Working with different nationalities is interesting, and sometimes kind of bewildering. And tiring.

I've been working with an Indian dev for a little while, and while she's a decent dev, interactions with her sometimes leave me a little puzzled. She glazes over serious topics, totally over-sensationalizes unimportant oddities, has yet to say the word "no," and she refers to the senior devs as (quote) "the legends." Also, when asked a question by her boss, like "Are you familiar with this?" Instead of a simple yes/no answer, she shows off a little. Fair, I do this sometimes too, but it's a regular thing with her. Also, like most Indians I've known and/or worked with, she has a very strict class-and-caste view of the world. It honestly makes me a little uncomfortable with how she views people, like certain people belong in certain boxes, how some boxes (and therefore their contents) are inherently better than others, and how it's difficult or simply impossible to move between boxes. My obviously westerner view of things is that you can pick where you want to be and what you want to do, and all it takes to get there is acquiring the proper skills and putting in the required effort. I see no boxes at all, just a sprawling web of trades/specialities. And those legends she talks about? They're good devs with more knowledge than me, but only one, maybe two of them are better devs. I see them as coworkers and leads, not legends. Legends would be the likes of Ada Lovelace, Dennis Ritchie, Yukihuro Matsumoto, and Satoshi Nakamoto. (Among others, obv.). To call a lead dev a legend is just strange to me, unless they're actually deserving, but we don't work with anyone like Wozniak or Carmack.

Since I'm apparently ranting about her a little, let me continue. She's also extremely difficult to understand. Not because of her words or her accent, but I can't ever figure out what she's trying to get across. The words fit together and make valid sentences, but the sentences don't often make sense with one another, and all put together... I'm just totally lost. To be a math nerd, like the two conversations are skew lines: very similar, but can never intersect. What's more, if I say I don't understand and ask for clarification, she refuses and says she doesn't want to confuse me further, and to just do what I think is best. It's incredibly frustrating.

Specifically, we're trying to split up functionality on a ticket -- she's part of a different dev team (accounting), and really should own the accounting portion since she will be responsible for it, but there's no clear boundary in the codebase. Trying to discuss this has been... difficult.

Anyway.

Sometimes other cultures' world views are just puzzling, or even kind of alien. This Irish/Chinese guy stayed at my parents' house for a week. He had red hair, and his facial features were about 3/4 Chinese. He looked strange and really interesting. I can't really explain it, but interacting with him felt like talking to basically any other guy I've known, except sometimes his mannerisms and behavior were just shockingly strange and unexpected, and he occasionally made so little sense to me that I was really taken aback.

This Chinese manager I had valued appearances and percieved honors more than anything else. He cared about punctuality and attire more than productivity. Instead of giving raises for good work or promotions, he would give fancy new titles and maybe allow you to move your desk somewhere with a better view of your coworkers. Not somewhere nicer; somewhere more prominent. How he made connections between concepts was also very strange, like the Chinese/Irish guy earlier. The site templating system was a "bridge?" Idk? He also talked luck with his investors (who were also Chinese), and they would often take the investment money to the casino to see if luck was in the company's favor. Not even kidding.

Also! the Iranian people I've known. They've shown very little emotion, except occasionally anger. If I tried to appease them, they would spurn and insult me, but if I met their anger, they would immediately return to being calm, and always seemed to respect me more afterward. Again, it's a little puzzling. By contrast, meeting an American's anger often makes them dislike you, and exceeding it tends to begin a rivalry.

It's neat seeing how people of different nationalities have different perspectives and world views and think so very differently. but it can also be a little tiring always having to translate and to switch behavior styles, sometimes even between sentences.

It's also frustrating when we simply cannot communicate despite having a language in common.

"If you want to set off and go develop some grand new thing, you don’t need millions of dollars of capitalization. You need enough pizza and Diet Coke to stick in your refrigerator, a cheap PC to work on and the dedication to go through with it. " - John Carmack

Carmack: "Hi, I am Carmack, your AI artist today. I create high definition 3D interactive world by listening to your verbal request or brain-computer interface."

User: "Hey Carmack, create me an ideal cyberpunk world."

Carmack: "World created. Here are the main resources used to synthesize your defintion of 'Cyberpunk'. Done. Is that what you want?"

User: "Hey Carmack, can you make it less similar to Coruscant, but more vintage, and more like Blade runner more like Africa, mixing super Mario galaxy. Also add a mansion similar to this link and the hot girl in this link. Make her ideal. Make the world ten times bigger than GTA V"

Carmack: "Alright, bro. The definition of "ideal" has been data driven by the norm on internet.
Done. Is this what you want?"

user: "Yes, test it in VR"

Carmack: "Enjoy."

I can vaguely remember the 4 year old me turning the computer on while my cousin starts a dos shell to play Dangerous Dave.

5 year old me finds wolfenstien installed on my windows 95 , doom a few years later , quake after that .. one masterpiece after another.

Little did I know that software can make memories.

I grew up with software made by these legends and nothing excites me more than the dream of one day being in a team just like theirs with the goal of having fun and spreading it.

Carmack and Romero .. the people who architected fun from code.

I don't really have one favorite programmer, there are many. I'll just add one to the list:

John Carmack

If you want to set off and go develop some grand new thing, you don’t need millions of dollars of capitalization. You need enough pizza and Diet Coke to stick in your refrigerator, a cheap PC to work on and the dedication to go through with it. ~John Carmack

Definitely John Carmack. That man is a code machine. Very technical person.

I don’t really have just one.

Ada Lovelace, she is the reason we have everything and she is the OG

Margaret Hamilton is badass and got Apolo 11 to the moon

Steve Wozniak, the real brains behind OG Apple. And his tech revolutionized computers. Plus have you ever just watched a video of him he’s so fucking pure and innocent. Like holy fuck he’s awesome and just hella intelligent.

John Romero + John Carmack. Two of the programmers on the original DOOM dev team. The team revolutionized the gaming industry and

Katie Bouman, just got added to the list for the black hole picture

So devs. Who are your programming heroes?

Mine are John Carmack and Dennis Richtie.

I have quite a few but I'll try to narrow it down.

Micheal Reeves
John Carmack
John Romero
Steve Wozniak
Ken Thompson
Brian Kernighan

People pressure me to get a degree but I think which I’ll pass, I don’t care about getting into research or management and if Carmack and Romero did what they did with little formal education I guess which I can be a good enough programmer to distinguish myself in my area without it.