While I don't doubt that the stereotype exists for a reason (the arrogant, maladjusted programmer) I can't really remember encountering any in all the time I've been working with other programmers (25ys). Perhaps it's more prevalent in non face to face situations like chat rooms or with the less mature.
I've seen the brilliant ones get a little frustrated with "slow" people but they weren't dickheads about it. In my personal experience, developers really go out of their way to help an enthusiastic "newbie" get up to speed.
On the other hand, I have seen situations where a newbie would ask a forum for an answer to his homework assignment and then get upset because he didn't get an immediate answer or someone pointed him to a source for his answer ("here's a link to sorting algorithms") instead of coding up the assignment for him.
> I can't really remember encountering any in all the time I've been working with other programmers
While I don't recall any such encounter with any programmer, I have observed many icon-dragging, button-clicking arrogant pricks that called themselves programmers because lave learned that clicking the third button from the second group in the toolbar turns whatever they mashed together into an executable file.
To the average user, such a beast is absolutely indistinguishable from a real programmer and, so, the confusion is understandable.
Comments
While I don't doubt that the stereotype exists for a reason (the arrogant, maladjusted programmer) I can't really remember encountering any in all the time I've been working with other programmers (25ys). Perhaps it's more prevalent in non face to face situations like chat rooms or with the less mature.
I've seen the brilliant ones get a little frustrated with "slow" people but they weren't dickheads about it. In my personal experience, developers really go out of their way to help an enthusiastic "newbie" get up to speed.
On the other hand, I have seen situations where a newbie would ask a forum for an answer to his homework assignment and then get upset because he didn't get an immediate answer or someone pointed him to a source for his answer ("here's a link to sorting algorithms") instead of coding up the assignment for him.
> I can't really remember encountering any in all the time I've been working with other programmers
While I don't recall any such encounter with any programmer, I have observed many icon-dragging, button-clicking arrogant pricks that called themselves programmers because lave learned that clicking the third button from the second group in the toolbar turns whatever they mashed together into an executable file.
To the average user, such a beast is absolutely indistinguishable from a real programmer and, so, the confusion is understandable.
;-)