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> 20 years ago (in 2005), did anyone voluntarily, happily label themselves autistic, without any disgnosis, outside of such psych classes (outliers for obvious reasons)?

The “Aspie programmer” meme has been around since the turn of the century (at least)

https://www.wired.com/2001/12/aspergers/

I’m pretty sure people made reference to it when I was at Cal in the 90s but I can’t prove it. (The prevalence of social awkwardness, eye contact avoidance, hyper-interests, etc.). I don’t think it was as much about people wanting to feel special as trying to find explanations for the overall environment.



Exactly. If anything I think the vast majority of us engineers under-diagnose ourselves for where we fall on that spectrum (which is probably the safe career and social move in the millennial generation).

Almost every day of my whole career I've worked with people who were missing social cues and being disliked because they were misunderstood. I think an engineer is MUCH more likable if they genuinely say "Sorry if I'm loud, and I don't mean to interrupt, sometimes when I get excited I accidentally do this, I don't do it because I think my ideas are better than everyone else's."

Now obviously if somebody exaggerates a trait they don't have, says it in a self-important way, and isn't remorseful at all about the effect it has on people around them, and isn't trying to change it that's a shame.

But frankly imo the balance of that in software is I've met 1/2 in my whole career who came across as self-important about their conditions, versus against maybe 20% (dozens and dozens) weren't able/willing to communicate their oddities.




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