See the above picture? That’s what have been annoying many people, specially between programmers. We have been trolling many people into a cult and a fashion to make everybody look like us. We made it to a point that whenever we see a (relatively) weird-looking person, we know he’s a programmer. We even call ourselves nerds.

We constantly are in war for our text editors (while we know Emacs is superior), we constantly talk about our operating systems, we constantly are looking to compute and write small programs, we bang about not having a life or not being able to live a normal day, and we pressure ourselves to show everybody that we’re familiar with computers.

For the last 3 or 4 years, I’ve been avoiding to call myself a programmer and emphasize that I just know how to code. I’ve been avoiding the cult we’re in for a long time now and I hope I succeed.

A programmer should have a life. Instead of banging about how fucked up we are, we should instead show off how our lives are keep becoming better. Instead of joking about how anti-social we are, we should show off what a great family we built.

Few days ago, Kev Quirk shared this picture (of a tweet) and shared his thoughts:

This is what’s wrong with the tech industry. The expectation that one should give their free time *EVERY DAY* or you’re somehow “not passionate”.

My response to that would be fuck you and your shitty fucking culture.

My kids and family are FAR more important to me than your ridiculous expectations.

I fully agree. We should stop participating in this cult and start caring about ourselves. Nothing is wrong about caring about ourselves. Nothing is wrong about having a good night sleep. Nothing is wrong to take our life as serious as our job.

It’s OK to care about politics and environment and other important matters. We’re not robots built to do certain jobs. Just because we have passion, talent, and skills for creating and working with programs, doesn’t mean we should sacrifice everything we have for it.