Do you know any programmers who exhibit these personality traits?

http://lispy.wordpress.com/2008/08/25/do-you-know-any-programmers-that-exhibit-these-personality-traits/

by raganwald • 18 years ago

95 67 18 years ago

lispy.wordpress.com

raganwald• 18 years ago

Reminds me of a story:

There was once a monk who would carry a mirror where ever he went. A priest noticed this one day and thought to himself “This monk must be so preoccupied with the way he looks that he has to carry that mirror all the time. He should not worry about the way he looks on the outside, it’s what’s inside that counts.” So the priest went up to the monk and asked “Why do you always carry that mirror?” thinking for sure this would prove his guilt.

The monk pulled the mirror from his bag and pointed it at the priest. Then he said “I use it in times of trouble. I look into it and it shows me the source of my problems as well as the solution to my problems.”

Where was I again? Oh yes, I do know someone just like the OP describes. I see his face whenever I look at this shiny piece of glass I carry.

dangrover• 18 years ago

There once was a monk who joined a monastery that mandated he only be allowed to speak two words every seven years.

After the first seven years, he said "cold floors."

After the next seven years, he said "bad food."

After the next seven years, he said "I quit."

The head of the monastery replied "Well, it's no surprise, you've done nothing but complain since you got here!"

(Sorry, couldn't resist)

jdavid3• 18 years ago

you should post them at comicwonder.com, i would like to hear you tell those cheesy jokes.

dangoldin• 18 years ago

Similar to the joke of the monastery where every year one monk is allowed to say a sentence.

The first year a monk stands up and says "The potatoes we get for dinner are too cold."

The second year another monk stands up and says "They taste fine to me."

The third year a monk stands up and says "I think we talk too much."

(Couldn't resist either)

nostrademons• 18 years ago

Heh. That's my dad. And to a lesser extent, myself. And a couple former bosses.

Honestly, I think it's genetic. A bunch of my dad's relatives are also like this, and from stories I've heard of him, I think my grandfather was too. If you're working with someone like this, it's best just to find some way to use his talents while keeping his weaknesses from being too disruptive (eg. send him off prototyping this pie-in-the-sky idea while everyone else handles the day-to-day minutiae of getting stuff done). If you are this person, find a profession where the strengths matter and the weaknesses don't. Like research, or tech startups.

It's possible to overcome these personality traits with enough effort, but the good goes away with the bad. I found my concentration plummeted as I became more socially adept, as did my ability to come up with crazy-off-the-wall solutions that nobody else thought of. And I notice a big, big performance penalty from multitasking, moreso than most people.

hhm2• 18 years ago

"It's possible to overcome these personality traits with enough effort, but the good goes away with the bad. I found my concentration plummeted as I became more socially adept, as did my ability to come up with crazy-off-the-wall solutions that nobody else thought of. And I notice a big, big performance penalty from multitasking, moreso than most people."

Exactly... I can work normally but it tires me a lot, after enough time. It's like needing a lot of continuous stimulation for my creative side, and if I ignore that for a while, I end paying that.

jdavid3• 18 years ago

i second these remarks. this guy seems to be explaining ME, and the more social i am, the harder it is to concentrate on code.

iamwil• 18 years ago

I hate to pipe up with a me too, but it's uncanny how I related to what you said.

I use to have my own office and pretty much just worked alone. While it's hard to slip into the zone, it's great when it happens for those magical 2 or 3 hours, and you do lots of work.

Now, I'm in a room with other people, and having to pay attention to everything else makes the zone slipping hard to do. Anyone know if self-hypnosis works here?

iigs• 18 years ago

Scary. I started to think "I wonder if I can tell who this is to see if they're talking about me." Meh paranoia. :)

If he can team up with a solid detail oriented checklist/calendar type person, he can be an awesome supplement to a team or company. This doesn’t always pan out due to personalities and politics, but when “the stars are aligned” things can really hum.

Fortunately my situation diverges with the spouse thing. My wife perfectly fits the detail oriented quote above. She laughs at me when I take a counter full of dishes and wash everything except one pan. I feel bad for his(?) "friend" that the situation hasn't worked out so well for them.

many5• 18 years ago

I'm actually recovering from paranoid schizophrenia. Slowly, I'm learning to simply analyze the noise. The signal is myth.

Not to be unkind. I live in rural kansas, where often you're funny to have called a thing by its right name.

Long day, I'm happy to be employed (finally!) but I'm broke, and my government check for being crazy doesn't come until the first.

Herring• 18 years ago

I guessed you were crazy

Just from looking at the way

You wrote your phrases

jraines• 18 years ago

This hits home for me as well. Are these traits really as symptomatic of ADHD as the commenters on the site are saying?

I have always disqualified myself because of this part:

Capable of working through entire books of information; does especially well with brief descriptions/examples followed by exercises. Capable of working for extended periods of time.

bestes2• 18 years ago

Yes, they are. Most people associate ADHD with hyperactivity, but there is an 'inattentive type' as well. It isn't as widely known because it mostly goes on it your head and people around you just think you get distracted easily. Being able to really get into some things for extended periods is characteristic.

blogimus• 18 years ago

On inability to multitask, see threads on three separate submissions to the same article on "The Myth of Multitasking."

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=253191

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=222451

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=232632

many5• 18 years ago

Mel, The Story of, Jr.

marcus• 18 years ago

Read http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/bipolar.htm for another description and some insights into your friend's psyche

swombat6• 18 years ago

I read this article some time ago, and while it makes some sense, I find its utility dubious. It seems to just provide an excuse for depression, and probably helps shove people into the "bad" direction rather than the light one. That's a shame, no?

learninglisp4• 18 years ago

I'd read that a long time ago before writing the post. It's even more scary now that I have some more "data points" in focus and on the table....

stcredzero• 18 years ago

Why does this link have a high proportion of incoherent comments? I'm not even to blame this time!

kungpaochicken• 18 years ago

For a moment I was wondering if they were talking about me! Hits too close to home..

swombat6• 18 years ago

Interesting.

What's missing, here, though, is the techniques to deal with this - yourself, without needing to be in an environment that condones your habits.

I've got most of those traits. Yet I survived 4 years in a large business consulting corporation, which is very unforgiving of this type of personality. And I'm now running my own business. Both of those activities are highly incompatible with the ADHD programmer mind.

How to do it? Well, there are many components to it. I should probably write them up on my blog one of these days. In fact, I've been planning to, and I probably will soon.

palish• 18 years ago

Please do, if you get the time.

hhm2• 18 years ago

I second that; please do, and post the blog post in HN!

papersmith2• 18 years ago

Could you post your URL here? I'd be really interested to subscribe.

swombat6• 18 years ago

http://inter-sections.net

Please note it will come in several posts, because there's several parts to that system.

(also, yeah, i know, I haven't posted in a while... though I intend to post something today)

I'll try to get started on it this week, then.

swombat6• 18 years ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=289014

Here you go.. First part of probably 6-10.

ryan-allen• 18 years ago

Check out the comment left by A.R.M. The INTP thing he's talking about is a scale on the Meyers Briggs Type Inventory, though I've never seen what he's referring to as 'extroverted intuition' exhibiting as ADD/ADHD symptoms, interesting...

danw• 18 years ago

I think he's mixing in a bit of 'Socionics', [0] which appears to be a Russian equiv to MBTI.

  [0] http://wikisocion.org/en/index.php?title=Socionics

indiejade• 18 years ago

INTP?

If so, one of the reasons he might have a hard time absorbing details given to him verbally: for a visual thinker, there's a point where spoken verbage (without the aide of note-taking) becomes overwhelming. It's why most of us loathe the telephone.

yummyfajitas• 18 years ago

I have many of these traits. I offer the following strong suggestion to others in this boat: treat these traits as character flaws and attempt to mitigate them.

About 2 years into grad school is where they started to really hurt me. I can't absorb many details verbally, and this never hurt me in classes. When doing research, however, many ideas concerning the details existed only in my mind or my adviser's mind. Mundane details also became extremely important, and finishing projects is crucial.

General suggestion: be active about organization.

Some specific suggestions:

Use source control for ALL projects, and follow "best practices." It's a matter of personal discipline as much as a way to go back in time.

Track your projects/tasks/subtasks: I like http://www.rememberthemilk.com , but a small notebook would probably be sufficient. Pick a task you are doing right now, focus on that 100%, cross it off when finished. Pick the next task, do that 100%.

For all projects, specify an end point, or at least a point at which one stops to reevaluate.

The good news: if I could improve myself in this regard, anyone can.

llimllib4• 18 years ago

I've found it helpful to make the connection in my mind that writing == working; if I'm not taking notes I will absolutely push many interesting things out of my mind and have to relearn them later. Forcing myself to jot down notes of things makes it much better.

jonmc12• 18 years ago

I have these traits as well - 'INTP from a mile away'.. Organization has really helped me over the years, and I would agree with comments above about social activity being stifling creatively (which basically means we live in our own little world).

Tip for organization: Do not try to organize yourself - pay a consultant to set up a system for you. Every time I tried to get organized by myself it turned into another project. 2 consultants and $3k later, I had all my papers in a filing system, and a matching file system on my HD. I was able to stick with it and improve over time until it was something that kept me fairly organized for the last 3 years.

Bookkeepers and accountants that have been a lifesaver to keep books in order as well.

llimllib4• 18 years ago

Since I always feel like I am the exact person described by these stories, I am hereby chalking it up to bias and relegating them to absolutely minimal relevance.

But yes, I think I'm like this person. Of course.

petercooper• 18 years ago

The people commenting on that post are scary. They're making out like these traits are uncommon or indicative of personality or mental problems, whereas they are extremely common and usually not detrimental at all.

skmurphy• 18 years ago

I agree, two good books on techniques for helping you manage issues related to ADD are

Driven To Distraction by Edward M. Hallowell http://www.amazon.com/Driven-Distraction-Recognizing-Attenti...

Healing ADD by Dr. Daniel Amen http://www.amazon.com/Healing-ADD-Breakthrough-Program-Allow...

elai• 18 years ago

I used to be like that, and I still am in many ways. The real reason?

He does not give a shit about the minutiae of life. He just doesn't care in an intrinsic level. He does not get satisfaction out of it. And that is a good thing in the long run, because those kind of tasks, as important as they may seem to some, really get you nowhere in life. Let the bureaucrats be bureaucrats and create things like java.

learninglisp4• 18 years ago

The irony is that it is easy for this sort of person to live only for the day, to not be materialistic, etc. All of the things that are in the Sermon on the Mount, but not practiced by the church at large.

This sort of person truly has meat and drink that other people know nothing about. Just watch out for the focus to shift and for the pendulum to swing the other way....

weiser• 18 years ago

To all those who share the personality traits of this "friend" of the blogger, how many of you believe your coding speed is slower than other hackers? From coding speed, I mean, say amount of time to finish a well defined programming project. Or to come up with an algorithm to solve a well defined problem and correctly implement it.

I obviously share many of these traits, and I know for a fact that I was slower than many of my peers in school, and later at work. I just had to spend more time doing the same amount of work. In the end though, I was able to produce similar results, albeit with more effort on my part.

ardit33• 18 years ago

I have to say the oposite. I am much faster, but just getting started, is the hardest part. There is always something else to do, procrastination is more fun that work.

learninglisp4• 18 years ago

What is needed is someone to give permission to ignore all the other details and just get one item done. The INTP is a commando problem solver killer... he just needs someone to "cover" for him so he can go in and tackle an objective.

bluishgreen• 18 years ago

Hit me very close to home, except for the organization part. I have a box for every last pin that I own. And this is how I cope with it.

Organize stuff around you. Make a hobby out of it, see beauty in organization. The things that are lying around you, and they way they lie around represent you. Any thing you do carries a bit of your personality and nothing does more easily so than clutter ( or the lack of it ). Think of the space around you as a painting - how would you want it to be? What this brings is clarity, clarity is a prerequsite for focus. Good cooks have clean kitchens, great programmers indent/refactor.

I am unaware of the passage of time mostly. You wake me, hand me a book and ask me after 10 hours how long it has been, I would say something like 2 hours. This is not good when you are working on a programming problem which has a deadline which doesnot permit degression. You have to do it now. To remind myself of the passage of time, I run a watch command on my linux terminal and make it play a sound every 5 minutes. At the end of every 5 minutes I mark a point in a paper. If I was working on the problem or was working on some GREATER cause. If I catch myself working for the greater good, I give myself a 0 for those 5 minutes, else a 1. When you monitor yourself like this, the mear act of monitoring and putting your awareness on how you deal with your time at a minute level makes you focus.

( This is like rescuetime, but I want the conscious act of marking on a paper, I think this is what helps me on a real time basis than the rescuetime report. Besides, even when I have my editor open, I might wander into thinking about the greater good. Only I can hold myself accountable in the end! )

When I want to not focus but be creative ( yes, they seem to be opposite states of mind, I know this from my own experience ): Say I am desiging a large project or want inspiration I go for a long walk into the evening sun( Leave your cell at home dammit ). The walking motion has something which someone will probably explain using neurology in 20 years, but for now, take it from me: for Creativity/Design walk. If I have a small scale design problem like how to frame this function I walk inside my room, in the form of 8 ( or infinity which ever catches your fancy ).

Caffine helps a lot, after a while the act of holding and sipping hot liquid takes over as a placebo, so you can experiment with various other less harmful stuff. ( yes, I can fool myself: its my gift and my curse ). Trance music helps too, The flow of most transmusic has a sense of urgency and it helps to absorb that into your psyche and show it in your action. I am currently using pandora for transmusic.

But the observation that the good will go with the bad is very true. I believe that this is an engineering trade off that has been built into some of our minds. Very much like risc vs cisc. We just need to learn how to consciously switch to the other mode. Because afterall the real strength lies in the "visionary streak".

I am still learning all these stuff myself, but someone said that if we had a word for teaching while learning and learning while teaching, the world would be a better place.

bestes2• 18 years ago

I would suggest seeing a psychiatrist. They might even be able to diagnose you from this post!

There are quite a few medications that might help, like Stratara, Wellbutrion, Ritalin, etc.

I'm not recommending this by any means (not being a doctor and all), but it's probably worth a look.

hooande• 18 years ago

Why is everyone treating these things like flaws? I think this describes a very capable and creative person. So what if he can't organize his desk or manage his bills? Those are things that need to be done by the majority of people so society doesn't break down. This guys sounds like one of the few people with the skills and passion to actually make society move FORWARD.

"Curing" these problems with drugs or psychiatry sounds like a horrible idea. This sounds like a pretty accurate description of me (as I'm sure it is for a lot of us). If you offered me the ability to trade whatever makes me special for the ability to do mundane things I would tell you to piss off 100 times in a row.

Good for that guy. I bet we'll all benefit from something he created due to his "character flaws".

many5• 18 years ago

Would it surpise us to realize that most famous figures in fact, were in life, bastards? Abandoning their wives and children to write about dancing girls or daisies, to claim the surf break speaks "nothingness," to drain the vitality of those around them, to kick dogs, snort cocaine, dehumanize their inspiration --- only to be rewarded by their coveted devotees? No, we all have character flaws, if only for exhibiting none apparent.

david927• 18 years ago

These traits are all the same thing: Perceiving (from the Jungian personality types). It's pretty common, he/she's just an extreme case.

To manage it, force the opposite. If this person is micro-managed, he/she can be a star. I've seen it happen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator

anthonyb• 18 years ago

More likely, they'll snap and stab your micro-manager in the face.

learninglisp4• 18 years ago

Heh heh. A collaborator would be better. Someone that could be excited about the right things and maybe steer a little via encouragement and reason. A truly anal micro-manager will simply humiliate the INTP.

The creative urge is a force of nature. Discipline is not antithetical to it... but control is pushing it. "Management" is right out. ;)

edw519• 18 years ago

Inability to absorb too many details verbally = personal fortitude to insist that others show a modium of discipline and occasionally write down what they want

Inability to multi-task = ability to focus

Inability to manage or even to “see” certain classes of “mundane” details = ability to distinguish the difference between and "issue" and a "detail"

Inability to organize = lack of the need to organize because of intense focus on the most important thing

Capable of working through entire books of information because of the ability to distinguish between "issues" and "details" (see above)

Capable of coming up with pretty good project ideas on his own = creativity

unusual degree of empathy = understands the "big picture"

Faults tend not to show up terribly badly but only to those tuned in to the "superficial", not the "important"

If he can team up with... = understands synergy

Is this guy sick? = a one eyed man in the land of the blind

josefresco• 18 years ago

Defensive - I'm not defensive, I just have alternate definitions for your criticisms.

Goladus• 18 years ago

Leaving dirty dishes lying around the apartment is not a superficial detail.

many5• 18 years ago

What if this described me to a (lower-cased) T? Would you want to read my current, second application for funding:

  http://listenlight.net/media/ycombinator_funding_application.pdf

It's been superficially updated, but it's a great fit for a 30ish, internet-efficient communicator, in especial regard to their own "what if" question.

For maximum efficiency, my user name is 'many' and my password is 'pass'. Go ahead and tailor the application, and I will run it by you this time next month. Cheers.

jordyhoyt• 18 years ago

"If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind." Kurt Vonnegut

thomasmallen2• 18 years ago

It's almost like he works a little differently from how the writer is accustomed. Autism! ADD! Medicate 'em!

It's the new witch hunt.

llimllib4• 18 years ago

(you got that it is the author, right?)

thomasmallen2• 18 years ago

Right, I mistyped my comment. It is pretty autobiographical.

KevBurnsJr• 18 years ago

Wall-E

calpaterson• 18 years ago

I have most of these problems, and some of the good points. I am "dyslexic" and I'm guessing that if your friend saw a late-1990's shrink, he would be "dyslexic" too.

I even did the cleaning thing today on my desk; some important papers get pushed together, others got binned. Things that don't really have a place are still lying around.

I find that when I work with organised people, I do very well.

Do you know any programmers who exhibit these personality traits?

Related Stories