Comment by gnat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gnat | Hacker News Reader

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Things were different. I had a similar experience with Michael Hart from Project Gutenberg. I stayed in his house! He was ridiculously warm and welcoming.

You can't imagine what scarcity of nerds there was back then. These days, every city has hundreds or thousands of programmers. But in the 90s -- for any area of computer interest -- there were only a few hundred of you around the world. It was wonderful to meet someone with the same interests.

Being interested in programming/hardware/security AUTOMATICALLY made you a member of a small club. Most of the other members were glad to help you. And there wasn't a surplus of people all trying to stand out and be noticed on social media. (In fact, because you were into computers for the love of them, you probably weren't even thinking along the lines of "I must get noticed by $celeb so I can ask them for a job". The odious phrase "personal brand" had not been coined yet, and the concept was foreign to most in our computer nerd world.)

It lasted until around 2008 or 2010, I reckon -- about the point at which "go into computers, it has good money", the success of YC, and the rapid growth of FAANGs really made nerds ubiquitous. Then Marvel/Disney turned our niche interests into the mainstream, and we became culturally adrift. We were in sitcoms (Silicon Valley, even Big Bang Theory to a great extent) and fully mainstreamed. At that point, you could ask someone for something but you were just one of an ocean of unremarkable others.

That's how things were different in the 90s and (as a white English-speaking het guy who had Internet access) gosh I miss those times.

I can definitely relate with this. Grew up hacking IBM PCs in the 90s, got heavily involved in BBSs as a young kid, even wrote letters to random software developers (remember scorched earth?).

I really dislike the modern tech industry. I think that money ruined everything. Vast majority of my coworkers over the last decade or so are the type that used to train to be doctors, lawyers and other lucrative careers, with no real passion in computers or tech. It's all about money.

I do dream about changing careers. I know at least one other thing I'd love to do but it would pay a fraction of what I can make now and simply isn't feasible.

I think a few hundred programmers in the 90s is underestimating the numbers by a factor of at least 1000 and (probably much much) more. Of course such numbers are difficult to estimate, but here some pointers: It was introduced in school in several countries in the early 80s: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_science_education

And there was vast literature. Petzolds programming windows first edition is from 1988 and second from 1990. While the first might have been a niche publication usually there is only a second edition if there is substantial interest. (number of prints would be nice to know).

I'm not sure the OP was making this claim exactly -- I think they just meant for any particular interest (like running Plan 9 on some old hardware) there were probably only a few hundred people around who shared that particular interest.

Could be. But any particular interest is def not true (windows programming), so more like some niche interest. But this is the definition of niche interest, isnt it.

I can count on one hand the number of people I’ve met that did windows programming, both before or after 2005.

You're right. I said "for any interest" but obviously, like all things attention there's a power law distribution. Many Windows programmers, or anything else that had massive interest. But if you were a Unix kernel nerd, there weren't many Unix kernel nerds around. If you were a Perl programmer, there weren't that many Perl programmers.

But even given the prevalence of Windows development, it was still rare to encounter another programmer socially unless you lived in the occasional city where they were common. My point is that nerds finding nerds was a much rarer thing back then.

Computer programming was a nationally available subject in secondary schools in the UK in the mid '70s.

I co-wrote a noughts and crosses program to run on a Busicom in 1973; and continued programming at university ('74-'77).

See, inter alia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesil, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busicom.

Computer nerds suddenly became attractive when Bill Gates made his first $billion. Before that we were pariahs <g>.

I was and still am a computer nerd and I was never a pariah. I'm sure some nerds out there felt like it. But, anecdotally, that was not my experience.

Consider movies at the time that had computer people in it. They were always portrayed as bumbling, inept people with bad greasy haircuts, odd clothing, pimples, and tape holding their glasses together. The hero would always berate them with "speak English, please".

You can also see it in the Seattle sketch comedy "Almost Live" series, whenever they did a bit on Microsoft.

Myself, I learned to avoid mention of my profession when meeting women.

Even at Caltech at the time, being a computer nerd was not popular. Popular was physics (possibly because Feynman was there at the time). Astronomy was popular, too. Back then, however, nobody had any inkling of how much money could be made from computers.

Yes. I am not sure if Bill Gate made the difference in the public image of nerd. May be in the State. Even the Google era in 00s didn't change much. ( May be very briefly during Dot Com bubble ) My first realisation of Tech really going into Mass Market was the Smartphone era in 2010. When you over heard conversion from everyday life people having lunch talking about ISO ( it should be iOS, but they got it wrong ). And Apple, or iPhone became a yearly event that all mainstream media publish. By around 2012 App Developers became "cool".

In some ways I think that was the revenge of the "nerd". Although in another way most of these new "nerd" never experience the 80s, 90s and 00s. And they are very different nerds to those in that era. Too much hype, too little engineering.

I had an old IBM XT clone sitting in my bedroom at the age of 12-13. I brought a friend over once and he called me a nerd. Not the "nerd" of today. Back then it stung. He said it with a bit of disgust, as if he learned some dark secret I had been harboring. I even loaded up Catacomb 3-D (a very early id Software precursor to Wolfenstein 3D) to prove I can be cool too. It didn't really work.

>>> really made nerds ubiquitous

It did not make nerds ubiquitous. It made nerd wannabes ubiquitous. The ppl with OG nerd-like qualities are actually frowned upon in the industry now. Somehow a SWE needs to be a "well rounded" individual. Technical skills don't matter much anymore.

This.

Way back in the 90's I reached a conclusion that a programmer or sysadmin or hardware guy is now just the new auto mechanic.

'98 or so I was shopping for replacement software for my uncles business (y2k prep) and we went to this firms office, and basically everyone in the office, the owner, all the developers, the sales guy, the guy who would come out to install the hardware... every one of them could have been in their high school football team 10 years earlier. They were doing this kind of job because there was money in it full stop. They took us out to dinner and the conversation only comfirmed that snap perception. You could substitute "propane and propane products" in place of software and IT hardware without changing a thing about any of them.

Perversely today I probably wouldn't use the same comparison because auto mechanic is probably more nerdly and interesing persuit today than it used to be.

I think what I mean to say it's now a trade.

You might be a nerd in that trade just like you might be a nerd welder, but it's no longer required. You don't even have to be a wannabe nerd although many are.

Countless people in those jobs with no special love of it, and no fundamental curiosity.

School counselors told them it was going to be in demand, so they did that.

I think it's both better and worse today since then.

Obviously the sheer mass of IT work needed today, and the sheer mass population of people needed to do it, means that there are a many many people doing IT work that aten't good at it and don't love it.

Obviously today it's no longer special to to work with computers.

And there is also the ever present dislike for intellectuals in general that hurts nerds even at the same time when there is some nerd cache from making money. (actually I bet the nerds don't even make the real money any more. they get harnessed by the business types)

But I think it's also true there are more actual nerds today and they are more accepted than in the past. Still outnumbered by wannabes and everyone else, and the real nerds still not really liked or taken seriously by most, but more and better than 20 years ago.

I agree, the Tech field has exploded and lotsa people are into it which is a good thing. But when anything goes "mainstream" it loses its charm, it loses the X-Factor which made it special.

Tech companies have lost that charm now. I have worked at companies where doin a good job does not even matter anymore. Its all about "projection" and "perception"

There will always be a place for those of us who like tinkering with software and/or computer hardware, the nerds. We like using the CLI or Vim or Emacs. We go deep on compilers and PLT. But I personally welcome those who aren't nerds in the same way. I like showing them how to be more efficient in their work, build more robust/reliable software, and helping them understand the job they are doing better. Maybe, I'm nerding out about mentorship but I find it rewarding to help the non-nerd become just a little more nerdy in their career. It's an opportunity not a problem.

Niche and Nerdery is fractal, I find. I also find sharing my findings from exploring random niche corners of obscure topics to be rewarding.

What I dislike now is that previously I could assume that anyone with the same interest had some form of passion for the craft, but now they’re swallowed up in a sea of people that are there -like you said- just for the money.

They still want to know enough to not get fired, but that’s where it ends.

I kind of feel it pulls the average down though, and it makes my work environment less ideal.

I've heard it described as "social gentrification", but that particular article tried to defend offensive behaviour (think 4chan) as a personality trait or a way to keep 'normies' at bay. I don't think that's the way to go either, because the very same type that defends their offensive and antagonistic behaviour will suffer from loneliness as well. The venn diagram overlaps a lot there.

But that particular blog post aside, you do make a good point. The 'nerd' in my head (and / or the one that I am) doesn't score too well on EQ and social skills, or to be even more blunt, is often on the autism spectrum and has to mask to match those expectations from the more neurotypical folk. But that said, I think one has to mask even with other neurodiverse people, because else they will just rub each other the wrong way.

Last time I was in Silicon Valley, I was shocked at how the nerd aesthetic had gone away.

Lots of athletic folks.

I think it’s because Ivy League and Wall Street folks have been invading (or taken as captives), and the Ivy League/Wall Street aesthetic is not exactly geeky.

Nerds can be athletic. Loving tech doesn't mean you can't also take care of your body.

I’m struggling to find the right word for “type of person” … words like “nerds” and “jocks” can be limiting, since plenty of people are both.

The guy who got me into tech and computers was a former green beret. Most athletic guy I’ve ever known, and a genius with tech.

I don’t think he was a nerd, but this is really subjective.

Makes you think how not ridiculous the scene from War Games where they get stuck on an island and the guy just lets them stay in his house when they miss the ferry. Makes for convenient story telling that in today's standards just seems like would be a 'awhellznaw' kind of response.

Or the Neil Degrasse Tyson story of how he met Carl Sagan.

That easily happens also today in less densely populated areas.

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