The Nerd Handbook

http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2007/11/11/the_nerd_handbook.html

by ironkeith • 17 years ago

247 55 17 years ago

Oh yes. Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes.

The interesting thing is that my wife has touches of nerdiness, and this article pins most of them. None of them are as clearly defined or extreme, but each is recognisable.

And this article has helped her understand a few things she formerly hadn't articulated.

For us - spot on. Thank you.

nathanwdavis• 17 years ago

I sent the link to my wife before I even finished the article.

Should be good for my marriage - I think.

GrandMasterBirt• 17 years ago

Exact same thing happened to me. I get an IM "lets go to the movies where its dark and damp and you can be in your cave and shit, bring a laptop"

trickjarrett• 17 years ago

I'm a half-breed. I'm nerdy but I was blessed with more social skills and only half-as-much stubbornness. But I love the puzzles, the high, etc.

My only fear is my fiancee discovering that 'cool' does actually mean I wasn't listening.

peregrine• 17 years ago

I was thinking about sending this to my GF till I read that line. Now I will just post it to facebook and assume she read it.

angusgr• 17 years ago

I showed this post to my girlfriend a while ago, and there was a lot of "OMG this is you".

Not exactly the same as me (same as RiderOfGiraffes' comment), but I think it helped her understand a lot of my day to day nerdiness.

Recommended if you're in a live-in relationship with someone not quite as nerdy as you. :).

jazzychad2• 17 years ago

> your nerd has carefully selected a monospace typeface, which he avidly uses to manipulate the world deftly via a command line interface while the rest fumble around with a mouse.

Bingo. I work at a command line all day, and even use the "Terminal" GMail theme with plain-text formatting. I'm glad someone else recognizes that monospaced fonts are a hallmark of nerds.

pyre• 17 years ago

> I work at a command line all day, and even use the "Terminal" GMail theme with plain-text formatting.

I work at a command-line all day but the 'Terminal' GMail theme makes my eyes bleed. :(

gurraman• 17 years ago

I too work at a command-line all day. mutt plays nicely with the terminal. You can even tweak it to your heart's desire :)

jazzychad2• 17 years ago

Well, my other email client of choice is pine (I set it to green text on black). The GMail theme was a welcome surprise. The black screen is easier on the eyes at night. Dunno, to each his own :)

celoyd2• 17 years ago

I’m a nerd who’s done some typography, and I hate monospace. The distinctive thing here is that nerds are about language, and the good linguistic interfaces to the machine are mainly monospaced just by historical accident. It’s not like we’d invent it over again if we hadn’t thought of it until now.

Now that it’s established, of course, we’re all pretty much locked in. Most of the text on my screen right now is monospaced. I mean, good luck writing code in a proportional font: pretty much every language and text editor assumes you can align with spaces, tiny punctuation looks huge, etc.

But saying that monospace is inherently nerdy is like saying that, say, slashes are inherently path separators.

thaumaturgy• 17 years ago

Depends on the kind of nerd. I wish I were a typography nerd, it's one of my weaknesses. On the other hand, I actually have written more than my fair share of COBOL74 on an old greenscreen, and if I had to do that in a beautiful typographical font, I would have killed someone.

Monospace isn't entirely an accident.

IsaacSchlueter• 17 years ago

In my Windows days, I used SciTE, and coded all day long in Tahoma. It was a dream. I think it also shaped a big part of why I don't ever try to "line up" code with spaces, favoring logical indentation with tabs instead.

iTerm and TextMate can't handle variable-width fonts, which makes me sad. At least I get my pointy serifs with CentSchBook Mono, though.

jcapote• 17 years ago

"but your nerd would prefer to hide in his cave for hours on end chasing The High" - That's a beautifully succinct way to label that state of consciousness we all strive to attain throughout our day.

Mongoose• 17 years ago

An oldie, but a goodie. Rands is great. Following his blog and tweets proves that there can be managerial whimsy.

His site's glossary is worth a skim: http://www.randsinrepose.com/glossary_alpha.html

Collaboration: A word used to convince you to work with people you'd rather avoid.

Office: The square box where you live. Some models come with windows.

p_h• 17 years ago

This is genius

araneae• 17 years ago

I don't understand how nerds could date non-nerds. But that's just me ^-^.

Deestan• 17 years ago

I first met my wife at a getting-drunk-on-tequila party, if that answers your question. :)

stcredzero2• 17 years ago

My girlfriend is also a nerd, but she's an Alt-Folky/Literary nerd. She's as different from me as we both are to mainstream people. We are both shy in many ways, though. It's kind of a miracle we got it together at all.

thewileyone2• 17 years ago

If you got charisma and charm, it's a non-factor. Wait, maybe I'm only part nerd ... :D

psyklic• 17 years ago

I disagree with the author that a nerd lives to build things -- rather, a nerd is just really into non-mainstream stuff that the public understands is important but isn't for them.

derefr2• 17 years ago

Traditionally, that's called a geek. There is in fact a distinction.

dunstad• 17 years ago

Not in the popularly accepted definitions.

xayide• 17 years ago

I defined this distinction to an older relative about a year ago (right after I apologized for "geeking" all over her shiny new coffee maker, which I had taken apart and put back together). To illustrate, I used music. A music nerd knows which years qualify as classical or baroque and which composers wrote what. A music geek tunes their own piano.

Osmose• 17 years ago

Forgive me if I'm overlooking some heavy sarcasm, but I'm genuinely surprised. I would have thought more people would have objected to the stereotypes and generalizations that plague this article.

I don't know the writer's background, so I can't figure out if this is a "non-technie looking in" or "techie explaining to the world" post. Neither is an excuse to assume that the hypothetical nerd has control issues, a cave, or an obsession with gathering knowledge.

I dearly hope no one attempts to interact with me based on this.

dkokelley• 17 years ago

I believe the piece is intended as informative satire. Yes there are many aspects that will not apply to every nerd. Also, from what I can tell the author is writing as an insider explaining nerds to the world.

donaq2• 17 years ago

Uh, it gets me spot-on in a lot of cases. The reason why stereotypes exist is because they're often true.

jimbokun• 17 years ago

"techie explaining to the world"

He explicitly uses the first person to make clear he is a nerd multiple times.

zby• 17 years ago

Isn't nerd the name of the stereotype? A hypothetical nerd has control issues etc. by definition - why would anyone call someone a nerd if he did not think the other one has nerd traits?

rudin• 17 years ago

The section "Your nerd has built an annoyingly efficient relevancy engine in his head." should be recast as "Expect social incompetence and rudeness from your nerd". This is not something people will accept or should accept. Nerds have to realize that when they do something like this they are performing a trade-off. As outcasts, they had to lower their need for social contact. The discrepancy between their lowered needs and the need of others is what causes these conflicts.

derefr2• 17 years ago

Eh. There are social signals that are important, and then there are ones that we should really be able to strip away once we've mutually acknowledged that we're "switching protocol" to a version of socializing that doesn't require it. Many things can be included in this, from saying "god bless you" when someone sneezes, to buying one another birthday presents. As long as you realize that you've already communicated the knowledge that the social signaling mechanism was supposed to convey, you can drop the signal itself.

Of course, this is for the nerds who tend to over-analyze social situations for fear of screwing them up; there are also the kind who just have no idea what is considered "normal" behavior in the first place, so they don't have enough information to even choose to obey or disobey social mores. In the latter case, I'd advise "critical people-watching" to figure that kind of thing out; your nerd will then likely transition to the over-analyzing type once they have this large, novel corpus to pattern-recognize over.

stcredzero2• 17 years ago

As outcasts, they had to lower their need for social contact.

In the days of my youth, nerds often were trapped in a high-school society that had no need for them at all, other than as targets. Many nerds only recognize the grown-up version of society as a continuation of this. To many, it's all just a system of oppression. The "cave" that they construct around them at work is just a refuge in the storm.

Note the highly escapist nature of many nerd pastimes. For many, programming is itself of of these.

I think the nurturing of a nerd to sociability has to do with power relationships. I think the problem is releasing a nerd from his enclosed "cave" into a larger world of social interaction, without unleashing his/her potential for tyranny. It's like contacting a race of fierce equestrienne nomads.

Do: Open trade relations. Mutual exchange & benefit! Gradually.

Don't: Open a breach in the wall and have the barbarian hordes pour through. (The charge can happen in both directions!)

RiderOfGiraffes5• 17 years ago

The article is about understanding your nerd, and what it says is true. You will get social incompetence and rudeness from your nerd, whether or not you believe it to be acceptable.

This article is a step towards understanding not just by people of nerds, but by nerds of themselves. I was 17 when someone recognised these aspects f the nerd in me, and made me see them myself. Net result was that I made it a project to make myself socially capable.

In the main I succeeded, although there are still occasions when I slip and fall, but it was recognising and accepting the truth that made it possible to change.

The article is right as it stands, as indeed you actually acknowledge when you say "Nerds have to realize ... they are performing a trade-off."

azharcs• 17 years ago

Seriously, I really miss HN's quality. A year ago when articles like these wouldn't even reach the first page, now it is a top story.

adbachman• 17 years ago

Really? It was on the front page two years ago (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=78409).

There must have been a quality bump somewhere around a year ago.

winter_blue• 17 years ago

This article seems like a joke to me.

chacha102• 17 years ago

I really don't think it is a joke. I know a lot of people who do a lot of what is talked about. For the most part, a lot in the article is true.

While it may talk about a few points in a joke-like manner, it is still a pretty realistic article.

scootklein• 17 years ago

if you think it's a joke you aren't like the rest of the people (like me) who upvoted it because they were smiling and shaking their head in disbelief at how well the author quantified their behavior habits

thewileyone2• 17 years ago

I sent this article and the article, "Nerd and his cave", to my wife a couple of months back. She understands me completely now and is so much better at leaving me alone to feed my inner nerd.

motters• 17 years ago

I thought this article was a rather silly cliche. Nerd cave?

Often so-called "nerds" are just smart people working on projects which are too advanced or too abstract for most people to grok. And no, it's not always about computers either. You can find the same intellectual focus amongst many people - architects, surgeons, lawyers, artists, and so on.

RiderOfGiraffes5• 17 years ago

It sounds to me like you are not, and do not know, any true "nerds." This article rang so many bells with me, my wife, my colleagues at work, and others here on HN, that it seems you have not experienced "nerd-dom".

The "nerd cave" takes many forms, but for those of us who know many nerds it is instantly recognisable. Yes, there are non-computer nerds, but they have equivalent forms. Yes, I know a surgeon and several artists who don't (significantly) use computers, and some of them exhibit most of the characteristics described. The description is close enough that already I've been thanked by a husband who now better understands his artist-nerd wife.

Perhaps you are unable to match the description given against a superficially different instance, or perhaps you really just don't know any nerds, but I believe you are mistaken.

If you believe the article to be silly, then perhaps you should just be relieved that you aren't a nerd.

pushingbits2• 17 years ago

Of course all true Scotsmen... errr... I mean all true nerds are exactly like the article describes.

This is really just semantics. Your definition of "nerd" apparently includes a dorkiness clause and a set of very specific idiosyncrasies. For me, a nerd is just someone who's extremely competent (or trying hard to become extremely competent) at some brainy craft.

evilslut82• 17 years ago

Genius!! I hope my gf will read it properly :)

wwalker3• 17 years ago

Do you really have to have severe ADD to be a nerd? I'm super-nerdy by any measure, but have a very long attention span. Most nerds I know are similar -- that's how those ambitious nerd projects actually get finished.

The guys with the long line of abandoned projects behind them aren't true nerds, they're just dilettantes. Like raccoons, compelled to collect shiny things, but never doing anything useful with them.

I also watch one TV show at a time (OK maybe two, so I can avoid commercials), read one book at a time, and don't switch conversational topics in mid-sentence. Can non-ADD nerds like me get any props on the Internet, or are we hopelessly outnumbered?

Freebytes• 17 years ago

The ADD stems from ignoring all topics that are not relevant to your current project. It appears to be ADD to most people, but in reality, it is simply ignoring irrelevance. "What do you think of the green dress?" "That is nice." "What about blue?" "Yeah, that is good." "What did I just ask?" "Uh...." "You have some kind of ADD!"

c00p3r• 17 years ago

Too much scores for a bunch of generalizations.

Just try to :,$s/your nerd/kid with autism/g and :,$s/project/game/g

Estragon• 17 years ago

I get the impression this was written more to stroke a nerd audience than to inform a nerd-SO audience. :)

The Nerd Handbook

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