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Comment by billrobertson42 | Hacker News Reader

A person who looks around at the people he's socializing with, then apparently immediately grabs a computer, downloads a statistical data set and begins to analyze it in R wonders why he's surrounded by other programmers?

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Exactly. As ridiculous as it sounds, that's an act worthy of ostracism in the small town where my wife grew up (and I lived for a while).

Living in a small town and working (remotely) in tech was an eye-opening experience. There wasn't another programmer within 100 miles. I learned that not only had I previously surrounded myself with a very homogenous group, but that the way I think and act most of the time simply isn't compatible with the way a lot of average Americans think and act. I don't say that to be prideful - it was a struggle. I simply approached situations and thought about things differently than most of the farming community around me.

Now, (and I'm a touch ashamed to say it), my social circle has become homogenous almost consciously. I just couldn't handle it anymore. Being the outcast "nerd" gets really old.

I love technology and the Internet. I want to live in the future. If you don't want to come with me, that's fine, but I'm not going to stay with you. I can't pretend to give a shit anymore about who has the biggest truck or who shot the biggest deer, and yes, I do care about whether my president is intelligent. I like acknowledging soccer as something more than "a Mexican sport" and not dismissing Tesla as something "for tree huggers." Does that make me "classist" of some sort? Maybe. But I'd just rather not put up with it.

There's a longer essay I could write about how it feels like learning to program made me an introvert, but that's a different topic altogether.

Nothing wrong with not wanting to hang out or be around stupid people ("average Americans" as you put it). And yes, calling soccer a "Mexican sport", Tesla "something for tree huggers", and wanting a stupid president are exactly what makes one stupid and insufferable. I totally relate to your situation at the time. Unfortunately, it's not limited to small towns.

Interestingly, I also work remotely from a rural farming area and have found that the farming community is a lot like the tech community. They, like you, love the future and technology. Robotics is huge in agriculture right now. Tractors that drive themselves, cows that can milk themselves, how software can be used to improve the bottom line, etc. are hot topics, and come up frequently among my farming friends. In my eyes, if there is any competition, it isn't who has the biggest truck, it is who makes the most effective use of modern technology.

In addition to being a developer, I also farm. Maybe I have a different perspective than you by being able to speak their language? It makes a big difference, in my opinion. I also enjoy being around programmers for the same reason. I find you can get into much deeper discussions more quickly when you have a shared background.

It's possible that austenallred can't relate well to farmers. It's also possible that he's like me in that he lived in a small town that had very few (or no) farmers.

I've lived in The Sticks, surrounded by farmers.[0] I've also lived in small towns that contain no more than a couple of farmers. I'm not claiming that every small town lacks farmers, but I do know that some of them do.

[0] It's hard to say that you're surrounded by people when your second-closest neighbor is a ten minute drive away, but that's the nature of back-country.

austenallred stated it was a farming community, but you are right that not all small communities are farming communities.

Oh, geez. Some times I forget how to read. Sorry. :(

It was definitely a farming community; almost the entire town either farmed alfalfa for the biggest farm in town (my father-in-law's, incidentally), or had very small dairy farms. You either had a very small farm/ranch, herded sheep, or were a "sprinkler boy." It was/is definitely on the "dying" side of the innovation curve, though somehow those types hold on seemingly indefinitely on almost nothing (which I certainly respect). Certainly no robotics, no one would even know what "software" is. A couple people had iPads; they called them "machines."

I guess not all small towns are identical :)

At times, I forget how to read. Sorry about that.

The phenomenon of zombie towns is one that mystifies me.

> cows that can milk themselves

What

Perhaps stated more accurately as: Choose when to milk themselves. A robot does the actual act of milking. With context of robotics already setup, I made assumptions based on that when making that statement. If I said that around farmers, they'd know exactly what I was talking about. I guess that goes back to being able to speak the language of the people you are interacting with.

But if you're looking for more general information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_milking

We used to assume that robots would have hands and feet and walk among us to do the number of boring jobs we wished someone else would do for us. What happened is that we started to carry them around (smartphones), or in this case, get animals to walk to the stationary robot so it can do the job it was designed for. We live now in the future, minus robotic hands and feet.

Your small town experience roughly equates to the environment I grew up in, except my small town had programmers, and I wasn't one of them. My technology angst only increased when visiting my mom's relatives, who still live in the sticks.

I visited some over a year ago. Both my aunt and uncle had laptops which you could tell were heavily used. They had satellite internet (again, really out there). I didn't, but I almost wanted to say something along the lines of "Thanks for finally understanding what I've been doing and talking about for the past 20 years."

You can analyze data and use R and not be a programmer. Less than half of the students in my advanced stats classes at college which used R were CS majors. Granted, for me, knowing how to program made things a lot less frustrating.

Spreadsheet programs are built for analysis without deep programming knowledge too.

I am not, nor have I ever been, a CS major. Yet I am a programmer.

I think you're kind of missing the point. There are not nearly as many MBA, liberal art, lawyer, etc people on here as techies and programmers.

Same here, but my experience is that I only know other programmers through work. I'm sure that's as much of my own fault as anything but I still wish I had more people in my circle who I could talk to about work and my technical interests.

I'd say that by virtue of using R, regardless of your major, you are a programmer.

The author of the article seems to mainly be concerned with being in a really homogenous social group according to job title.

You're right that everyone who programs is a programmer, but 'programmer' in the article means someone for whom programmer is their job title.

I bet they people in his social circle would have the same argument.

I'm a programmer and I hate doing this kind of statistics analysis. Not my cup of tea.

A lot of the programmers at my company have never even heard of R.

Yes, a programmer is wondering why he's only surrounded by other programmers. That's the premise of the article.

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