"One of us". It's tribalism. Same applies to logo hoodies, conference t-shirts, and various other things programmers do, deliberately or otherwise, to provide authenticity.

It may have started as simply being too lazy to pick out clothes from the closet, but at this point it's a full-blown subculture, with signals and counter-signals. Notice that if you walk the streets of San Francisco you can spot the tech workers incredibly easily. They're not just dressed down, they're dressed down in an very specific way. Toe shoes is one such way - they've achieved a cult status in our subculture and almost nowhere else.

you're signaling "I'm the kind of person who's angling for a very painful metatarsal fracture."

i must disagree. i have had foot and knee problems my entire life, to the point that i never enjoyed running or doing anything althetic becuase it hurt too badly.

since i started wearing the toe shoes, i learned to become more phsyically aware. my foot pain went away, and now i run regluarly and enjoy it. it's like night and day.

if wearing toe shoes gives people foot problems, it's because they've trained their bodies to wear shoes - and we didn't evolve walking on inch-thick slabs or rubber. our bodies weren't meant for it.

It's probably more because of the running surface in combination with the shoe, than the shoe alone. Using the same logic, our bodies weren't meant to run barefoot on concrete/tarmac for long periods. They're too hard.

I'm speaking from experience here, I bought a pair of vibrams, lost 70 pounds taking up running, and was doing great right up until I broke my metatarsal. Coming up on three years later I had to have surgery, a pin, orthotics, and I still need regular cortisone injections.

Here's a link: http://www.runnersworld.com/barefoot-running-minimalism/stud...