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.<p>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.<p>I dearly hope no one attempts to interact with me based on this.
Oh yes. Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes.<p>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.<p>And this article has helped her understand a few things she formerly hadn't articulated.<p>For us - spot on. Thank you.
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.
"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.
An oldie, but a goodie. Rands is great. Following his blog and tweets proves that there can be managerial whimsy.<p>His site's glossary is worth a skim: <a href="http://www.randsinrepose.com/glossary_alpha.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.randsinrepose.com/glossary_alpha.html</a><p><i>Collaboration: A word used to convince you to work with people you'd rather avoid.</i><p><i>Office: The square box where you live. Some models come with windows.</i>
> 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.<p>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.
I thought this article was a rather silly cliche. Nerd cave?<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>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?
I showed this post to my girlfriend a while ago, and there was a lot of "OMG this is you".<p>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.<p>Recommended if you're in a live-in relationship with someone not quite as nerdy as you. :).
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.<p>My only fear is my fiancee discovering that 'cool' does actually mean I wasn't listening.
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.
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.