ASD has different levels of diagnosis. I've been told by a therapist specializing in ASD that there are a lot of diagnosed and undiagnosed ASD workers in tech. It's very possible the only reason they are "full blown clinically diagnosed" is because they haven't been tested.
At this point we could diagnose basically everyone on the planet with some flavour of neurodivergence. I’m sure there’s one that makes people good at sales, one that makes people ruthless CEOs, one that makes people programmers, etc.
But I just don’t see the point of diagnosing people with things unless it causes some kind of actual disability and dysfunction.
No, you can't diagnose most people. Yes, the diagnosis generally requires there to be disabilities related to it. Otherwise it doesn't meet the criteria.
That's the current medical way, but the author and this thread like to put up the idea that basically all if not all programmers and "weird nerds" are autistic but it's just massively under diagnosed. To which I disagree, if there are essentially no disorders in your life, you shouldn't be diagnosed.
The ASD spectrum has become incredibly broad to the point where someone who likes just programming too much is being classified in the same group as someone who can hardly speak, let alone look after themselves.
"The ASD spectrum has become incredibly broad to the point where someone who likes just programming too much is being classified in the same group as someone who can hardly speak, let alone look after themselves."
This isn't true at all. The ASD grading has different levels based on the level of assistance needed. Unless that programming is significantly impacting your abilities in life, you would be told that you display some ASD like behaviors but that you don't actually have ASD.
I know a therapist that specializes in adult ASD and they believe that many people in technology fields do have undiagnosed mild ASD. The strong logical basis to the work and other characteristics of the job may play a role in attracting people whose minds work a certain way. It also seems the few people I know who have been diagnosed later in life tend to be in technical fields. The observations and the theory behind it seem to make sense. But not everyone has it, and there is criteria that need to be met to diagnosis it (disabilities).
The issue IMO is we don't have a non medical but accurate word for "some flavour of neurodivergence".
The author tries to come up the "weird nerd" terminology, but it doesn't feel better to me. Extending the medical term to non problematic behaviours feels like a better tradeoff to me.
We already do that in spades: people can have myopism to varying degrees, and we don't avoid putting them somewhere on the scale until they need coke bottle glasses.
