What role (e.g. work) did the "programmer personality type" have throughout history

Question

This has always concerned me to an unnatural degree. I have no idea what sort of "role" I would have had in society if there were no computers or advanced technology to play with (for work and/or pleasure). One typical "programmer personality type" is an overly analytical problem solving mind with minimal regard for social interactions or conventions. What role would this personality type have fulfilled in the following periods (for euro-centric example): ancient tribal, roman times, middle ages, pre-industrial revolution, etc. E.g. I've always thought it would be technically interesting to have been a charcoal burner in ancient times.

Answer 1

There've been engineers of some sort in almost every European and Asian society since long before Greco-Roman times. That's probably where you'd land.

Or, if you'd like to think more daringly: traditional healers (e.g "Witch Doctors"), polytheistic priest-equivalents, and others who we now regard as quacks get an unfairly bad rap -- they were surprisingly very serious, analytical and technical about their work. It's just that their analytical technologies and data gathering techniques were fundamentally faulty.

Time will come when it turns out that our own technologies in this area are faulty as well, and the intellectuals we admire today will be snickered at for their weird miconceptions.

Answer 2

"Are people with certain Myers Briggs personality types drawn to careers in programming/development?" notes some personality types that you can then go to another website to get a list of occupations. For example for INTJ you can see the list here. There are likely pages for other types. This does illustrate some of the challenge as I'm not sure there is just one programmer personality type really. Prickly describes part of it but there is a lot more to most developers or programmers.

Answer 3

• Scribe
• Monk
• Philosopher
• Combat engineers (think roman roads, aqueducts, baths etc)
• Castle/Cathedral/Pyramid Architect
• Arms manufacturers (think greek fire, trebuchets)
• Logistics (an army marches on its stomach)

Answer 4

Up to about 30 years ago, we could have very likely had the profession of "computer" -- that is one who sits at a desk in a large room with your peers adding lists of sums (or looking up logarithms in a book) all day long. Call me cynical but I think I'm better off now.

The most common Myers-Briggs personality type for our profession is INTP, so other common professions for that type would be likely: accountant, engineer, book editor etc.

Answer 5

Maybe you were Carl Friedrich Gauss in a past life?

His list of achievements boggles the mind. He even came up with the fast Fourier transform well before its rediscovery by Cooley and Tukey in 1965.