Dwarves and Hobbits
As an iOS developer living in Seattle, any sort of dealings with the local, heavily Microsoft-biased tech community reminds me jarringly of the “Squabbling Hobbits” scene in Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon:
In the Tolkien, not the endocrinological or Snow White sense, Randy is a Dwarf. Tolkien’s Dwarves were stout, taciturn, vaguely magical creatures who spent a lot of time in the dark hammering out beautiful things, e.g., Rings of Power. Thinking of himself as a Dwarf who had hung up his war-ax for a while to go sojourning in the Shire, where he was surrounded by squabbling Hobbits…had actually done a lot for Randy’s peace of mind over the years…
…A Dwarf on sojourn in the Shire would probably go to a lot of dinner parties where pompous boring Hobbits would hold forth like this. This Dwarf would view the whole thing as entertaining. He would know that he could always go back out into the real world, so much vaster and more complex than these Hobbits imagine, and slay a few Trolls and remind himself of what really mattered.
I’ve spent years having Windows developers sneer at my Mac, and then my iPhone, and now my iPad. Every year I’ve gone to WWDC and C4, and met people like myself, and it’s probably about the only thing that kept me sane.
Man, these hobbits don’t know shit.
