Clothes aren't shallow, how you dress reflects how much you care about presenting yourself to the world; whether you care at all. Someone who doesn't wash or shave is the obvious example of someone who's just 'zero fucks given' in that regard, but that's an extreme. Clothing is just a more subtle form of it.
Growing up my stereotype of 'hackers' was of unfit boys with an almost monk-like isolation and dedication to their projects surrounded by fizzy drinks. ... Which, for all that I liked programming, wasn't something that made me identify with that role.
Perhaps an unfair characterisation. If you want to be among the best at anything it's going to demand a massive amount of your time, which necessarily has to be drawn from time making friends outside of that area and engaging in other more widely pro-social activities. And things always appear more extreme from the outside than they actually are. I don't know. I just know that, looking back, I can't think of anyone who identified themselves as a hacker who had any friends that any of us knew about.
Growing up my stereotype of 'hackers' was of unfit boys with an almost monk-like isolation and dedication to their projects surrounded by fizzy drinks. ... Which, for all that I liked programming, wasn't something that made me identify with that role.
Perhaps an unfair characterisation. If you want to be among the best at anything it's going to demand a massive amount of your time, which necessarily has to be drawn from time making friends outside of that area and engaging in other more widely pro-social activities. And things always appear more extreme from the outside than they actually are. I don't know. I just know that, looking back, I can't think of anyone who identified themselves as a hacker who had any friends that any of us knew about.