[skeptical]

__People are tribal. Some people are attracted to tribes, become attached without really knowing why, and start having the strong urge to fuck with the other tribes. Apparently this was good for the survival of the human race. Perhaps it's a bug now that we should consciously compensate for__

That this tribal behavior occurs among software engineering is a rather disappointing fact. Computers are pretty much the edge of technology in many aspects, technological achievements by Mankind should be the prove that we're able to use our brains in more advanced ways than basic instincts and produce great achievements like modern software.

This flood of programmers that prefers to join a tribe instead of enjoying the good things from many different 'tribes' just makes me wonder how many of us are really devoted to do something useful/positive.

[generalk]

  > That this tribal behavior occurs among software engineering 
  > is a rather disappointing fact. 

It occurs amongst software engineering humans. All humans get this to some degree, it's basic ingroup/outgroup psychology.

We're all humans here. It's nothing to do with "devoted to doing something positive" or "using our brains in more advanced ways." It's just the reality of being an evolved ape, and the lack or presence of this trait doesn't make anyone any better/worse than anyone else.

[jrockway]

Yes, thank you for writing this. We are all humans, even if we don't want to be, and we have to think about our actions in the context of our genetic programming. In the case of tribalism, even though it's a strong feeling, we have to ignore it because it doesn't get us anything in programming language debates.

The best attitude to have is one of acceptance and an open mind, because the right programming tool applied to the right problem can make solving that problem orders of magnitude less difficult. You can have programmer friends even if you don't unconditionally hate the enemy. In fact, it seems, most people don't care about who you don't hate.