I always put up a men­tal bar­rier when read­ing arti­cles such as this as I am of the opin­ion that it is dif­fi­cult to suc­cess­fully pro­duce gen­er­al­i­ties about a sub­set of peo­ple unless you are quite inti­mate with their idiosyncrasies.

Philip Guo over­came this bar­rier in his arti­cle look­ing at the con­ver­sa­tional behav­iours of “geeks, nerds, and other highly-smart tech­ni­cal peo­ple”. These behaviours:

  • Strug­gling with turn-taking.
  • Obsess­ing over cor­rect­ness and completeness.
  • Pre­fer­ring exact numer­i­cal responses.
  • Using tech­ni­cal terms with­out check­ing for understanding.
  • Focus­ing on the how rather than the what or the why.
  • Favor­ing com­plex­ity and detail over sim­plic­ity in descriptions.
  • Rapidly enu­mer­at­ing long lists of items.
  • Show­ing a lack of inter­est in out­ward appearances.
  • Evan­ge­liz­ing their favorite technologies.

The Hacker News thread dis­cussing this arti­cle is also wor­thy of a casual look.