Are you religious?

The first time I heard such usage of the word “religious” was during the online course of Prof. David Malan at CS50. Some people are religious towards the computer disciplines.

At that moment I realized, oh that explains it. I met H at my junior year at university, and he was a doctorate candidate in astrophysics, double major math and physics. We were grouped by Prof. Albert to do a final project together.

H is really intelligent, but easily provocative if I happened to ask any questions that he thought I should have known, and got angry against himself easily if he couldn’t answer my questions. I picked up this attitude as well, each time before I asked questions, I’d make sure my answers couldn’t be found on StackOverflow and that I had my pencils and papers at hand with my thought flows on it. Or else I’d got a shouting email with curse and blame.

I might have improved my skills, but deep beneath I got afraid of computer science and math.

I felt it’s sacred. I didn’t know why H was so reactive, now I know. Because he is religious in computer science.

And little did I know that I also picked up this religious piety, in a negative way. Few days ago a friend of mine was asking me some questions, and I thought she should have known, or at least demonstrated some effort made on self-study.

Come on Stasy, this is her first time learning CS. And you’re not an expert, but you’ve done this for quite a while.