Sure, that's good and all makes sense. I am somewhere in the middle of a venn diagram that includes all these tribes, plus mercenaries and many other things that aren't described, as I'm sure many of us are.
I do think it should be discussed further but my original point was that we may be missing out on discussing the unseen majority as much as we do these passionate ones.
Then again, perhaps those groups are just not as worth discussing other than in side notes like these HN comments and that's just fine too.
OTOH, I don't throw eggs to other so-called tribes or the mercenaries, because We're humans and we're different. We have different reasons. I live in this stuff since C64. Not everyone has to. Some likes poetry, others don't. Some listen to classical, others listen to death metal, rap, whatever. I don't expect everyone to like, understand or endorse what I do. The correct baseline is we're expressing ourselves here, including the mercenaries.
So, as long as you don't throw eggs at me, we're friends. I'd gladly help you with my knowledge and more importantly, I want to learn from you to broaden my horizon and augment my ideas with yours to try, see and do new things.
Tribalism is not inherently bad, the quiet war and fetishization of these tribes are the toxic parts of it. Similarly, being passionate about programming sans the zealotism is not harmful IMHO.
These camps provide a nice foundation and philosophy when used correctly. OTOH, I agree that this is a double edged sword and very sharp one indeed.
Why not discuss further?