Curiosity and the Computing Profession

Alan Kay said that computing professionals are not curious, especially about the past. How obvious!

Let's start from the top, the CTOs. Laugh now, laugh. I think most of us know that even if they are curious, they won't know enough to understand both the question and answer.

The middle managers? Well, if it is not about resources and deadlines, they don't know what it is. And how important would it be anyway?

The development manager? Lack of curiosity is almost a badge of honour for them. For that is why they are managing and not programming.

Project managers? Laugh some more.

The programmers? Well, since you must know all the fashionable buzzwords, why would you want to know anything that has nothing to do with the buzzwords? Let's see what is fashionable right now, and learn as little as possible about it, as long as it is enough to fool the interviewer, all is good.

I knew about this lack of curiosity since the beginning of my career. Initially, I attributed it to my mostly electrical engineering educated colleagues. I did not think they thought much about computer science. They programmed for a living. That is all, nothing more than that. Then I talked to a person who was advocating design patterns, and realized he was not a bit curious about where design patterns came from. Christopher Alexander? Who? After explaining who he is, his reaction was a shrug. I knew enough to change the topic.

But then, the author of the article made an obvious mistake too: he said Alan Kay invented object-oriented programming. Alan Kay is one of the Gods in computer science. But, he invented an object oriented programming language. Not object-oriented programming itself.

Oh well.

Update: In case it is not clear, this is only a very general observation. I don't mean every CTO is clueless. Some obviously are not. The same for other roles.