Do you know the difference between “geeks” and “nerds”? If somebody calls you a geek, does he mean in a good way? I am a programmer. As you can imagine, I hear quite often that people commenting us as “nerds” or “geeks”, however, they do, in the end, say that I don’t look like a nerd. I take it as a compliment ;-), but can’t help wondering: what exactly geeks and nerds mean.
Simply put,
A geek is generally knowledgeable, even to a point of obsession, about one particular topic. When you talk to a geek, he or she may appear as an expert in certain fields and they seem social until you hit the subject which he or she is fascinated (or obsessed). Then they will explain to you how exactly Lord of rings story is, or if you disagree, they might try to convince you until you decide to let him win the argument (note: I say this because I had experience dealing with geeks).
A nerd is usually an irritating, unattractive person who may be brilliant, but who chooses to focus on non-social pursuits. They are normally very knowledgeable but are shy to express themselves.
By the way, I don’t know why they always assume geeks and nerds wear glasses (wink, wink…….)
The diagram below gives a better idea of what geeks, nerds and dorks are.
Difference 1: Communications
** Geeks use obscure references abundantly.
** Nerds love using jargon or unfamiliar terminology.
** examples: when talking about the sound effects in filming industry, a nerds will say: “That's an overused Foley. The SD must be lazy.” (note: foely=sound effects, SD=sound developer). A geek will say: “Oh! I love how Peter Jackson uses the Wilhelm Scream in every movie!”. (They are talking about the same thing.)
Difference 2: Social skills
** Geeks have normal social skills, though they could be prone to being pretentious and long-winded, especially if the topic lands on their particular passion.
** Nerds are in general introverted. They may have a lot of knowledge but not comfortable to talk with people.
Difference 3: Interests
** Geeks may enjoy board games, film(and may follow directors, composers, or key grips obsessively), tech gadgets, hacking and techno music. Geeks tend to be more interested in brands, such as Apple, and technologies such as Linux.
** Nerds tend to enjoy solitary pursuits such as programming or games like chess.
Difference 4: work place
In IT departments, you can find geeks in artistic jobs like web design, graphic design, or game designs, vs. nerds to be working as a rocket scientist, or programming the software (I’m unfortunately falling into this category ), or engineers.
A bit history of the two terms:
** Geeks: Back in the early 1900s, when traveling carnivals were popular, there was a performer called the "geek." His job was to perform bizarre and disgusting acts for the amusement of the locals. Notably, this included biting the heads off live chickens
** The word "nerd" was started on in 1954, by a young doctor by the name of Seuss, in a line that read, "A nerkle, a nerd, and a seersucker too!" If you don't wish to call somebody so trite a word as "nerd," you can also call them a "seersucker”.
Summary: There is never an absolute clear line between Geeks and nerds. Sometimes people would laugh at them because they are easily spotted and appeared as social inadequacy, but I respect them as they may have the knowledge that you and I may not have.
Now, do you know the difference between the two? Here is a question for you: Is Dr. Sheldon Cooper (from TV show The Big Bang Theory) a geek or a nerd?
