I would say a lot of this is just the nature of online discourse that allows the loudmouths, blowhards and nitpickers to have their way while more balanced people disengage because it just isn’t worth it for them. This dynamic can be seen in all online communities that grow large and it’s not specific to technical topics.
That said, I think programmers are prone to some of this simply due to the fact that programming requires a baseline obsessive attention to detail that most people don’t want to think about. Combine this with the fact that businesses need tech and the situation has led to a lot of secure jobs for technical people with poor social skills. This has led to a situation where a lot of people can get by in a sort of comic-book-guy bubble of expertise without having to learn anything about civil discourse.
Now I think it bears repeating, these people are a tiny minority, definitely less than 5% in my experience working with hundreds of engineers over the decades. It’s just the increased size of the community and incentives online that cause them to bubble up without consequence.
That said, I think programmers are prone to some of this simply due to the fact that programming requires a baseline obsessive attention to detail that most people don’t want to think about. Combine this with the fact that businesses need tech and the situation has led to a lot of secure jobs for technical people with poor social skills. This has led to a situation where a lot of people can get by in a sort of comic-book-guy bubble of expertise without having to learn anything about civil discourse.
Now I think it bears repeating, these people are a tiny minority, definitely less than 5% in my experience working with hundreds of engineers over the decades. It’s just the increased size of the community and incentives online that cause them to bubble up without consequence.