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Comment by scott_s | Hacker News Reader

I know logically that I’m pretty good. But I never feel like I’m as good, or as experienced, as everyone else. I always feel like I’m behind, trying to catch up to a group of super-elites who’ve been programming since they could walk.

Me too. I think that for most people, that feeling will never fully go away. It's a common enough sentiment across all disciplines that we have a name for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome

But, I was confused by this paragraph:

People often cite social ineptitude as a reason for unpleasant behavior in tech. But, frankly, I’m tired of that excuse. The fact is, the behavior that comes from technical entitlement is poisonous.

My confusion is that I don't think of it as an excuse, but as the fundamental reason. The remainder of your post discusses how we can fix the fundamental reason.

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This sounds a lot more like the problem than entitlement.

But nothing can be done about it. Getting professionals in the field to be more respectful of women? Can be done. Making efforts to reach out in elementary schools earlier and get girls more interested in tech at an early age? Sure. Great stuff. Getting teenaged boys to stop swaggering at each other, especially in front of the girls? Like stopping the tide from coming in. Never going to happen.

No sarcasm, no cynicism. You can't make teenage boys not be teenage boys. People have been trying for a long time for reasons a lot better and more numerous than this.

It may help to be less intimidated, though, to point out that while swaggering at each other, teenage boys can often be... shall we say... less than truthful? I've been programming since I was about nine... if by "programming" you mean stringing together some GOTOs and PRINTs in BASIC. I didn't really start programming programming until college. But rest assured teenage-boy me isn't exactly going to fill in the less-than-flattering details of my tech experience while claiming to have been programming since I was nine.

(Oh... and... don't try to throw this fact back in the teenaged boy's face. Whatever will happen, it won't be fun for anyone. Just keep it in the back of your head, share it as needed.)

I don't think if somebody says "I have been programming since age 9" people assume that age 9 that person was engineering a huge enterprise project employing TDD.

100% correct.

Much like someone learning a foreign language from an early age, or growing up in a bilingual house. Even if this was the case, we don't expect that the person is saying they were a great writer, orator or debater at age 11.

I started programming at 9. What I mean when I say that is I was able to think about problems, data, logical rules and how to break those down in to something a computer could understand, usually in BASIC (much later 6502 assembly). True, I wasn't programming enterprise apps, but the foreign language thing feels like it rings true to me.

If I was looking for a translator, I'd prefer someone who was a native speaker their whole life, or someone who'd been studying from an early age. Someone who took "spanish I" at a community college 3 years ago, and perhaps visited Spain last summer .... they might be able to do the translation, but it likely won't be as comprehensive and nuanced as someone who's lived with that language for a lifetime.

If the problem is something inherent in the male constitution, then why don't we see this disparity across all majors?

The vast bulk of majors either lacks the ability to get into it so early ("I've been civil engineering since I was 9!"), women get into them just as easily ("I've been into biology for a while now"), or it sounds really lame when you brag ("I've been making lumps of indistinguishable chemicals with chemistry sets since I was nine"). I wouldn't be surprised there's a couple of others that have at least a trace of this problem.

Hmm, maybe. I guess I meant more that bad behavior is more acceptable in tech because people are "socially awkward"--when, really, it doesn't matter WHY people are exclusive because the effects don't change.

Anyone who is trying to one-up someone else is exhibiting social intelligence. The "socially awkward" excuse is completely illogical. Nerds who act that way are acting just like all the jocks we disparage. Just because they are using lines of code and obscure knowledge instead of pushups or interceptions caught doesn't mean they aren't doing exactly the same thing.

I think that bad behavior is more acceptable in tech because people think being abnormal and living in a "meritocracy" gives them a right to treat other people, especially normal people or anyone they feel superior to, badly. It leads to lots of trying to prove you aren't a "normal" person or somehow inferior so the people around you won't treat you badly. It is a miserable way to live.

The people who are actually weird and different are treated badly by the so-called "socially awkward" nerds. I agree with you: it is an excuse for why they shouldn't be expected to know better. There is no such thing, though. I'm dyslexic and I still had to learn to read and I'm still judged on my spelling. Even if something is harder for someone, that just means they need to work harder at it or find another way to get to the same end goal.

The people I have known who are actually on the autism spectrum, rather than just using it as an excuse, all have.

Establishing a pecking-order is different from having the tact to know when something is appropriate or even harmful. So, yes, knowing how to one-up someone is a part of social intelligence, but I submit that knowing what is appropriate to say to be as welcoming as possible requires more sophisticated social intelligence. Hence, I don't see "socially awkward" as illogical.

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