Abstract Deviance

In the face of all this AlphaGeek bullshit that’s floating around the crapoblogosphere, it seemed to me that since proposing developer labels is so cool right now the time had come to coin a new phrase, something to safeguard the self-esteem of those of us who know with a dreadful certainty that we don’t fit the profile of the much-vaunted AlphaGeek. Since I needed some way to relieve my chronic boredom anyway I took it upon myself to come up with something, and drawing on my unparalleled lack of imagination, I hereby usher into existence the concept of the OmegaGeek.

As OmegaGeeks we are the antithesis of our alpha brethren: we don’t run at the head of the pack, we dawdle along behind and smell the roses. Sometimes we yell disparaging remarks from the back of the class, but for the most part our intentions are good. We love software development, but it’s not our religion; we got into this because it’s fun, and consider ourselves lucky to have gotten away with doing it for this long. Our sense of self-worth isn’t based on our Code Project articles. We’ve been into the whole ALT.NET thing for a while, but not because it’s cool to be different, just because it pisses us off when people tell us how we should be doing things; when ALT.NET becomes “mainstream” we’ll start advocating the use of datasets and post about it on our blogs, just to annoy software architects. We use new languages and frameworks because it makes our daily grind more amusing, and because we want to make life miserable for the maintenance coders who come along after we’ve moved on. We go to community events, drink all the beer and hit on the geek girls. Our spare time isn’t all spent “reading books, going to conferences, and tinkering” – sometimes we spend it playing WoW, downloading porn or watching old sci-fi TV series. Sometimes we even get away from our computers altogether and concentrate on getting laid.