> or vice-versa

I have quite bad myopia (-4.5). My parents didn't notice this until I was in fourth grade (~9 years old.) I have a feeling that this contributed to my early enjoyment of indoor, "up-close" activities (reading, video games) in preference to "outdoor activities" where I would have relatively little clue what was going on at the other side of the soccer field/baseball diamond/etc. So, in a way, my bad eyesight could have pushed me toward computers.

Computer engineers have a tendency to read while not using adequate lightning, and to stare at screens for quite too much. That being said, it's not so much a matter of computer engineers using glasses because they are geeks, it's more because a "Computer Worker" can easily get headaches or fuck up his vision even more because he's staring at a computer for 10+ hours with less than perfect vision. A chef, psychiatrist, teller, or security guard won't need the glasses as much as we do.

So yeah computer engineer are more prone to wearing glasses than the general population. That doesn't mean that more hackers need glasses than regular people, but it could easily mean that hackers feel the effects of imperfect vision more than regular people, and because of it, are more prone to use glasses to correct said vision impairments.

For the same reason some dictators execute people with glasses--they're only truly needed for reading, for many with those conditions.

You'd be surprised how many people walk around with terrible vision, without knowing it. My guess is that computer-related jobs require good vision, so people in these jobs are more likely to discover and treat their vision problems.

Wikipedia has something to say about this:

> Daylight may prevent myopia. Australian researchers had concluded that exposure to daylight appeared to play a critical role in restricting the growth of the eyeball, which is responsible for myopia or short-sightedness.[37] They compared children from other developed countries such as Singapore and Australian children spent about 2–3 hours a day outdoors which could increased dopamine in the eyes that restrict distorted shaping of the eyes.[38][39][40]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myopia

doesn't say anything about eye strain

I only need glasses to program. I started getting pretty bad headaches every time I would sit down to program, got my eyes checked and some glassed fixed the problem.

Programmer -> nerd -> lots of reading -> myopia.

They must be those fancy glare reducing ones I've seen people use even with plain lenses ;-)

But good catch on the "glasses as geek(ette)" stereotype!

She has a 3D laptop