This post is meant to be
humorous and in no way intended to seriously
insult or
offend anyone, including any large
corporation whose
software gets mentioned. It is mainly meant to be lighthearted, and making fun of only myself.
I imagine it's
easier for some than for others, especially when those "some" are
male. After all, some people set out to become
geeks at a very young age. They take
programming in junior high, or high school, or worse, teach themselves it because the school doesn't offer it (which in my
opinion is enough by itself, at least if they took it at school it could be considered a matter of
curiosity), they try
hacking, they build their own
computers (although I have heard this called the definition of a "
nerd", so who knows), but more importantly, they embrace geekdom with open arms, and an eager smile.
These people you can spot a mile away as "geeks". They have a certain look about them (
scruffy,
glasses, long hair, often coupled with a pungent
odor, etc), they have certain mannerisms (socially
inept,
clumsy, etc.), they just have an overall
aura that screams, "I am a geek!".
What about those who quietly
find themselves slipping into geekdom, though? They
exist, trust me, I am one of them.
It starts off
innocently enough, and for many people it's
HTML. You learn it because "web pages are really cool". It's something you can use to
impress people, something you can do to maybe earn a couple extra dollars here and there, something you can do to just play with and be proud of yourself for learning. Then you find yourself noticing the limitations of HTML (this in itself should send up warning flags that you are on your way), and learn
CSS, or maybe
JavaScript, maybe some
VBScript, maybe even
ASP or
PERL or something more complicated. At this point you may still be safe, since technically this makes you a "
Web Developer", and as long as you are still concerned about the "
pretty stuff",
graphics, layout, etc, you may be reasonably
sheltered, especially if you are being
paid to learn the aforementioned
technologies. (Also note: if your ISP is
AOL, it doesn't matter if you could solve world hunger with your
coding skills, you will NEVER be a geek, switch ISP's, and you're in
trouble, though.)
So you've learned all these web
languages, and you've started to notice your
hair getting longer and scragglier. Are you becoming a geek?
Ask yourself a few basic
questions:
What do I look at first, the
content of a
web page or its
source code?
Can I tell without looking at the source code what 3rd party tool created the page (
withOUT it being because that's the one you once used yourself)?
Do I
scoff at this page created with
FrontPage or
Dreamweaver for being done "the easy way"?
Do you notice other people's coding errors because you already have script
debugging installed on your
machine?
Do you spend more time checking your page for errors in
Netscape than errors in
spelling?
If you answered
yes to a majority of these
questions, unfortunately you're on your way to becoming a geek. However, you're still only a "Web Developer", and these could also be accounted for by saying you're a "
Conscientious Web Developer".
But then the
bug hits. Suddenly you're realizing that your web pages can't do
much, so you learn about
databases. Before you know it, you dream about
normalization and
primary keys, and you're starting to get into trouble.
And it gets
worse. Now you don't want to just be able to write web pages, so you learn
Visual Basic. This is alright, since it's not really a "
programming language" and you could get away with never really doing anything more than minor coding, plus it's really only that
VBScript you learned a while ago,
right? That's not so bad.
Suddenly you find yourself taking
C and
C++. Maybe you heard that
Java would be easier to learn after this and wanted to add Java to your bag of
web tricks. However, before you know it you're having nightmares about being chased by pointers and attacked by looping
control structures. At this point I have some bad news for you, you are beyond the
point of no return. There is nothing you can do at this point, no matter how much you dig in your heels, and fight the
impending doom that is geekdom. You are a geek.
The
realization hit me a couple months ago, after a few years of just dabbling with web coding, as I found myself answering questions for other people that I KNOW were just not easy. A strange queasy feeling came over me, and I started to
panic. If you
realize it before you've crossed that point of no return, you can sometimes stop it, although doing so is often on par with stopping a stampeding herd of elephants coming your way, but at least it IS possible. Once you have
inadvertently crossed that line your options are highly limited. You can a)
embrace it or (Note: approach most effective for
females) b) do what I did, put on a low-cut shirt, wear your
contact lenses, and go out to the
bar, get
hit on by as many guys as possible, anything to remind yourself that you're capable of NOT being a
geek! Just remember that when you get home, you can't
forget to check your
email before you go to
bed.