Triumph of the nerds Part I: Impressing their friends (Commentary)

I have always been a fan of the unusual siliness surrounding the IT industry. It's uncanny how an industry usually displayed as "gray" or "lifeless" can contain such witty quirks as naming your first program "Hello World" or the implementation of unusual (mainly useless) methods such as Android's isUserAGoat(). After watching this documentary it is no longer a mystery for me from where do these excentric outbursts come.

Nerds, the pariahs of academic life, those who take shelter in their own hobbies and interest from life's more serious aspects. They are responsible for the creation and accidental proliferation of one of the most substantial aspects of our daily lives in this day and age. Why do I call it "accidental"? We can see how the IT industry began with a bunch of hobyists toying around with machines and gadgets, mainly just having fun and, of course, in the process, as it is natural of any kind of playtime, their excentricities were impregnated in the very foundation of the IT industry. It is too late to change the silly nature of programming, just look at the pletora of so-called esoteric programming languages that spawn every other day. The IT industry is still a paradise for nerds and hobyists, and that's the way it has been growing, specially when it comes to the open source cult, but that's another topic entirely.

It is funny (and extremely moving, if not cheesy) how inspiration and the desire to have fun could give birth to such a big and economically monstruous industry, just by toying around with old mathematical concepts and a big ugly gray box. The history of modern computing is the history of childhood itself, and our child in question is just about to reach puberty and the changes to come, promise to be big.