In reply to Kyle Maurer.

Thank you for replying Kyle and Rebecca. I suspect that my life experience of being 'ASD' (Autistic Spectrum Disorder) is not dissimilar to others like me. From no empirical basis, my guess would be that the ASD coders you might be potentially targeting as an audience are either Asberger's or HFA (High Functionin Austitic). I am the latter.

HFA are often wrongly labeled as savants, because, in our early years we appear to be highly skilled (to the exclusion of apparent normality) in one thing. For me that was Math (not unusual for HFA). But, as we get older, most HFA, who have been wrongly labeled as savants, do/can start to function slightly more normally, but no-one who knows me would ever call me anywhere close to 'normal'.

The thing is, a LOT of Asperberger's and HFA are coders.

We have learned to accept that people we meet will normally react negatively towards us, sometimes quite strongly and in rare cases violently. By the time we are mature adults (for men that is around 50), we try to avoid situations where we have to socially meet and/or interact on anything more than a superficial level with strangers.

In the UK, it is rare for us to have employment (over 90% do not). We generally have low self esteem and poor body image. Those that do work tend to do so from home as self employed and earn very little, as finding new clients is hard when you won't go out and 'shake hands'.

Think how many people you know who are in great jobs as a result of meeting someone, at events like these meetups. Or from a comment like 'I know a friend who would be great ...'. I have no friends. Each day I awake stunned that I am even married and have a beautiful daughter.

Like most ASD, I am OCD. New places, like hotels, freak me out. It takes a huge amount of preparation and planning for me to go to an event. I will know my room number in advance. It will not be changed. I will have been given a detailed schematic of the location and lots of photos and/or videos. How to explain? Imagine going to a place you have not visited before, by auto. I use Google Streetview and memorize the entire journey so that when I drive it, it is as though I had already done it. Before Streetview, a strange journey was incredibly stressful for me.

I can't cope with turning up to a hall with seating and not knowing which seat is mine, or, worse, knowing which is mine, but someone else being in it.

And then there are the discussions. Someone will engage me in conversation. They will get one of two responses from me. 'I don't know' or 'I do know'. By the latter, I mean what I know IS the answer. No discussion. It is not possible to have a normal your view/my view type discussion with me. Either it is possible to come to an answer, or it isn't. If it isn't, I will say so and that will be the end of it for me, or if an answer is possible, I will tell you what it is.

It is incredibly annoying for a coder to show me a chunk of code that they know has a bug but that they cannot find and they have been looking for days. Because I do not read in the same way that normal people do (I see only patterns) I often spot the bug within seconds, point it out and walk away. It is a very annoying personality feature that I have. Most people hate it.

In general, people do not come away from meeting me with a positive, warm feeling. If you have an 'alpha' type of character, you really won't like me. It has cost me every conventional job I have ever had. New bosses come and go. I am not nor should I ever be put in charge of people, so bosses get promoted above and around me. Eventually one will be an alpha, and they will fire me within a short time.

What else? A high number of people like me will have been found guilty of committing a crime. We find it difficult to operate within social and legal rules. Someone once hurt me very badly, so I hurt him and his business (a bank) back. Hard. I took a LOT of money off them (electronically). Stuck it under my bed and waited for them to ask for it back. They did, with the Police. 3 years it cost me to learn that lesson that you don't hit back at the people that bully you. Instead you take the hit without complaint and walk away. But now most countries won't give me a visa.