What are the three great virtues of a programmer: laziness, impatience, and hubris?<p>What would compel those who hang around Stackoverflow to be complete assholes to those who ask questions? Definitely hubris, and most probably impatience.<p>As a mediocre programmer I&#x27;ve been subject to ridicule from experts. I remember when I was trying to learn ExtJS (before is was Sencha) and for the life of me I could not get past a bug. I went on the ExtJS posting board.<p>Along the way I noticed one guy who answered replied to a lot of posts, but frequently not with an answer. It was more often than not to ridicule the original poster. Sometimes he would help but more often than not he would make a derogatory comment. I eventually broke down, and decided to post a question on the board, and within a short period of time the aforementioned guy replied, but did not provide a real answer. Something about &#x27;you clearly don&#x27;t know how to debug&#x27;. Yes dumbass, I can&#x27;t figure it out that&#x27;s why I&#x27;m asking.<p>I don&#x27;t think any particular field has a shortage of arrogant know-it-alls that take pleasure in lording over the masses and gain pleasure out of humiliating those who they perceive as being beneath them. However programmers can be a funny lot, and without going too far out on a ledge there are quite a few of us who are brilliant at code but not so much in other areas of our lives.<p>Plus I have to wonder how many of us programmers have been on the receiving end of abuse in other areas of our lives, and take that repressed frustration out on others in the area we have confidence in.