they identify with it and it's a term of endearment. When the out-group uses it it's a label and a slur.

I'm not going to list any of these because I'm not in most of the in-groups (other than nerd) but if you think about it I'm sure you'll be able to come up with some examples.

Nerfherder

Agreed, labels suck, though I have been called a bro-grammer and for some reason it doesn't bother me. Maybe because its the antithesis of nerd.

I'm am perfectly happy to be called nerd/geek but call me a bro-grammer and you will definitely piss me off. (and I'll hate myself a little for inspiring someone to call me a bro-grammer)

That's interesting. I feel like brogrammer would bug me a lot more than nerd. It could just be preferences though.

Well, back in the day, "nerd" meant "social misfit". Which a lot of us were (me included), because we were too busy trying to be smart to be worried about learning how to play the social game. (Paul Graham wrote an essay about this, "Why Nerds are Unpopular".) But in the real world, it turns out that social skills also matter, and I should have realized it earlier.

But these days, "nerd" means more "socially awkward but really smart", which is neutral to positive from our perspective.

"Brogrammer", on the other hand, to me at least means "male who thinks he's really smart (even if he isn't) and therefore that he can be an offensive jerk to others, especially females". It would bug me a lot if someone thought that was true of me.

Its unfortunately that is your interpretation of the word because your definition is inflammatory

By "word", I presume you mean "brogrammer".

Do you have a less inflammatory definition? (I would claim that my definition is true to the current connotation of the word, even if not the current denotation.)

I've never seen/heard a non-derogatory use of "brogrammer" -- maybe gkilmain will enlighten us with some use I'm not aware of (has it already been reclaimed by brogrammers making in-group use of the term?), but the connotations are overwhelmingly negative: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=brogrammer

I would define brogrammer as a programmer who acts like a (stereotypical) frat-boy.

You know, living to party, acting up in boorish ways.

Yes. Remove everything after the word smart and add "(like most people in the programming profession)"

That doesn't capture what I think of when someone says "brogrammer". At the very least, I think it also denotes a strong sense of machismo, with a connotation of disrespect for others and boorishness. It's not a positive term, generally speaking.

I would hate being called a bro-grammer, because for me it implies that other geeks aren't taking you seriously.

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