The autistic developer

It seems to me that developers are far more stubborn than any other phyllum of worker I have known. Not only do they get set in their ways, they get wedged in their ways so tightly and so inextricably, that any attempt to dislodge them will end in disaster.

Example: just try to get a developer - who writes his functions in camelcase - to write his functions in all lower case. So, instead of writing

function myFunction(){

you require that he writes:

function my_function(){

Try and tell a programmer to make that kind of a life-altering change, and then sit back. If you've never seen the Exorcist, you're about to see it now. You're about to see heads spinning 360 degrees and pea soup flying in every direction.

As a consequence of outbursts like these, developers get an awful rap. They are resistant to change. They're surly. They're arrogant. They have massive egos. But it's not really true. Few developers have big egos. Rather, they have fragile egos, if they have egos at all. The typical developer doesn't think massively of himself. He can barely make eye contact.

And therein lies the root of the problem. Developers are, for the most part, not arrogant and egotistic. Developers, for the most part, aren't even geeky nerds with low social skills.

Developers are, for the most part, autistic. The world of programming is a honeypot, attracting Aspies like they were flies.

Keep that in mind the next time you are about to launch into a tirade with some junior developer who floutes convention puts his braces on their own line.