[01:53] Kathryn: cuase u sit in ur room all day and dont want friends
I agree with her, shes right, i just never heard anyone say it so openly and blunt. So! who else enjoys the friend with strings more than the one that talks to you, and hey if your feeling crazy you might talk to a person and throw in some 2 hours of html code(not so fast u cwazy wabbit!)
ok now time for the real topic. are we [us cool coder ppl] better off leading a life of solitude and becoming rich and famous, or do hang out till 3 am drinking laughing about things 4 year olds would find stupid and pointless. Are we anti-social or are we geniuses for working hard and becoming skilled in our intrests (like 99% of this forum loves the ti, i enjoy php n other code), rather than wasting our youth killing our livers, so one day when our liver needin buddy come crawling in were the doctors and all who help them.

If i rambled cause its alsmot 2:40 am and i havn't had any sleep just answer this question instead. Is it better to be anti-social or be crazy and not have a care in the world, is their some middle ground in all of this?

I don't think genius types, or anyone for that matter, should be without friends. If you don't talk to people face to face, then eventually you will go mad. Humans are social creatures and we need interpersonal relationships.

[poll added]

I agree with what Something1990 said so far. However. I do not feel that these friends necessarily have to be real-life friends. One of the problems with real life friends is that they demand your attention at inopportune moments, just when you've figured out why a vital part of your code isn't functioning or the next piece of your plan towards world domination. I respect all of you as colleagues and friends just as much as my real friends, and since you understand the issues of genuity / programming / megalomanicism. So in some ways digital friends can be just as important or more important than real life friends. Anyway, where I'm going with all this is that as long as you have a strong relatioship with a community and its members, such as this once, friends can indeed be optional with little adverse effects to you.

haha, I just had a great conversation with someone about this...via IM.

she was saying that even though we'd been talking for an hour and a half on IM I probably wouldn't talk to her if I saw her in real life. I said I would, but that most people dont get what Im talking about and/or dont want to hear it, so Im just quiet most of the time at school. I think we geniuses don't want to be antisocial, but that it happens anyway because society doesn't want anything to do with us, and as soon as we realise that we go off and start our own society, and normal people just think we are antisocial. anywho, that was sorta rambling, but I voted for the first option.

I agree there, I hate trying to talk about computers to anyone who doesn't even know what a BIOS is (even in the most vague of terms), or these people who think the Internet Explorer is the internet. Someone asked me when looking at my laptop, where is your internet, I about wanted to take the handle of the machine and bash upside the head with it, well, maybe not that far. I think it is society that is anti-social towards us.

Maybe you ought to try something new like talking about something other than computers! Few of my real life friends know anything bout programming. We talk about other stuff. It's not that society won't accept geniuses, far from it. It's that most geniuses are too preoccupied with sounding smart that they ultimately distance themselves from other people. I'll also have to disagree with you Kerm. Real life interaction is much more important than having friends whose face you've never seen.

true, but how do you keep on a conversation unless the parties have some kind of common interest. Even when I have people ask on comp trouble, I can't diagnose because they don't know the a key from the z key it seems at times.

You can't honestly tell me all a genius is interested in is intellectual type stuff. Just because a person doesn't know a computer inside and out doesn't mean you can't talk to that person for an extended period of time.

I'm with you something! I have plenty of real life friends, and I rarely discuss computers or calculators with them. I think it's important to have a life outside of this, because it can become consuming.

I agree that it can become consuming, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Don't get me wrong, life would be insanely maddening (in the becoming-crazy sense) without real friends, but it's also nice to have some friends that are knowledgeable and share a common interest.

100% agree.

I was just saying a topic both people can releate to is what helps a friendship.

Maybe talking to someone new will help you discover something new and interesting. You and your new friend can talk about that topic. Your new friend will introduce you to many other people with many other interests and you'll ultimately end up being a better person. Having something in common helps but it doesn't have to be the sole reason for being friends with someone.

<sarcasm> I try to have 1 real life friend for every 100mb of code I write </sarcasm>

no, I agree... even we anti-social people need friends... the trick is to have friends with similar views...

yea i see your points, however im in high school. 1 of my close girls informed me she would be getting acid when she came back home, and the rest of my classmates usually enjoy the gallons of beers. So anti-social isn't bad for me, its keeping me out of trouble and gives me time to learn useful things i can use when i get out of college. Im in the middle tho, because @ my school you have the smart people and then the assholes (pardon my html). I didn't work hard in freshmen year my poor 90 average (or so) didn't make it to get into the classes and shit w/ the smart kids so ive been doing a whole year with kids who google for porn and ask whats a usb drive.

I'm in high school too... I have actually seen a kid try to get on the internet with Microsoft Word, I have been forced to correct HTML errors of people who think PHP is just HTML with colors...

It's good that you're not hanging out with the wrong crowd. Those kids know it's not good for them but they do it just to be "cool". Luckily, society in general isn't like that.

oh god, well freshmen year i had to take a computer class and all we did was word and oh god yes front page. The computer teacher asked me how i did shit n he mostly slept.... do i win? OH! also the kid who asked me what a usb was is taking ap computer science is he fucking insane


Yea i don't drink or do drugs... my mind is alrdy crowded w/ ideas for codes and shit

all the people i hang out with at school drink and smoke weed. they even get drunk during school. they hide wiskey in travel coffee mugs or in apple juice containers and others stick vodka in water bottles. also they smoke during school. it does not really phase me though i just learn to live with it but we also talk about stuff other than programming. but every now and than we do because they all want to program video games for a living.

i doubt they will be good @ it if they all smoke drink and all that shit..
i mean all that time wasted when you could be writing code or fixing it..
I have written code during my boring classes but i like to see instant results which is why i always need a computer, however i wasn't in the smart crowd so i didn't get that option (to get a computer and be able to use it in school)
and just so were all clear on my views, i don't smoke or drink n i hate ppl that so but im open for a lil romp.