[abalashov]

> I was just ahead of the curve.

I can relate to this. I was always moderately extroverted and sociable, but the irony has never ceased to flabbergast me that the very behaviours and interests for which nerds like me would have been stuffed into lockers and garbage cans (if I had dared to tell anyone in school that I was into computers) became, only a decade later, de rigueur for every young person.

I remember sitting in a coffee shop in 2003 (senior year of HS) trying to get kernel drivers for a PCMCIA 802.11b card to work on an ancient Compaq laptop, and being pointed, laughed at, and called -- by modern standards -- unconscienable names by a table of high schoolers nearby. It must have seemed so strange to them to see someone's head so deeply in a laptop.

And my goodness, I wouldn't have dared to confess that I talk to strangers in faraway places _online_. To be known to have substantive computer-based interactions would have branded one so profoundly socially unsuccessful, that one's very family name would be cursed with this prejudice for two generations. AIMing one's classmates on the family PC was one thing, but chatting online to likeminded peers in other countries? Why, that was radiantly gay!

But literally a few years later, I can't get anyone to make eye contact and they frequently plough into me because their heads are buried in their phones, texting people they never see.

A'ight.

[Imustaskforhelp]

Trust me I am in 2025 and I am in senior high school and whenever I try to talk about open source or linux or anything others. Friends have point blank said that they aren't interested in it. (only one friend showed interest/shows interests at times)

the most ironical part is that they want to become software engineers for just the money aspect but fundamentally they really don't know anything about the field or are even interested to talk about.

So in a sense this still happens :) This happened so much that I had to cut off my friends because the only thing that they were interested in talking about were woman or insta shorts and very few intellectual discussion could happen (atleast with that friend group and I would consider that friend group to be more intellectual among other peers but for some reason they just never wanted to discuss intellectual topics other than some very few occasions, mostly just shitposting being honest and I didn't enjoy the shit posting aspect that much if I am being honest as well)

[RugnirViking]

For what its worth, the field does have something of an immune response to those sorts of people (software engineers only in it for the money). You often hear a lot of nonsense online about leetcode interviews or whatever, but most of my jobs have asked questions like "do you have a computer at home? what kind?" and "have you ever used linux?" or "tell me about some hobby projects you have done, its okay if it was a long time ago" and used the responses to try and figure out if you were interested in computers. Ive often had bosses talk about how its been much more successful for them to train someone interested or give them space to learn themselves rather than hire someone checked out who has only credentials. If anything, thats the entire risk that hiring is trying to avoid.

I get it a little less now, but perhaps thats because i'm starting to have a good amount of experience to talk about - and getting questions more like "talk about a project that you thought was going to fail. What happened? did you do anything? why?" to try the same thing but with management concepts. They want to see that you're interested.

Some of these were ten years ago, some in 2025.

[barbs]

Hah! I had a very similar thought enter mind recently. I used to get shamed for being on screens too much, now the situation seems to have flipped. Who's the nerd now??

Also just an aside - I love your writing style.