What force gives programmers everywhere “freedom from decency”?
Wen | Tao Yuting
In today’s society, engineers often represent intellectual level and social status. When ordinary people hear this title, they are greeted with admiration:
But there is one group of engineers who, while truly advanced, rarely enjoy the same social benefits as their peers: programmers.
Unlike the bright image of engineers, most people think of programmers more as a group of nerds with dry tastes than as an elite group with high intelligence and high income. The Internet is full of jokes that make fun of programmers and have become a cultural phenomenon:
Objectively speaking, these assessments are unfair. As a senior technical personnel, most of the programmers can achieve a monthly income of more than ten thousand yuan, no less than other engineers or occupations. Most people who laugh at programmers are far less likely to achieve a hierarchy reversal.
By the “Geek Institute” released in 2016 programmer salary statistics
But it’s not hard to see why the programmer community is being ridiculed. The most important factor is that they wear clothes that do not match their income and social status.
And the phenomenon is not unique to China: the uniform of Silicon Valley’s tech elite has already caught the attention of Americans.
Network summary of the United States silicon Valley elite daily dress
Us drama “Silicon Valley” (2014) in the programmer image
Why are programmers so poorly dressed? How did this industry culture come into being?
Programmers, once decent people
The mundane appearance of a programmer is hardly reminiscent of an engineer with a halo. Since the industrial revolution, thanks to the wealth brought by technological innovation, engineers are no longer as well-dressed as their lower-middle class counterparts.
In the stratified normal society, the social aesthetic trend is often upward. The newly rich engineers were soon as well dressed as the aristocrats of the past, and their gentry gave politicians an run for their money.
Michael Faraday, inventor of the electric generator, for example, was born into a humble family but is photographed in formal dress:
Werner von Siemens, the famous electrical engineer who had come from a farming family and only graduated from high school, was always dressed as an upper-class man:
William Juert Gladstone, the British prime minister of the same period and the son of a wealthy merchant family, dressed in a style so similar to Faraday and Siemens that it is hard to see any class differences:
Even in the US, the birthplace of the computer, early programmers (or software engineers) dressed in a decidedly upper-class fashion.
Since computer programs were designed on the basis of mathematical logic, most of the earliest software developers were mathematicians. They come from major universities in the United States, whose colleges have a long history, and both teachers and students are accustomed to wearing formal clothes.
An old photo of Stanford University in 1939
Princeton University in the 1950s, most of the teachers and students wear suits to class. This cozy style is known as the Ivy League style and has had a major influence on mainstream American suit culture/Photo: LIFE
As a result, early programmers were well-dressed during their time, and never looked down upon by entrepreneurs, politicians, or financiers.
Known as the “father of computer” Princeton University professor John von Neumann dressed in formal dress standing in front of the computer
Known as the “father of artificial intelligence” mathematician John McCarthy is also a suit
How can decent people “degenerate”
However, it is precisely because of the close connection between programmers and universities that the dress culture of programmers has taken a historic turn.
In the mid-1960s, with the rise of opposition to the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, and the hippie movement, college culture in Europe and the United States was transformed.
In particular, in the hippie movement, which was dominated by college students, students rebelled against the established “traditional order” and regarded the neat and decent gentlemanly style in the traditional dress system as an oppression of individuality and freedom. In their place, casual casual wear and whimsical outfits that embody pop culture rose dramatically in the modern fashion system.
The student movement had a profound impact on college dress culture, basically destroying the formal dress custom in western universities. Today, few students show up to class in a suit, and even the teachers mostly wear casual clothes when lecturing:
Fortunately, for more traditional industries, where professional dress has established industry conventions, the influence of college fashion is limited. Even Ivy League-educated hippies who became lawyers, doctors or business elites were expected to wear whatever they wanted.
Two hippies at Yale Law School in the early 1970s
However, computer programming is a new industry closely related to the forefront of college research, and there is no professional dress tradition, so it gives an opportunity to the new college dress culture.
The older generation of programmers, who lived through the hippie movement, brought collegiate dress directly to work, gradually creating a unique dress culture. For example, James Gosling (pictured left), the creator of the Java programming language, looked very much like a programmer.
Similarly, biyani stroustrup, the creator of C++, was equally unfussily sartorial.
After decades of accumulation and diffusion, the casual attire of programmers has left a unique cultural image in American society. Since the 1980s, the “geek” in American movies has almost always been a free-flowing look:
1993 film “Jurassic Park” villain programmer
2007 film “Die Hard 4” in the hacker
Film “social network” programmer leading role, and the side of the traditional dress man formed a sharp contrast
And the scruffiness of Chinese programmers has more credence than the sophisticated but willfully rebellious American geek: Chinese college students almost never have the experience of being “decent”.
After the reform of colleges and universities in 1952, Chinese colleges and universities advocated “education serves proletarian politics”, and the suits and student clothes popular in colleges and universities in the Republic of China were abolished.
While western college students in the 1960s wore strange costumes and opposed formal suits in universities, Chinese college students still wore “working people’s clothes” or “military uniforms”, or at best “Zhongshan suits”.
This traditional dress language was rapidly eliminated after the reform and opening up, but the culture of decent dress has not been established yet. Wearing vest slippers to class has become the norm at Chinese universities.
Interestingly, the first generation of programmers in China after the reform and opening up, as most of them were from traditional technology industries, they were “retro” out of the “consciousness” of engineers, and generally liked to wear formal suits.
Electromechanical technician background “Wang Jiangmin”, as a Veteran of Chinese programmers, left media photos are almost all suits, ties, white shirts, gold glasses
It was not until the rapid development of China’s Internet industry that the career path of programmers and traditional engineers deviated further and further. Graduates majoring in information science or software engineering realized direct access from universities to enterprises, and the subsequent generations of programmers gradually caught up with the “advanced level” of western developed countries in terms of dress.
As a rising star ding Lei, dress style appears many leisure
What’s the point of a suit?
In addition to the influence of “dress culture”, the reason programmers do not care about appearance is also related to the nature of the job.
Programmers are labor intensive, and irregular maintenance of the product (upgrading features, fixing bugs) significantly extends their overtime hours. The stress of the job leads many programmers to be mentally exhausted all the time, neglecting to maintain their personal image.
Also, living in a 24/7 social environment, programmers don’t need to dress appropriately.
Once social needs escalate, programmers don’t stick to the stereotype of being sloppy. When corporate bosses such as Bill Gates become successful, their nerdiness is quickly diluted by the aura of business elite.
Bill Gates in 1984 office photos
Bill Gates “Standard Image”
Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the two founders of Google, also sported suits for formal occasions:
On the other hand, if you live in isolation for a long time, your dress sense, even if you’re not a programmer, will probably creep down to the same level or worse.
For example, in ordinary people’s eyes, the narrow sense of otaku (game nerd, anime nerd) and programmers can often share the same standard image, but the two are not nearly as much as they think.
