I totally agree.
People tend to associate computer geekery with loneliness and social ineptness, but I think what's actually happening is the solitary nature of hacking attracts the loners.
Another facet of this is the fact that hackers tend to think overly quantitatively about the world, and try to approach everything from a 100% logical standpoint. The real world dynamics have feelings, emotions, and totally irrational behavior. Continuing to moan about how everyone else doesn't see the light of logic and retreating to hacking technology which does follow a strict guideline is self-detrimental.
Learning to hack society is also interesting and has potentially larger pay-offs.
Re:Rebuttal to "A hacker's loneliness"
by lallysingh on Thursday September 25, 2008 @04:33PM
(#315347)
Takedown II: Mitnick gets laid.
The wonderful thing about programming is that the computer is an honest mirror. If you screwed something up, you'll know. It won't spare your feelings or let you delude yourself into thinking it's working (well, within reason -- eventually you learn to write good tests).
In a world with so much bullshit, it's pretty nice. While growing up, it's a great anchor of simple reality in a volatile time in your life.
As for other questions as "does it make you into a loser" or "is it a life-long cockblock?" the answer's simple: it's fairly unrelated. If you're a true loser, you'll just be a computer loser. Ditto for the cockblock.
OTOH, you'll notice that there percentage of college-educated men has been dropping recently, while the opposite has been occurring for women. Which means a certain tolerance to loserness is building to help against that self-cockblock threshold.
Maybe 5-10 years ago it was a problem, but in my generation (I'm 29), everyone's using a computer almost all day long. The only difference is that it's my job directly, while others have other jobs using the computer. Gaming is deeply mainstream now (esp. in men in my age group & younger), and programming's just a good sign of intelligence in this group.
Look, here's what you do:
1. Hit the fucking gym. It's really not hard. Usually single programmers have lots of disposable income. Instead of buying that new Amiga motherboard you've been salivating over, spend some cash on looking hot. Experiment with it like you would any other problem: maybe a trainer, different exercises, buy some books on it, maybe some equipment, whatever. You've got the CPU for this, and this really is a simple problem that's usually solved if you can get off the terminal for an hour or so every other day (and you can, just schedule your gentoo builds).
2. Drink water and/or diet soda while hacking. It's the cheap sugar calories in regular soda that give programmers the "fat loser" stigma.
3. Don't wear the free t-shirts you get at social events. Actually spend money on what you wear and research what looks good & bad. For men, fashion is dumb-fuck-simple. If you don't know, just read "Dressing the Man" and only do 1/10th of what it says.
4. Have other non-computer-geek things in your life. Somewhere that'll let people connect with you somehow. Politics, music, sports, whatever.
With that, you're a good-looking, intelligent, well-paid guy. Suddenly you can be a complete jackass and still get laid pretty often. Just, you know, don't start singing to yourself & rocking in your seat when a girl approaches you.
Sorry for the preaching, but when I hear the same seemingly easy-to-solve complaints over & over, I kinda have to get this way.