************************************************************** * * * CYBERSPACE * * A biweekly column on net culture appearing * * in the Toronto Sunday Sun * * * * Copyright 1999 Karl Mamer * * Free for online distribution * * All Rights Reserved * * Direct comments and questions to: * * * * * ************************************************************** I used to work with a programmer that had a degree in philosophy. He started as a math major. Whenever he took a new math course, he found he was always more interested in the first chapter of a math text, the chapter that explains why that branch of math exists. He felt his overwhelming need to understand why something existed and a general disinterest in its real world function indicated philosophy was his true calling. Along the way, he learned programming because he still liked playing with numbers. His ability to write computer code eventually employed him. His philosophy degree ended up making him slightly irritating to most of his co-workers who couldn't understand his need to linger in their cubicle and babble. In the software world, programmers, even good programmers, don't necessarily have computer science degrees. I've worked with programmers with degrees in economics, biology, and arts. Some don't even have degrees. Programming, some might argue, is an inborn talent. You can no more teach someone to be an insanely great hacker than you can offer a Best Selling Novelist degree. Good programmers simply are. Despite stereotypes about techies being vastly dull number crunchers, programmers tend to be highly creative individualists. It's their creative nature, not their general lack of social skills, that drives them to interface with machines. They discover early on that computers are an efficient tool for realizing their sweeping creative visions. Hence, the oversupply of Star Trek shareware games. Programmers are no different from the artist who discovers the paint brush or the violinist who discovers the bow. In my career as a technical writer (I'm the guy who writes the computer manuals and help files users routinely ignore), I've discovered I'm sometimes more interested in tracing and analyzing the massive chain of events, motivations, and personal heartbreak that brought a programmer to create an application than how the application actually works. I like geeks. I'm endlessly fascinated by the way they try to do creative, smart things with dumb machines. I'm in a constant quest to understand their psychology, their history, their language, and what makes them happy. A good starting point is Geek Central at www.geekcentral.com. Geek Central offers a nice range of Geek-related links and various tests to determine if you have what it takes to cut it their bespectacled world. One of the best insights into the geek mind is the Jargon File. The Jargon File is a compilation of geekspeak. The Jargon file project began in 1975 and has been regularly updated ever since. The latest incarnation can be found at earthspace.net/jargon/. Contained within the Jargon file's definitions and supporting material is a fascinating and amusing look at techie attitudes and history. You can browse and search the Jargon File online but I highly recommend downloading the compressed version and generating a hardcopy of its 200+ pages (maybe print it out at work when no one is looking). It's a wonderful cover-to-cover read. To understand a people, you have to understand their language and history. A fun and somewhat random look at computer history and folklore can be found at yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au/~mist/Folklore/. The rise, fall, and maybe rebirth of Apple Computer and the rise and rise and rise of Microsoft/Bill Gates are probably the two key events in the history of modern computing. A good overview of Apple's history can be found at www.apple- history.com. From a techie perspective, the Apple II History page (www.hypermall.com/History) offers a nice trip down computer memory lane. Strangely, there are few very good online resources on Bill Gates besides official material from the Microsoft web page. If you do a search at Yahoo, you'll find more pages devoted to jokes about Gates than pages tracing his history and accomplishments. The Unofficial Bill Gates page at www.zpub.com/un/bill/ does offer a smattering of interesting articles. The GeekWeek webzine (www.geekweek.com) offers weekly looks at some of lesser known and up and coming geeks. The San Jose Mercury News (Silicon Valley's paper of record) sponsors an interesting page that at www.thetech.org/revolutionaries that looks at what inspired such pioneers as Steve "The Woz" Wozniak (Apple's cofounder) and the nearly forgotten Nolan Bushnell (Atari's founder).