Dispelling myths about the autistic programmer
With all the discrimination and bullying going around, I think it is good that someone has something nice to say about autistic programmers. Like Ian Murdock who founded Debian and recently committed suicide had Asperger&#x27;s Syndrome. Despite obvious impressive technical skills, life probably wasn&#x27;t easy for him.<p>Most companies favor hiring average programmers that fit the mold over &quot;weird people&quot; even if they are amazing at their work. If Microsoft is doing the opposite and targets autistic programmers, then good for them! I see no reason to complain about that.<p>And for the record, the &quot;myth&quot; he is dispelling is a common misunderstanding of statistics. I can say that almost all rapists are men. Obviously that doesn&#x27;t mean that all men are rapists, it means that the probability that a given rapist is a man is very high. It also doesn&#x27;t mean that females can&#x27;t be rapists.<p>In the same way, I can say that a &quot;genius programmer&quot; likely is on the autistic spectrum, without saying that all autists are geniuses and without saying that you can&#x27;t be a genius programmer without being an autist.