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Comment by rhacker | Hacker News Reader

> "First off," I reply, "No. And second off,

This is a super condescending thing to say. Let's say you're a lawyer telling a client why you can't do something. The language you're using is pretty harsh.

> Maybe I just need to have a little more empathy (or is it sympathy?) for normal people.

You are also a "normal person" I don't understand why developers sometimes think they are gods or something.

> Can you help with my printer. No

No explanation on this one at all? That, again, is a rude response.

I've been saying this for a while, but the pay we provide to developers was a mistake. It has created a class of people that think they are gods. Come down from your soap box, learn real empathy, decide you are a Normal Person yourself and get rid of your condescending attitude.

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> I've been saying this for a while, but the pay we provide to developers was a mistake. It has created a class of people that think they are gods.

I think you've got it backwards there. I agree with everything else you said, and hopefully the author was being tongue in cheek, but this is silly. Developers have a specialized skill and get paid specialized wages. The behavior you're describing is not limited to developers..any profession that has a specialized set of skills and a specialized language that only the "in" people understand has the same issues.

> The behavior you're describing is not limited to developers..any profession that has a specialized set of skills and a specialized language that only the "in" people understand has the same issues.

You can use specialized language without having the attitude of a condescending prick.

I'm not sure I said anything to the contrary.

Who is he being rude or condescending to? The `<h2>`s? He's not actually talking to anyone—he imagined up a non-technical conversation partner and he's being dismissive to them as a writing device to express how sick he is of getting the same questions. I'm sure he wouldn't actually respond to someone asking for help with their printer with the single word "no."

Also, normal people don't compose documents with pandoc or use the command line. That's not a secretly-disdainful observation just because it uses the word "normal." People with technical knowledge in these areas are abnormal when it comes to how we use computers. The word "normal" doesn't have inherently negative connotations—if anything, in most contexts it's seen as better to be normal.

> Come down from your soap box, learn real empathy, decide you are a Normal Person yourself and get rid of your condescending attitude.

This is way ruder than anything that was written in the post.

> Let's say you're a lawyer telling a client why you can't do something. The language you're using is pretty harsh.

Except we aren't talking about a client relationship, we are talking about someone asking you to do something for free because "you do something with computers" without making the effort to understand literally the first thing about what you actually do.

> the pay we provide to developers was a mistake. It has created a class of people that think they are gods.

Painting an entire diverse group of people with a single brush, that's real polite of you.

> Come down from your soap box, learn real empathy, decide you are a Normal Person yourself and get rid of your condescending attitude.

Perhaps take your own advice?

This was literally my whole point.

If you think my attitude is condescending in the scenarios presented, then you properly understood what I was trying to express in the last section.

I didn't want to write it in a way that's specifically attacking the (likely technical) reader, so I put the focus on "me"

> You are also a "normal person" I don't understand why developers sometimes think they are gods or something.

I can't tell you how much I loathe the label "normies".

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