&gt; It certainly has affected me as someone who grew up nerdy and bullied, but most of my coworkers seem pretty happy.<p>I can very much relate to this.  But you grow out of it and I never really considered it a psychological problem.  Everybody has his or her thing growing up and for me it was just lack of self-esteem and not fitting into the lifestyle of people around me.  But growing up I learned to just ignore it and that made me happier and more confident in the process :)<p>I don&#x27;t think it only affects programmers.  But when I was at school it was just not particularly common to be interested in computers and that&#x27;s certainly a factor.  Group pressure is a big thing when you&#x27;re young.