I agree, and I don't think it's a good thing. As Crockford once said, we chose software because there's something wrong with us.
I also find the spread of autism terrifying. My wife works at a kindergarten and she has had to deal with children that have problems from the autistic spectrum, healthy enough to be allowed to integrate in a normal collectivity, problematic enough that adjustment is very hard - they simply stand out from everybody else. And she noticed an interesting pattern, those children usually come from families of engineers, mathematicians or software developers.
And maybe the sample is not representative of the general population, but it scares the bejesus out of me, especially since we have a son that is happy, loving, socially apt, smart and healthy, but that was a late talker and at 4 years old he still does mispronunciation for many words - this is another recent trend.
I have read a book at some point, can't remember the title, but especially in boys you have brain parts specialized for certain tasks and this happens when you've got certain parts of the brain underdeveloped, with maybe other parts overdeveloped. It usually goes away, once the child grows. Maybe this is just an evolutionary step, or maybe we are broken, I don't know.
This is a serious issue, there was an article on HN a few years back on how the concentration of children born with Autism in SV is something like 10x higher than elsewhere across the nation. They concluded that its most likely due to a severe case of assortive mating between mathematically gifted couples.
People wanted to know why evolution didn't continue to make us smarter? There's your answer...there's an upper ceiling imposed by biology. The way our neural architecture develops puts a damper on how much abstract reasoning we can do before we sacrifice our basic survival mechanisms (i.e. social interaction).
Autism is one of the most fascinating conditions from a medical perspective, but its absolutely terrifying when the majority of HN (myself included) is at greater risk of producing autistic children.
Guess there was a reason why people married their secretaries...
Maybe those who stand out are exactly the specialists we need to change this world. To think differently, as Steve Jobs famously said.
We are not broken. We are perfect as we are. It is our approach to these children and people that is broken. We should embrace them, and foster their creativity and unhuman kind capability to concentrate. And not medicate them with medicine that will kill their creativity and unique way of looking at the world.
Think of them as Specialists, not Generalists. Our current education system sucks for them, sure. But it will change.
Be proud of what you do. Love it. Aknowledge you are on the right path. Or else change path or your way to approach it. Why do it if it feels wrong ?
I may well be mistaken but I don't believe this was the intended meaning in the quote. Do what feels right, that's not being disputed... but what feels right to someone who "sees the code" behind things in life is often very different from what feels right to the average/normal human at this point in time. Like how everyone loves a good comedian but if you ask any good comedian they almost all say you have to be kinda fucked up to embrace that life... I agree with you though, I don't thing it's wrong or fucked up, I think it's just different from the lives that most people believe to be everyone's status quo.
Amish people freak me out. I can't understand why you'd want to limit yourself to that set of strange ideals (roofers with cell phones who play angry birds on lunch break but they have to higher a driver because it's against their weird rules?) but I don't believe they are fucked up or wrong... they're just a quark of this strange existence... I don't want to believe it but I might be just like them if I'd grown up indoctrinated into that life. There is some beauty in every path if you choose to see it.