When I read Wesner Moise's post on Asperger's Syndrome, I wasn't surprised. Many of the best software developers I've known share some of the traits associated with Asperger's Syndrome:
Face it, the vast, vast, vast majority of people are, well, average. If we were all dysfunctional, thereād be no human race.
I partially agree with this. Clearly computers and geek culture have become somewhat mainstream now, primarily because of the internet.
But that wasnāt true in the 60ās, 70ās or 80ās.. page through some of the articles in the Creative Computing archives (the top link) to see what I mean:
Off the top of my head, I can name Doctors and Accountants as two professions that contain people even āweirderā than programmers.
can name Doctors and Accountants as two professions that contain people even āweirderā than programmers.
Really? Do accountants go home and do a bunch of accounting for fun? Do doctors? Somehow I think thatās unlikely, but many programmers do exactly this.
Example. For better or worse, I spend nearly every waking hour (almost literally) in front of a computer. I have a hard time imagining accountants going home and cracking open their accounting ledger and sliding on their green visor, you know, āfor funā.
I think other professional fields can be asperger-y, but few as much as computer science.
Really? Do accountants go home and do a bunch of accounting for fun? Do doctors? Somehow I think thatās unlikely, but many programmers do exactly this.
Is this really a sign of Asperger?
Iāve met some really weird, incredibly introverted docs and accountants. Just because some programmers do it for fun doesnāt mean theyāre not socially average.
Not all programmers program after-hours, believe it or not.
I have a very hard time believing point #2 as being relevant. Ever met a woman who loves collecting something? Does that give her Aspergerās Syndrome, or something like it? Ever met someone who likes to work on cars? I have friends that can talk for hours about one of their favourite subjects. That makes them weird?
As for point #3, that qualifies as a serious problem. I canāt ever imagine any programmer ever being successful treating their job that literally. Code itself is totally abstract - itās not real, it lives as magnetic code in a hard drive, for goodness sake. Which is precisely why so many programmers are so inept - itās an incredibly abstract field.
#1 is too subjective to be useful. I once had a manager that couldnāt tell someoneās mood if you had a display on your forehead that scrolled your mood on it. That gives him Aspergerās?
Jeff,
Thanks for that link to Wesnerās post, itās interesting stuff. I recently linked to an online ātestā for autism which I found interesting due to the kind of questions that it asks and the results, at least for me, seemed quite plausible. I know several people who would score much more highly than I did and Iām sure that as one moves towards that end of the spectrum things get much more challenging, but I quite like where I am, even if it isnāt quite ānormalā. Personally I wouldnāt trade my focus and attention to detail for anything, least of all improved social skills 
Having been exposed to the academic world during graduate school and later, I think there are plenty of intelligent āweird and obsessiveā people outside of software. Any profession where being eccentric isnāt detrimental as long as youāre highly skilled is fair game: academia, art, music, etc.
āI once had a manager that couldnāt tell someoneās mood if you had a display on your forehead that scrolled your mood on it. That gives him Aspergerās?ā
Well, yes, possibly, who knows. I donāt follow your logic. Most people are normal, therefore everyone is normal?
Most of the coders I have worked with, including myself, have or do a lot of drugs. Perhaps, given that large quantities of illicit substances are consumed by the most educated folks and by their obviously affluent and highly educated children, perhaps one might be inclined to name ones affliction as a disorder, rather than the consequences of ones actions. This afford one less of a need for emotional response to emotionally charged stimuli, a reason foir ones eccentricity and cannot be so readily discerned by a pee-test ;p
I have to show your post to my wife. I was trying to explain to her the other day how despite my outward appearance of being a totally hip normal sociable likable suave person, I still have certain obsessive compulsive tendencies. Especially when at the computer.
Iām just glad my disorder is socially acceptable.
Bleh.
Iāve never believed this. Iāve met lots of perfectly capable, very nice, very normal programmers. Iāve also met lots of totally dysfunctional, socially inept managers, grocery store clerks, teachers, salespeople, police officers(!), etc.
This is just something that programmers bring up occasionally to make themselves feel better. Itās a social case of assessing oneās programming skills far above the norm, even though thatās probably not true.
Face it, the vast, vast, vast majority of people are, well, average. If we were all dysfunctional, thereād be no human race.
Particularly common interests are means of
transport (such as trains), computers, math
(particularly specific aspects, such as pi),
wikipedia, and dinosaurs.
Does anybody see a web site in there that looks out of place?
Heh, yeah, it [wikipedia] was removed.
To someone with Asperger Syndrome (AS), itās the rest of the world who are all slightly sickā¦ āour wayā seems so much more functional. Youāve all got this constant obsessing with social status and your position in various groups, inability to concentrate on one thing at at time, excessive show of emotion for the smallest things, and so on.
I am quite happy to have AS and wouldnāt want to have it any other way.
Well, yes, possibly, who knows. I donāt follow your logic. Most people are normal, therefore everyone is normal?
Well, yeah. The only truly average is, well, what a proper sample of the population is like.
Or do you determine āaverageā the egotistical way - what you consider your own normal behaviours to be?
I still donāt follow you. Consider tallness. Most people are around average height. A few people are very short or very tall. Do these short and tall people not exist? Perhaps they are just deluding themselves about their height?
This is a subject Iāll be writing on in some depth when I start my blog about mid-year.
The problem with this subject is that there are too many assumptions being made about people being abnormal based on arrogant assumption.
So called ānormalā people can be amazingly dysfunctional - incapable of holding interests other than those prescribed by society, holding that what you want to believe is more important than established facts, āfollowing the mobā, idolising low achievers, undervaluing real accomplishments, being exclusively consumers with no contribution to society and, hereās the clincher, forcing social dysfunction on other people that they cannot relate to by refusing to soc-i-a-l-i-se with them and cruelly ostracising them for their entire childhood for no good reason other than they themselves are too immature to relate to them in any meaningful way.
I think many people suspected of Aspergerās syndrome are actually just intelligent enough to have independent and creative thought and who take an interest in the world around them.
I suspect Aspergerās itself is, in this regard, something quite different to the popular image being put about.
Thatās me, baby! 
Face it, the vast, vast, vast majority of people are, well, average. If we were all dysfunctional, thereād be no human race.
I could argue that weāre well on the way to not being here anymore, thanks in large part to a lot of people being pretty dysfunctional :P. āAverageā and ādysfunctionalā are not necessarily disjunct.