No, this isn't another dumb questionnaire. Bear with me. Recently I saw an article in which the author attributed the development of computers to people with Asperger's Syndrome. I can't seem to find it again, but no matter: I can find lots of other articles linking Asperger's to hacking and "The Geek Syndrome". In his 1964 science fiction novel Clans of the Alphane Moon, based on a 1954 short story, P No, this isn’t another dumb questionnaire. Bear with me.Recently I saw an article in which the author attributed the development of computers to people with Asperger’s Syndrome. I can’t seem to find it again, but no matter: I can find lots of other articles linking Asperger’s to hacking and “The Geek Syndrome“.In his 1964 science fiction novel Clans of the Alphane Moon, based on a 1954 short story, Philip K. Dick writes about a society that has evolved from a psychiatric institution. The various diagnostic groups have formed seven clans and taken appropriate roles in the society: the paranoids are the statesmen; the manics are the warriors. The obsessive-compulsives are the conservative, unoriginal clerks; the polymorphic schizophrenics are the radical, creative members of society. And so on. Asperger’s wasn’t really well-known in 1964; neither was hacking. Phil Dick himself spent time in psychiatric institutions, and wrote often about altered states: see, for example, VALIS. If Phil were rewriting Clans today, he might well add clans for autism and Asperger’s: who knows?I think a lot of the really good programmers I know have characteristics that could be described in terms of one or more of these clans. I know some who act like they might have mild Asperger’s, exhibiting difficulty relating to people rather than machines. I know others who have a hard time getting up for lunch if there’s an unfixed compiler error on their screen, and a hard time going home at the end of the day with an unfixed bug in their queue: their bosses might think they’re just conscientious, but they might tell you themselves that they’re a little compulsive. That doesn’t mean that they’re not creative, however.For a C++ programmer writing libraries, a little paranoia about input variables is probably warranted, and a little bit of OCD probably makes for better testing. I can admit to some of that in myself. What about you? Which clan do you belong to? Software Development