A stereotype about programmers is that they like to think in black and white. Programmers like things to be good or bad, moral or immoral, responsible or irresponsible. Perhaps there is something romantic in the idea that programmers like to be as binary as the computers they program. Reductionist? Almost certainly, but hey, laugh at yourself a bit: we probably deserve to be made fun of from time to time.

Personally, I have no idea if the trope of the nuance-challenged programmer is accurate, but whether it’s a property of programmers or just humans behind a keyboard, the intensity with which we disagree with one another never ceases to amaze. Ask any group of working programmers what their least favorite programming language is, and there’s a pretty good chance things are going to get heated real fast. Why? What is it about programming that makes us feel so strongly that we are right and others are wrong, even when our experiences contradict those of tens or hundreds of thousands of others?

I think about that question a lot.

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