I was going through this article:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubcultureWhich got mee thinking is programming a subculture?After the a while I started thinking it really hard, and if you go really in depth this is a very complex and interesting question to ask.YOu can even ask yourself if (heavy) internet (social) users are an subculture and programmers a culture within.I think it might be an interesting discussion, hope you like it!NOTE:I linked the wiki article because it might be a good baseline, maybe you can base you answer  on Ken Gelders proposal to distinguish subcultures. But it should be based on a little bit more that intuition.Thanks in advance!Trufa
Is programming a SubCulture?
culture
No, programmers are not, in themselves a subculture.  There isn't a sense of belonging shared among programmers as a group, or really any of the elements of a shared identity.  However -- and this is a big however -- a not-insignificant number of programmers are members of hacker culture.Hackers have a shared identity, shared rituals/holiday, shared humor, a distinct shared language, they differentiate themselves from other cultures, have their own folklore, and modes of dress, foods, habits, etc.Hacker culture is not the same as programmer culture.  Many programmers don't grok hacker culture at all, and being a hacker isn't really defined by the activity of programming itself.  It's more about the mind set.You may be wondering why I call hackerdom a culture rather than a subculture.  Part of being a subculture is being somehow distinct from the dominant culture.  However, hackers don't have a specific term for non-hackers, despite having developed an expansive distinct vocabulary.  This is because the hacker doesn't consider him/her-self not to be part of other cultures due to his/her membership in the hacker culture.  It is not only acceptable that each hacker also belong to one or more other cultures, and that one hacker's other culture(s) may conflict with a fellow hacker's other culture(s), but it is expected, and believed by some to be the reason hacker culture exists.One 20th century definition of culture, however, is a much better match: the universal human capacity to classify and encode their experiences symbolically, and communicate symbolically encoded experiences socially.  Hackers share a common way of classifying and encoding experiences, a shared symbology and language, and a shared way of communicating all of these things within the hacker social group.Programmers as a group doesn't seem to fit either mold to me.--SusanP.S. - I registered just to answer this question, but since I am new I can't link all of my references here.  Please see my comments for URLs (if the system lets me do that).Links:Hacker humor and ritual observances (holidays): http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2520Hacker lexicon (dictionary of hacker language): http://catb.org/jargonHow hackers differentiate themselves from other cultures/subcultures: http://catb.org/jargon/html/crackers.htmlHacker folklore: http://catb.org/jargon/html/appendixa.htmlHacker dress, food, habits, etc.: http://catb.org/jargon/html/appendixb.html