Dr. Orbifold is facing a fundamental crisis of identity: is he is or is he ain’t a computer geek? (He didn’t phrase it quite that way — he was grammatical, for instance — but we all know what he meant.)
I can sympathise with him here, for I, too, am not quite sure where I would fit in to such a classification. I think I can say without fear of contradiction that I was, in fact, a computer geek back in high school; I admittedly didn’t last long in a Computer Science program at my undergraduate school, but the major that I switched into upon switching out of CS was principally concerned with abstract versions of CS problems, so I’m not sure how much of an improvement that was. (Except for, you know, that I liked it much better and didn’t have to do nearly as much — well, any — programming. Except on co-op work terms, but that’s another story.)
By most definitions, though, I’m really not a computer geek any more. Certainly I’m not a professional C.G. And yet! Like the good Doctor O., I maintain the delusion that the only thing between me and a successful career in computers is an effort of will. This is, of course, wrong.
Here’s the thing: I’m good with computers. While I lost the patience for serious programming sometime before my 20th birthday, I still spend a good chunk of my waking hours in front of them and am not inclined to complain about it. I like fiddling around, I can generally pick up the hows and whys of applications with minimal fuss, and I’m willing to be impressed by kewl new innovations. And I can still speak the language, for the most part.
So I think Orbifold’s question — Computer geek? (Y/N/Q)
— is ill-formed. It’s a false dichotomy; dividing the world into Computer Geeks who can immerse their minds in La Machine and make a good living doing so, and clooless noobs, is not a terribly accurate model of reality. Not everyone who really understands computers would make a good software developer. Not everyone who doesn’t understand computers is incapable of working with them. It’s more of a continuum; I’m probably something like 0.78 of a computer geek, and I’d imagine that Dr. Orbifold’s about the same.
Of course, math geek
is a fair cop, and I think the previous sentence made that distressingly clear.