Response to "Programming Can Ruin Your Life" or The Benefits of Being A Programmer

First, in order to understand my post, you have to be a programmer and have read Programming Can Ruin Your Life on devizen.

Finished reading? Good. Quick summary: Being a programmer makes you socially handicapped.

What about the benefits? Surely there are many, and I think they far outweigh the drawbacks. I'm not a big fan of long, paragraph style posts so I'm going to make a list. Besides, programmers prefer lists.

1. We scratch our OCD itch. Nearly all programmers seem to have some form of OCD. We are obsessed with our work, oftentimes choosing to finish a database wrapper instead of sleeping. In the real world, nothing is perfect. This pisses us off! In the wonderful world of 0's and 1's, we can write specific code to do specific tasks. Insert data into a database? Done! Email customers after they sign up? Easy! We are very task oriented and our OCD requires us to know 100% that we can cross off this item on our to-do list. Try doing that in political science or psychology.
   
   
2. We see details others don't. Minor features on clothing, slight color differences, different scents. Everything is unique to us because we are trained to see everything in black and white, 0's and 1's. A picture frame isn't "almost" straight. There is no such thing. What's the benefit of this? We can admire nature and enjoy the smallest things in life.
   
   
3. We see beauty in structure. No one can argue this one. Programmers reverse engineer everything in their heads. We look at a building and immediately think of all the components (as well as wonder what kind of network they have set up and if their security policies are any good). This is especially when we look at software, which also goes back to number 2. Everything has a system and we spend more time thinking about how something came to be rather than just taking it for granted.
   
   
4. We can take a huge project and cut it down into bite-sized tasks. We face this every day. Someone wants an application to manage a multi-national corporation with 2,000 employees. Of course, that someone also has no idea about the details of the system or what it exactly has to do. That's our job and we are damn good at it! Before you know it we'll have a giant to-do list with a feature by feature breakdown. Let's see you philosophy majors do that.
   
   
5. We are better at managing things. Checkbooks, to-do lists, shopping lists, home improvement projects, bills. You name it and we'll name a website that we use to track, analyze, and complete it. We are organization freaks when it comes to data (most of us, however, are not so good at keeping our desks clean).
   
   
6. We see life as one giant application. Present us with a problem and you'll usually get a straightforward answer with detailed steps to take. Now, if you are a guy, you realize this can sometimes be a bad thing, since most women aren't asking you a question to find a solution, they just want to talk (We of course, will never understand this - just stop trying.)
   
   
7. We are not afraid of failure. Why? Because we fail daily. In fact, usually dozens of times per day. Half our day is spent trying something, and the other half is spend fixing the mistakes we made. We know they happen and focus more on solving the problem than getting it right the first time. Iterate, iterate, iterate!
   
   
8. We can type without looking down. And we won't hesitate to laugh if you can't. But seriously, we take pride in our intimate knowledge of the tools we use, and spent a lot of time finding ways to be more productive. This spills into other sectors of our lives, which is a very good thing. As programmers we are trained to look at something and try to figure out a better way of doing it (which is why there are a billion social networking sites, and a quarter million of any other type of website out there).
   
   
9. We aren't afraid of trying something new. We do this every day. Being involved with technology requires us to learn a new tool, programming language, or standard practically every week. While some of us cherish our programming language more than our ability to walk, we are generally open to learning something new to improve our lives. This is also why we are so fascinated with new gadgets. Programmers get tired of things very quickly, so anything new and exciting is going to make our hearts race. Marry a programmer and everything in your house will always be cutting-edge (WiFi refrigerator with email notifications, anyone?)
   
   
10. We can make anyone seem stupid when it comes to computer. Oh you want to do that with your computer? *click* *click* *enter*. There you go! To people who aren't that familiar with computers, that's Merlin style magic! Ok we are actually seen as geeks but this list had to have 10 items (there's the OCD again)