Ladies and gentlemen, if you’re somehow still not sure how the IT industry got its reputation as a bunch of smug, holier-than-thou assholes, look no further…
“The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a ‘mouse.’ There is no evidence that people want to use these things. The whole concept and attitude towards icons and hieroglyphs is actually counterrevolutionary — it’s a language that is hardly ‘user friendly’.” — John C. Dvorak, 1984
Maybe all of us hardcore types don’t remember (or would rather not admit) scoffing at the Mac/PARC interface model when it first appeared. Now it’s all but standard, industry-wide, even for many Linux distributions. Only now that sufficient time has passed that the nay-sayers mostly have anonymity can we look back and admit that it was a genuine improvement over the command line without the shame of having to admit that we, the super really smart people, were wrong.
I whole-heartedly agree that the smart super geeks are some of the most condescending people around when it comes to technology. We really do forget how hard some of the concepts we take for granted are, and then we make fun of people when they struggle with it. And it’s not just to novices, you see this happen on almost any help forum on the internet, be it for Microsoft Word or getting the latest Linux distro compiled from source. Geeks can be some of the most unhelpful people on the planet.
I’ve tried really hard to make sure I don’t end up like that, but I’m sure I’ve done it once in a while. If so, I truly apologize and don’t hesitate to call me out on it.
