Neither Nerd nor Bro

Very honest and clearly written article, thanks mst.

I'm truly puzzled by how popular stereotypes are in the western culture. I mean what does someone job/hobby have anything to do with their everything else? Let's just stop here for a second and realise that whenever we refer to a group of people with a job title, say, 'programmers' we are talking about hundreds of thousands if not millions of people. And there is no way you could fit that many people under the umbrella of your single statement.

In the culture I originate from they are absolutely non-existent. The word 'nerd' doesn't even exist in my first language and if you ask people in the street to tell you about the attributes of 'programmers' they wont know what to say. The closest word to nerd that we have is 'smart'. The same goes with most other jobs.

I'm curious. When I first heard the term "brogrammer", without a definition, I did not assume the "bro" part meant drunk, misogynistic, immature frat boy bros.

My first guess was it meant "bro" as used in "How I Met Your Mother", which encompasses a diverse set of behaviors (consider that Ted, Barney, Marshall, and Robin are all "bros"). Thus, a "brogrammer" could include immature misogynists (Barney), erudite nerds (Ted), somewhat regular guys (Marshall) and women (Robin).

Anyone else go that way, or did you all go right to the drunk immature frat boy meaning?

There is no such thing as a real-life brogrammer. NONE of the hundreds of developers I've seen are wild, drunken frat boy caricatures. What we are seeing is a generation of programmers who are much younger and varied than ever before. We're seeing some changes because of that (e.g the startup hub in the Bay Area has moved from MV/PA to SF)

The previous generation of developers had to go out of their way to be interested in computers. You had to order some computer kit by mail and put it together. This kind of selected for a certain personality that came to be known as "nerdy".

My generation (currently in their 20s) has grown up with off-the-shelf PCs and the Internet. We built our first websites in middle school thanks to Geocities. We learned CSS and Javascript from MySpace themes. Programming became accessible to a LOT of people.

Because of this democratization, there is a wider range of personalities among programmers of my age. There are athletic guys, girls who love to go clubbing and yes, guys who would fit in at a fraternity. I think the "brogrammer" label is a mischaracterization of this younger demographic of programmers who all of a sudden don't fit the stereotype that's existed for decades.

The author fails to apply his argument to itself.

Many programmers have many different interests, and don't conform to any particular stereotype, and that's fine.

But, some programmers do fit particular stereotypes. Some of them do have the "brogrammer" set of interests. Some of them want to share it, not to counter nerd sterotyping and get even with them fratboys, but because they enjoy watching sports, getting wasted, and the company of those with similar interests. And that's also fine.

Assuming that anyone who likes these things must be "Shallow, emotionally repressed, sexist and valuing testosterone poisoning induced displays of bravado over trying to do things that are actually cool," that anyone who goes out with the purpose of getting laid must be stupid, is just as "idiotic and potentially damaging" as assuming anyone who programs must be "Not A Real Man".

Sounds like you are a Regular Joegrammer

When I first heard the term, I pictured young guys high-fiving each other because they mastered RVM and Git...