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Comment by edw519 | Hacker News Reader

  1960's: Eddie's so gifted! Send him to a special school.
  1970's: What a nerd! How will he ever meet a girl?
  1980's: What? You want to go out with me? What a nerd!
  1990's: Look at that's nerd's car. His father must have bought it.
  2000's: With all this computer stuff, good thing he was always a nerd.
  2010's: No longer a nerd. Just an "outlier".

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Also, now people want to be somewhat disguised as nerds, using geeky gadgets and pretending to like computers (just because they like Facebook and MSN).

That's an unfortunate trend.

But maybe there is a positive side to it. Maybe it's the beginning of a process that could end up making computer-related activities more mainstream. More accepted. More respected.

In the past if you said to a random person, "I'm a computer programmer" it didn't really emotionally connect with anything in their world. Now you can say "I make iPhone apps", or "I make Facebook games", or again "I make web applications" and people will have a vague idea of what you do and why it's cool.

But not all programmers make iPhone apps, Facebook games or web applications.

Sure, but it's still progress towards making our profession a bit more respected and glamorous.

I don't really want it to be glamourous. Keep it unglamourous, supply low, and demand high. It's good for prices.

Once it becomes glamourous we'll have no end of professional certifications, professional organizations, etc.

There will be no end to the red tape and little increase in price and yet more people attracted to it because of fame / money rather than enjoying the practice of the craft.

And, just like during the bubbles, those who just get good work done will need none of them.

I'm one of those who don't. This is the way I explain it:

Well, I don't do any of those things but what I often do is provide tools to people in highly technical industries.

Oh. <Change the subject not fully trusting that there is anything beyond iPhone, facebook or web apps>

Argh.

I think nerds are going to become respected like linux.

A lot of people are buying Macbook Pro's these days, and all I see them ever do is use them to read Facebook.

A lot of people buy SUVs these days and all I see them do is drive to Walmart.

By themselves.

s/Macbook Pro/good computer

and your point is?

Simply the irony of people using geek-worthy computers for socializing.

Why is that ironic? You're getting downvoted for being elitist, which is the mentality that makes so many kids feel like outsiders in high school.

You sound as if you 're one of them.

From a technical point of view, what are some critical tasks can you do on a mac that you couldn't do on a windows or linux machine?

a mac is sort of both, a good unix w/ a good UI on top, and good integration

Program IOS apps.

why would anyone want to do that?

From a legal perspective -- it's the only way to run OSX. And it will run Linux/Windows)

Most intensive development is a bother in Windows. When I started learning ruby on rails I had to go through cygwin(a command line simulation program) to be able to follow along with the tutorials. There are lots of bugs, and since Macs are based on BSD, same as Linux, it is supposed to be easier to develop on them.

How do you know they're pretending? Why can they not "like computers" in a different way than you do?

No nerd would wear lens-less glasses when they have 20-20 vision.

They are called hipsters not nerds :)

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