yintercept's Journal: Transcendental Elitism

I have to admit, one of my biggest enemies in life has been transcendentalism. Transcendentalism has been the rage since Kant.

Transcendental philosophies generally push the illusion that there is an elite group that has a higher way of thinking about things. For example, in math, we are given the illusion that transfinite theory is a higher way of thinking than classical discourse. Psychology produced a series of philosophies that were posited as a higher way of thinking.

In programming, Object Oriented Programming was positioned not simply as a technological improvement, but as a higher way of thinking. There are many technical advantages of using a OO design. Design decisions, however, are best made on the technical requirements and not on the sense that one technology is more elite than another.

For small clients, I generally push the idea of using PHP rather than Java Servlets. I would have preferred to work with Java, but the client was better served by PHP.

I think that when people get too caught up in the elitist allure that they are thinking at a higher level than the rest of us mortals, that they some times end up making very profound mistakes in their design.

Deep inside, I've always wanted to be that person working on the extreme edge of technology and science. I think the truth in life is that the edge is an illusion and we serve the people around us best by looking at their needs and designing for their needs and to skip the view of programmers as people living on a higher plane.

Once you develop the view that there is one person, or a group of persons who think at a higher level; you immediately find yourself in a world where who a person is is more important than what they say. The best world is one that accepts input from a diversity of points of view.