1. Attire
A truly badass programmer has no time at all to groom himself. The hairstyle should be like Einstein's — a bird's nest on top of the head, messy and fluffy, giving people the feeling that you could pull an egg out of your hair at any moment. A big bushy beard exudes confidence and composure. If you're not nearsighted, fine; if you are, wear huge glasses with lenses as thick as bottle bottoms — the look of a scientific researcher. Badass programmers have high standards for their attire: whether spring, summer, autumn, or winter, day or night, wind or rain, a truly badass programmer must be very particular about what they wear. A T-shirt + loud floral shorts + slippers is the standard uniform, 365 days a year, rain or shine. A replacement rate of 3–5 T-shirts a year is enough. Most of the T-shirts are freebies from open source conferences, printed with "ruby on rails," "eclipse," "apache"... When the cold gets truly unbearable, throw on a big cotton coat and big ear muffs — any style — and wrap yourself up. The standard is: don't freeze to death.
2. Gear
Programmers' computers have extremely high specs, but look like crap on the outside. A battered chassis + a beat-up bag covered in stove ash, grab it and go. At meetings, slam the laptop onto the table — bang! — and a pile of cigarette ash and instant noodle crumbs falls off. Never use a wallpaper, no beautification at all, giving people a Windows 98 vibe. Only a text editor + development tools installed. The more austere and pure, the more badass you are. Avoid using an IDE if you can. If you absolutely can't, no matter which IDE it is, be sure to set it to a black background like DOS or Linux, giving people the feeling that with a few keystrokes, North Korea's Taepodong missile is about to be launched at the White House. A badass programmer's desktop must be a huge mess — development docs, code, and images all tangled together. No one but you knows where the core files are. Even if a corporate spy came in, they couldn't steal them. But when you need a specific file, you can find it in no time.
3. Environment
Programmers don't deal directly with clients, so an office in a dark corner is just fine. On the massive desk, there should be at least two computers — a laptop and a desktop connected to dual monitors, one landscape and one portrait. The portrait screen is for writing code; the landscape screen is for debugging. This shows you handle a huge amount of information and work very efficiently. Scatter a few books casually on the desk — they must be English originals, or at minimum photocopied editions, the thicker the better. Don't line them up neatly on a bookshelf; they must be piled on the desk, half-open, covered with fingerprints, soup splatters, and big snot. Pots, pans, bowls, instant noodles, and fast food boxes can be set around carelessly, showing your state of working so hard you forget to eat and sleep — earning everyone's admiration.
4. Work
Carry a canned yellow-peach syrup jar and set it by the edge of the desk. After sitting down, tilt your neck back slightly, cross your legs, and stare down at the screen to review the requirements. Best to light a cigarette — the brand doesn't matter, as long as it gives off smoke. What you want is that foggy, smoky atmosphere, squinting through the smoke with an air of confidence. When the cigarette is done, the flowchart has also been completed in your head. Snap — stub the butt out in the tea mug. Light another one and start typing code in silence. Type with total concentration; don't even flick the ash. When it's done, compile, debug, compile again, debug again, get the feature working, and commit the code via SVN. (Even in an earthquake or fire, you absolutely must commit the code before leaving.) "Snap" — close the laptop, clock out, and head off to drink beer and eat grilled skewers.
5. Experience
Programmers love nothing more than bragging when they get together, talking about all kinds of trendy, cool tech — cloud computing, web 3.0, mobile internet development... If you talk about that stuff, you're too young, too low-class. Those topics are everywhere on major IT sites, a dime a dozen, talked to death already. At the very least, you should mention something like XiaoRong, Liuguang, or the Glacier Trojan, showing you're a seasoned old hacker. For an even higher level, silently light a Hongmei cigarette, take out a yellowed photo: "This is a group photo after the Chinese Hacker Alliance hacked all the major US websites following the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in 1999. Of those people back then, some were recruited by the authorities, some went off to sell flatbreads — the Chinese Hacker Alliance also faded away with history." Gazing at the drizzling rain outside the window, lost in pensive melancholy.
"Boss, you must have had a ton of zombie machines back then, right? How many? Did you DDOS?"
"Heh, heh."
Hiding his merit and fame.
6. Relationships
Speaking of relationships, it has to be said this is the Achilles' heel of programmers. Programmers usually have high IQs but very low EQs. Every time I'm in a relationship, it's like using a SELECT statement inside a LOOP — each iteration requires a traversal and a SELECT, rather than selecting everything at once and then filtering out. This is all from being poisoned by Tan Haoqiang's garbage beginner book "C Programming Language." It caused massive time loss and physical exhaustion. I applied my programming mindset to romance; when I was in love, my mind held one giant flowchart. It was all IFs: if Y, go one path; if N, go another path — there was no third path to choose. It was a "if you want to date, date; if not, get lost" rhythm. This also led to me being taken advantage of many times without being able to defend myself. So for this chapter, I'm still researching it myself.