We, The People:- "The Geek Squad"

Once, while an arranged marriage was being "arranged", the prospective groom sent the prospective bride a long list of questions. One of the questions in the questionnaire was "Do you consider yourself a geek?". :))

It's an interesting question. Mind you, the question is not "Are you a geek?" but whether you consider yourself one.

I'm sure there are many people who would want to consider themselves geeks. Its not necessary whether they are geeks. The point is, they consider themselves geeks :-). Being in the so called 'Hi-tech' industry, I happen to meet many people who think they're geeks or who do stuff which does make them geeks.

Here's a small list of such things which people do which makes them geeks (or look like one :-) )

1. MS Windows bashing and using Linux (and/or unconditionally praising Apple):

Bashing Windows is almost the first step towards showing yourself as the geek. Some people don't even know why other OS's might be better/worse than Windows. But all they see is Windows crash a few times and off they start on their journey to 'geekhood' :-).
I've met some people who crib about Windows source code not being public. But people should know that there's a ton of information about Windows available (either published by MS itself or by people who've reverse engineered it). Also, in the same breath people might praise Apple. Except maybe a few, most Apple policies are identical with those of Microsoft (sometimes maybe even worse). Yet, bashing MS and praising Apple seems geekish!!

BTW, I'm not against bashing Windows. It should only be for the right reasons.

2. Using terminals instead of IDEs, GUIs:

We all know or have heard of some spiritually inclined people who almost renounce everything they have and lead a life of austerity. There are some such people in the industry too. They won't like the latest released version of, say, MS Visual Studio or not even like newer plugins in Eclipse.
They usually have some best friends (forever): vi, emacs and gdb. So away you go IDEs and fancy GUIs. The graphical front-ends and fancy tools only lower the performance of an otherwise well oiled and perfectly working system.

3. Using text based internet:

This was awesome to know. Call me a poor engineer, but untill a few months ago, I didn't even know that we could see websites on a terminal window. But I came to know about it from someone and tried it. Sure, there are a zillion problems with it. But it works. And is awesome when it works :-).

The internet has revolutionised the world. But largely web browsers have been responsible for it. And browser wars have been a topic of great debate. Geeks are kinda beyond the browser wars. As long as they have a terminal window, they're happy :-).

4. Using other text based terminal softwares: pine, apt-get, yum, etc.

5. Debate between vi and emacs:
If you haven't been involved in one, definitely do it. Sure, just like me and most others, you don't know what all vi (or emacs) is capable of ;). But just start the debate for the heck of it. Its always cool to talk about clean interfaces, light-weight softwares, multiple buffers, etc.

6. Using geeky terms/phrases at unwanted places:
I've heard some amazing terms being used in some amazing situations. I think I was discussing newspapers with someone. And this person suddenly said, "I don't like newspaper XYZ. It's signal-to-noise ratio is very high". The argument may be right; but dude "not-the-time not-the-place" for these phrases. Similarly, I've heard many people use the words "latency" and "overhead" in some fairly unrequired circumstances.

Some of the steps might be completely genuine. People do like programming from the terminal using a minimal text processor. But there could be many who kinda do it in the enthusiasm of being in the "Geek Squad". And generally that enthusiasm is short-lived.
I too might be guilty of doing some these things! But then, I'm geek too... oops.. human .. human... I'm human too :-).