The Utter Strangeness Of Dress Codes
The sartorial formalisation of software engineers was never going to work.
Today, a short missive on expressing yourself and why you’re not so different from the pioneers that started the industry, the grand game that we all play, all those years ago.
Memory Lane
In olden times, when all software engineers were genuine computer scientists, we were an eclectic bunch of mainly mathematicians and electrical engineers who dressed in the general manner of somewhat eccentric academics who’d be under a desk soldering high voltage electrical cables one minute, juggling hot vacuum tubes the next, and then taking a picnic on the college lawn at lunchtime with homemade jam and lemonade.
It was an age of dressing somewhat smartly, taking pride in one’s appearance, but also conforming to the generally more formal sartorial requirements of society along with the obligatory chalk dustings, pens and pencil stuffed in the top jacket pocket, and engraved slide rule behind one’s ear.
Happier times all round.
Unfortunately as computers began to shrink in size, their power requirements dipping below that of a moderately sized English hamlet, a class of less technical acolytes started to come on board — first as operators, then as programmers, and finally as users.
