interesting... and in shorter time than PayPal , I assume. Pity it's not yet present in :flag-cl: , a surely smaller market than :flag-br: , and perhaps with more hurdles for foreign banks.

great, i got a boss before said nobody will use clojure for a big bossiness, :rolling_on_the_floor_laughing: now it is time to smash back

I was thinking about doing a conference talk about this one day, because I think it's a really important issue for the whole software industry to talk about. But, ultimately, I have a lot going on these days and I'll probably never give that conference talk. Or I might not, so I figure I'll just drop the idea here as some food for thought - maybe somebody can give it a deeper dive conference talk on it one day. Tldr: I think some majority of programmers are in this profession because they have experienced trauma. Especially languages like c, c++, and other "puzzle languages," where you get to solve your own little Sudoku everyday - they're forms of escapism. There used to be a larger share of female software developers, from what I understand. Sometime during the '70s and '80s, a new form of stigmatized male archetype developed: the nerd. Before that you had the jocks versus the city slicker rebels. Then the hippie archetype. But then came the nerds. The 80s movie "Nerds" recounts a new social divide between the jocks and nerds, where nerds were 1) techy smart, with protractors and pen protectors and glasses held together by tape, and 2) the worst thing a woman should want to associate with - pure ick. Around that time is when women left a lot of more technical fields - perhaps to chase the jocks? Social stigma? But the alienation of any socially awkward male anywhere increased the chances of them wanting to escape into technical endeavors. If women shunned you, you were more like to chase anti social, escapist activities. So my thesis is that programmers, in particular, are escaping trauma - are individuals with a history of trauma. Why do I say such a provocative, perhaps even offensive thing? Because 1) the nerds won - obviously, now everybody is on board and wants to be the nerd, and 2) because we don't appreciate the trauma of our programming peers sitting to our left and right. It would be useful for us to sometimes take a moment to recognize the pain of trauma that likely sits quietly in our peers. I don't know what the numbers are, but I'd bet a majority of programmers are programmers because some traumatic event alienated, stigmatized or somehow pushed them away from more social endeavors at some early point in their life. And that could just be being on the spectrum, which a lot of programmers are. So this is mostly just a call for empathy for your fellow peers. And if you've had trauma that you thought others didn't understand, perhaps you can take solace and commiserate with your peers, knowing that they too probably know an alienating trauma. And either way, practicing more empathy won't hurt you. That's all, thanks for attending my talk.

I have done no detailed study of the actual psychology of people who have become software developers, but would like to add a couple of comments/questions.

I have heard that somewhere around 1950s to 1960s, and perhaps longer, programming a computer was seen by many in the engineering field as lower status than engineering, e.g. closer to activities like a stenographer or typist than to engineering. I have no idea if it is related, but the term "computer" once referred to rooms full of people, often women, who worked at desks doing arithmetical calculations directed by someone in charge who divided up the calculation work across these people, and ensured the results were combined as desired.

I also would hope that anyone talking about the relative low fraction of women in the field since around the 1980s or 1990s would investigate and address whether certain patterns of male bravado in social interactions, e.g. one-upmanship in technical conversations, may have played some role in women preferring to avoid that kind of work companion.

Mansplaning perhaps played a role. And I have no quantifiable evidence. But I think patterns of attraction and ick have much larger pressure on social trends than we acknowledge

I think you could maybe even make the argument that the drive of engineers towards building AI is a form of escapism seeking

> As he listened to Dorsey talk, Glass would later recall, he stared out the window, thinking about his failing marriage and how alone he felt. Then he had an epiphany. This status thing wasn’t just about sharing what kind of music you were listening to or where you were, he thought. It could be a conversation. It wasn’t about reporting; it was about connecting. There could be a real business in that. He would certainly like such a service: his nights alone in his apartment, alone in his office, alone in his car, could feel less alone with a steady stream of conversation percolating onlinehttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/magazine/all-is-fair-in-love-and-twitter.html > Nick Bilton, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/magazine/all-is-fair-in-love-and-twitter.html, NYT (2013) an extremely consequential anecdote in support of your point here: Twitter.

If programming is escapism, then what is wood working? (Not that I currently already reached that phase)

@U04V15CAJ

woodworking is at least a form of escapism that forces you to observe and interact directly with a tangible physical world and its limitations, as opposed to the seemingly infinite space (nonplace) within the computer

@UFTRLDZEW hmm, last time I checked there's plenty of things that suck due to physical limitations and could run faster in this nonplace

@UFTRLDZEW I guess low level programming would be very different from say anything JS in that regard (or Haskell) I still remember counting clock cycles and timing signals

And maybe software would be better if programmers realized they aren't in a truly infinite space

https://dynamicland.org/!

I have experienced the dynamicland-style model of computing firsthand, and I can tell you it is fundamentally different in that regard.

That's not what I meant, but mostly because I was not that fortunate

My physicality was in measuring how much current I was drawing into a microcontroller with an oscilloscope 🙃

When anyone asks me about software I recommend against it, not because programmers aren't nice, they're exceedingly so, but you need to love abusing your brain to enjoy this work and not go insane. I don't want people to suffer.

I didn't mean to make this a conversation about women in software. Just that that the nerd phenomenon has to do with a certain kind of alienation from normative gender relations.

Just that that's a part of the story

We're all alienated here 🙃 We're talking with virtual strangers through black scrying mirrors

Some women definitely suffer from the same alienation, seen and unseen, I'm sure, along the lines of nerdism

Peterson is extremely problematic and, while he sounds educated/academic and authoritative, in reality he cherry-picks a lot of material and twists other material to fit his narrative...

But for whatever reason, during the 80s and 90s, it was a particularly male affliction

You might be interested in reading some works by https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Hermosillo

> I didn't mean to make this a conversation about women in software. Just that that the nerd phenomenon has to do with a certain kind of alienation from normative gender relations. Fixing the normative gender models would help, but that pretty much means tearing down the patriarchy and hundreds of years of systemic misogyny...

Perhaps millions of years

But I'm not an anthropologist

Anyway, gender roles are besides the point. Some women are nerds too

nerdy is a state of being unrelated to software imo. It implies following your own path, rather then looking around to see the direction others are going.

it carries slight negative undertone though, so i would be wary using it if your hoping to compliment someone.

I mean, sure, some percentage of programmers are just naturally good programmers and perhaps never had much trauma and were never much affected by social stigmas wrt their career choices, etc. I just think that percentage is probably lower than expected.

this thread tho 😬

I'd be pretty hesitant to draw correlation, let alone causation between trauma and software development motivation/ability without actual data to back that up. In terms of my own personal anecdata, I know too many relatively undamaged well adjusted folks that genuinely enjoy the craft, to say nothing of the end result + loads of money. I also know plenty of people with all sorts of past trauma who want nothing to do with this stuff. I do think there is something there w.r.t personality types/traits being naturally drawn to this type of work. I think this helps explain some of the stereotypes mentioned above (introverted, socially awkward, maybe on the spectrum, etc).

One of my meta principles regarding discussions of metrics of statistically significant differences between human subgroups, subpopulations, or subsets in general is that irrespective of the existence and/or extent of diversity and difference in these areas, it's generally good in 'regular' (ie, non-policy-related) conversations in groups that already have a membership that's passed through a selection filter (like this one - we're all here presumably because something something Clojure) to not direct attention overmuch to such statistical diversity or difference, since presumably the selection filter 'screens off' that part of such differences that may be relevant to the discussion within that group.

Put more simply: if you're organising a chess tourney for players between 2000 and 2100 Elo, then sex of the participants, or different rates of chess perf by different sexes, or interest in chess, or whatever other difference you may care to name is irrelevant in that context, WRT participants meeting the Elo criterion filter.

And I'd consider it in mildly poot taste (for myself) to direct attention to such differences, precisely since it's kinda pointless if you've made it through the filter, so all those difference stats don't apply to them in the first place, and unnecessarily emphasises the identity/identities of some subset of people there in a way that potentially emphasises their 'otherness' - or has the potential to do so.

(All bets are off and everything I said above inapplicable if the selection filter is itself compromised for political, ideological, or social signalling/any other reasons, of course.)

Coincidentally I just wrote about a job I had long before programming, where my primary work was being social as frontline support. Part of the reason I'm programming is because it's engaging and challenging, and I'll never feel like I've reached a plateau with my skillset. No trauma involved, just a desire to change things and keep growing. https://naomarik.com/verbiage/corporate-rascal

@U04M0MDGCJY yeah, I don't think this phenomenon is clojure specific, though I think we're all aware that esoteric language communities do attract the more esoteric of us. But yeah making generalizations is risky

@UBHTL6AF3 true, there's a lot of money. And nerd/geek is sheek these days. So this entire dynamic is turning upside down right now, it appears. Younger programmers might be less affected by this dynamic.

@U0175247L06 nice. Yeah, I'm in it for the same reasons. But honestly, most people don't want to be challenged every single day. Very few jobs out there actually require potentially fresh logic be created to solve some problems every single day. I feed on the distraction of that challenge, but that burns most people out super quick. And yeah, that can be a natural ADHD trait, but it can also be induced by PTSD. Personally, I have PTSD from two deployments in the army, good old fashioned shell shock, and I'm fine talking about it as veterans are encouraged to talk about it. But it took me a long time to realize that my hypervigilance wasn't just a super power but was also a weakness. It wasn't until I got a heart rate monitor on one of these smart watches that I realized that my heart rate was humming higher than normal people everyday. My day dreams can spike my heart to 130 bpm easy. So I gravitate the jobs that require either physical or mental focus, usually in a high intensity environment. Jobs involving routine, where I don't have some new challenges, are extremely boring for me and hard for me to even focus on. We rarely have to write the same code twice in programming, so that works really good for me. But yeah, I get to have fresh challenges every day and work from home where I have complete control over my environment? That works perfectly for my PTSD. There's a lot of support out there for veterans with PTSD and I'm getting better at managing it. Honestly, it wasn't always so easy for me to talk about it but after I came to accept it, that's when I started wondering how many of my peers are also using the profession of programming to help quench physiological restlessness brought on by trauma. But other people aren't encouraged to talk about their PTSD. What incentive do any of you have to admit it? Most folks are going to have difficulty admitting they have an issue, and maybe most folks shouldn't have to. That doesn't mean it's not there though.

> “One of the things I love about Sam [Altman] is every day he’s calling me and saying, ‘I need more, I need more, I need more.’” Satya Nadella, as https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/14/technology/microsoft-ai-satya-nadella.html?mc_cid=b6086ceb6e therapist voice: "But what if you had enough already, Sam?"

Lol

I feel this thread is drawing facts based on conclusions, honestly. I, for once, started with software development before any trauma (the trauma happened after that). Maybe I'm not doing any favor because I do have traumas too, but I don't feel they're correlated. Also... I feel we're basically "mansplaining" the gender part here, and I don't like this one bit. I don't see any women participating on this thread with their own opinions, and honestly, if I was a woman, I wouldn't be participating either, considering that the presence (or lack of) women in the field was already "mansplained" in the thread - like, it feels that all conclusions were drawn already, without even consulting the other parts. The citation of the Peterson was kind of the cherry on the top on the whole "we're confidently wrong on this and not going to back up"...

I'm not trying to draw conclusions about the gender part here because this thread is not about those conclusions. And I'm curious about those ideas too, but this thread is about trauma and escapism. It just so happens that there was a predominantly male form of escapism taking place in the '70s, '80s and '90s. That fact is pertinent to the discussion of mental health in the programming industry today, just due to the demographics of the situation. I'm not trying to draw any further conclusions, but just step the conversation off from that. Regarding jbp, yeah I think he's gotten kinda annoying but hey people love the guy so to each their own, etc, etc, again, not the point of this thread

I mean, how many other industries have "burnout" and where is that considered healthy? To Ben's point, programming can be a kind of brain abuse over the long term, if you over do it

Teaching has burnout. I bet lots of professions do.

Hmmm, for different reasons though. Programming is a hyper concentration thing

Reasons I have heard for teacher burnout: combination of low pay, demands from parents that you be an expert on all things and handle all issues their children might be having, even if you are not trained for it, but still motivated to continue past the stress because you love the good moments when things are going well

Yeah, that's true

I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those reasons can be rephrased only slightly to describe many cases of software developer burnout.

Naaah, developer burnout is specifically a form of mental exhaustion imo. I do think that there are some programmers that have brains that are genuinely born for it though and don't get burned out

My sister got burned out teaching for those reasons you mentioned though so yeah I think that's another form of burn out

Again, I feel we're back to the "finding facts to explain the conclusion". I got burned out because of demands of others (not parents), handle all issues with the code my CTO put in prod (even when I had no say on it), and poor management... the code, itself, was not what burned me out. Other fields that have burn out: executives, sales, anything health-related, social workers, marketing, retail, telecom... in fact, I can't imagine a field where "I have a lot of work, I'm stressed out, and that's a good thing" mentality is more prevalent than sales, executives, etc... thinking that IT industry is the only one (or one of the few ones) that is affected by "mental burnout" have no basis in reality, when there's a http://ekhsuir.kspu.edu/handle/123456789/16428 for example.

Maybe there's two forms of burnout. One where you get bored of the thing and one related to more like a dopamine burnout. Programming can have this addictive quality when chasing a solution

It's the same reason some people need to do Sudoku. But programming is like that on steroids

So is breaking personal records on athletes, and trying to buy something for the smaller price, and beating his peers on the numbers of sales, and making students understand some very complicated concept, and finding some fundamental concept about particles... These can all be addictive, I don't think there's anything special about our kind of addiction, and I kinda wish we would stop believing our field is "special" in any way.

For example, there are a lot of studies on why working with people is stressful, and it seems that part of the reason is because our brain isn't wired for the number of people we communicate each day

Well it could be true too that some preponderance of hard core athletes are escaping trauma

Also, trauma can be the result of a positive thing

Medics and emergency professionals have inherent PTSD in their professions

People just need to learn to recognize it and manage the physiological effects

@U050PJ2EU Thank you for being open and honest about your background and your trauma. I'm wondering if you aren't projecting your reasons for programming onto the rest of us, given the pushback you've had in this thread? I started programming as a child, because it was fun. I always liked puzzles and figuring out how to take things apart and put things back together and, for me, programming was just more of that. If you include my childhood programming, I've been doing this for 50 years, all because I enjoy puzzles (and I'm fairly good at solving them). No trauma, no burnout. I'm just lucky that people will pay me to do something I enjoy doing and I would happily do for fun outside of work.

I think you're born for it. And yeah, I must be projecting to some extent. But I will say, I've mentioned this idea to multiple colleagues over the years, after the idea came to me, and it resonated strongly with the people I mentioned it to. In fact, it seemed to change them a little for the better. So, ever since, I knew I had to give some little talk about it, in case it could help anyone else. But yeah, I have no idea what's in other people's minds so I gotta be projecting some. I do apologize if my characterization above was insensitive or put anyone off from participating in the conversation

I probably could have avoided the demographics of the situation, but I think that the sex relations alienation stuff (as well as ostracization of nerds/geeks in culture at large) might be part of that multivariate analysis. Not getting into that would have made focusing on the main point easier and less controversial conversation, especially because many women have PTSD, so I'm sorry for that. The moral of the message is very much for the women in the room too, but I wouldn't blame anyone for not feeling comfortable chiming in. In any case, the idea is, something like, to imagine that your colleagues are going through the worst day you've had in the last year, and when you do that exercise you end up having more compassion for your colleagues and working together is actually easier. We can't really know what's in each other's minds but if you assume others might share your struggle, it gets easier to share theirs, etc.

Well, having more compassion for co-workers is good advice, I'll give you that...

I don't know what is going on this summer, but I am lately talking too much here… Life is absurd. We all are suffering machines. Life is tough for everyone and, on top of that, we are crap at predicting our future satisfaction. It’s always been like this and will continue to be like this forever. Just read diaries, old books. We are all the same, we are not special. Mental health issues are rising, it’s a global trend. I have a friend, a firefighter, and he tells me that he is witnessing a lot of suicidal cases, specially since the pandemic. Get over yourself, my friends. And let’s keep building awesome stuff! ps: I really cannot understand how a Clojurian can like the verbal diarrhoea of Peterson, the fake childish dandy.

Yeah, firefighters have it a lot. @U04V70XH6 programming is one of the rare things that keeps getting harder because you never have to repeat yourself, so you're always dealing with escalating, usually novel complexity. Some people are born for that. For others, the never ending challenge of it makes for a convenient form of escapism, because there's always a genuine source of novel problems that you can solve.

I have not explained myself. He works a lot in suicidal cases. Every week, several cases. Many more than pre-pandemic times.

That's tragic. And I agree, life is hard for everybody actually. PTSD often has physiological imprints on a body, distinct from other forms of mental health. But yeah, it's not actually trauma that I'm getting at, but the escapism that various things like trauma lead to. Trauma, alienation, addiction, lots of things cause people to chase hard problems. So in any challenging career in that way will probably gravitate that kind of personality. And, if so, and there is some self selection going on... Well then look there, you have something to commiserate on. But yeah I could be projecting how hard programming is for me 😆

> programming is one of the rare things that keeps getting harder I disagree that applies to programming in general. The vast majority of programmers deal with fairly standard problems using standardized tooling and they just get on with their job. A huge amount of programming is pretty standard CRUD stuff, written in the context of frameworks that work hard to hide the incidental complexity of their environments. As a few others have said here: stop trying to mystify programming and make it out to be some "dark art" that only tormented souls can handle. That's just B.S. and, frankly, it's an offensive and elitist take.

Yeah, for sure, I could crank out widgets and endpoints into the sunset. But programming is one of those professions where you can keep finding harder and harder problems to solve, if that's your schtick. And that's one of the things that allures me to it, and I can just admit that it satisfies some anti social interests for me. And that doesn't mean that you have my anti social issues and I didn't mean to imply that programming is necessarily dark art. I'm not saying programmers are special or that all of them have my issues. Just that if others are in programming for similar reasons as me, it's because we don't want to deal with the social stuff as much anymore and enjoy less social interactions. I don't think that's mysterious or elitist. Moreso just a pattern of personality I've noticed across the tech sphere. So seeing that pattern makes suspicious of common motives, and thus gives me a feeling of commiseration. That's all it is. But anyway, we don't have to belabor the point. It was a fairly simple one. But it's a sensitive topic so we don't need to dance around it. It was supposed to be a warm and fuzzy point about how we should find compassion in our peers but I think that point has been made so we don't have to continue to over analyze it.

I'm also not saying programming is a crutch. Programming is a fantastic career for people with PTSD, if managed well. Again, it can be a super power. And that's not me talking about programming superpowers - it's a common trope in the mental health community these days to say that some trauma led to some superpower

you're over-generalizing your own experiences

and you're arriving at compassion and solidarity on the basis of suffering, which is an idea many millennia old

it's just a job and/or a hobby, it's not special in its effects on humans

the aggrandizing is a bit much

I'm just saying I use it as a form of escapism and others might too. I'm not sure if I mean to say it has special effects on humans or not. I certainly didn't mean to have it come out that way. I'm sorry if what I said somehow came out sounding like an aggrandization, that was definitely the opposite of my intentions

I probably am overgeneralizing my experiences though, that's fair

Regarding solidarity on the basis of suffering... I'll have to think about that :thinking_face: not sure if I agree with that. But I appreciate the critique

Suffering in general, yeah, go join Buddhism, right? But I think I'm talking about something more specific regarding causes of escaping, which maybe doesn't always have to be escape from suffering? NASCAR drivers probably get PTSD from their high intensity driving over long periods. They won't regret the symptoms though. They'll just manage them. PTSD usually ends up with a flight or fight response issue related to the amygdala in the brain as well as other physiological changes. But it doesn't have to be caused by tragedy. The NASCAR drivers signed up for it. But I guess the NASCAR driver could potentially still find some commiseration with others that have the symptoms, right? In more than just generic commiseration you'd get down the street at your nearby church, right? Or did I misunderstand you?

No, what happened was the Apple II, then the Mac and PC. Before then mainframe/mini manufacturers produced language compilers that worked without fuss, and folks could concentrate on programming the application. Women were fine at that. I was there, btw, and can confirm the large fraction of women programming. Then with microcomputers things exploded, and with Linux and Javascript the tools wheels came off. Now programming required a never-ending battle with just getting code to compile. Males get off on technology, so we shrugged off the hell of tooling. Women moved on to find real lives. Code camps did a lot to bring women back during the tech boom, because $$$ are also attractive. I wonder if female representation has dropped off with the current depressed tech job market?

I did work with two brilliant women devs recently. Both code campers. One wanted the benefits from an IT job, the other did not like the glass ceiling in her chosen career.

I’m very much a lurker, however I struggled reading through this discussion knowing most women reading it would have a hard time participating in it. There’s a lot of misinformation, assumptions and generalisation here that is perpetuating very old school views on women. The lack of women feeling safe to chime in is well known, and these conversations are clues as to why. I think the opening statements (and some that followed) are what triggered some red flags for me, and if there were a talk on trauma in tech, I’d recommend removing gender from the conversation if you want it to be constructive and inclusive. A particularly damaging statement here is: > Around that time is when women left a lot of more technical fields - perhaps to chase the jocks? It might do good here to actually go do some research on what happened at that time. When computers first made their appearance, to combat it not being adopted and being perceived as complicated - women were used as cheap labour, were seen as temporary workers (since once you married you were expected to take on the home role), and it helped sell the idea that working with computers was easy - since women could do it. As the value and impact of software and the evolution of computers continued, it gained status, and its power and potential became evident. At that stage, the “seen-as” cheap, low level women workers started getting pushed out. As complex, powerful work was the man’s domain. Women who “should” eventually end up taking care of a home would not be considered for these more challenging roles, especially as the salaries and career ladders started evolving - at that time promotions and career ladders were not meant for women. To say that women just up and left the field is incorrect here, once it became a powerful tool, men took ownership of it. This is a deeply patriarchal issue, that we are still combatting today. The statement above also perpetuates the sexualisation of women, and their decision making processes. It’s coming across as saying women gravitate towards fields where the males are more attractive to them? They didn’t value careers or challenges, but wanted to chase men or rather chase “jocks”? And where were these supposed jocks worth chasing while women were working in tech? Even the notion of women only seeking “jocks” is damaging - I’d argue it’s damaging to both women and men. Even when we say “I didn’t mean to make this about women”, the sentiments expressed do make it about women, and our apparent “icks”. These things make it hard to participate in conversations, when right off the bat women need to come in to contradict statements and defend themselves. It’s extremely tiring, even when there isn’t any ill intent, the outcome stands. However, I am equally very encouraged by the many men in this thread that expressed concern on how this conversation went in relation to the gender discussion, as well as the many that recognise the damage people like Peterson are doing. Those messages DO help bring women into the conversation, it does help give a sense of safety in participating. This is not always the case across tech communities I’ve been a part of (speaking of alienation - perhaps consider the hidden alienation of women trying to take part in entire industries such as tech). I highly value and appreciate those advocating for women in these forums - so thank you to those who expressed this. And lastly on tech being chosen as a trauma response, I’d challenge you to also speak to a diverse set of people across careers and industries. You’ll find a fairly significant proportion in all areas have trauma. Tech is not unique in this, and while from the outside it is spoken about as “magic”, or that we are “magicians” - the truth is, it is not that wild or complex or mysterious. It should not be abusing your brain. If it is, perhaps you are not in the right flavour of tech or environment for you. It might be worth exploring different areas of tech, to find the parts that will rather be inspiring, challenging and motivating.

Hi Jozel, thanks very much for your input! I'm pretty sure I disagree with most of what you said, but that's okay! I appreciate critique. I'm going to meditate on some of the things you said though before responding though, as I don't disagree with all of it.

So, I definitely agree with you that by bringing up the demographics thing, I opened up a debate that entirely detracted from the main point of the thread, and potentially poisoned the waters for women that might have wanted to chime it - definitely a missed opportunity there. Thank you for chiming in! Regarding my disagreements, again, I'm going to go back to asking that people refrain from having that debate in this thread. Start a new debate in a new thread about women in tech. I'll put forth this nerd-alienation correlation thesis over there. We can debate it. Perhaps it has no basis in reality despite movies like The Nerds, etc. but I truly never intended for the moral of the message in this thread to get bogged down in that debate. Also, if anyone wants to reach out to me directly and change my mind about something but not in front of everyone, feel free to DM me!

I'm going to step in here as an Admin and declare this thread CLOSED. Any further posts here will be deleted (and any persistent offenders will have their accounts deactivated).