I like tapping computers and making them do things, but working as a programmer and writing software people use (and talk about) a fair bit is quite exhausting sometimes.
For whatever reason, many software nerds tend to be sullenly adversarial by default, in my experience. They also seem to constantly be trying to talk down about things they don't like (often for arbitrary, highly-subjective reasons), instead of working to understand why they are the way they are, or indeed just quietly accepting them and moving on. Some nerds seem incapable or unwilling to understand that their particular hangups about a thing are not universal, and nor should they be; instead, they squat like a troll under the bridge of projects they've taken a disliking to, haranguing passersby that xyz is bad because [insert reason here]. This doesn't really benefit anyone, least of all the increasingly-frustrated person doing the haranguing.
That's not to say that criticism of a project is always illegitimate, by any means; but I would hope that software nerds (who often prize their own intelligence and logical thinking) would be canny enough to recognize the difference between constructive criticism, and the rather less helpful behavior described above. There's a big difference between saying "xyz SUCKS" and "xyz didn't fit my requirements because [...]".
So anyway this post is both a big "thank you" to the many nerds who are chill and easygoing and joyful, and an exhortation to others to free yourself of contemptuous, competitive attitudes, and re-embrace the intellectual curiosity that presumably once brought you into programming in the first place. If you want an excellent read on the topic, treat yourself to Contempt Culture, which is much better written than this post.
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