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I’m often disappointed by how disrespectful people can be in programming discussions. It’s one thing to discuss tradeoffs but ridiculing peoples’ choices or speaking in absolutes is not helpful. There’s no One True Way to program.

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I always wondered whether it's programming in particular that attracts a lot of people that think in only black and white, or whether it's the same in other industries as well.

I know this kind of turns things up to 11, but about 5 years ago there was a book published called, "Engineers of Jihad." A bunch of news articles were written when it was published. I have zero idea how reputable it is, or if its been later debunked (I never read the book itself or heard any followup). My recollection is that one assertion offered was that many engineers are predisposed because engineering has logical, straightforward order and hierarchy while most of life is a lot more messy.

Separately, I think programming itself is solitary and predisposed to people who don't focus on building social skills (myself included). I think online (pseudonymous) communication can introduce all sorts of problems.

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