I can't relate with the author. It seems like most of the software engineers that I work with are not and were not nerds. Maybe some of them were or are but I don't see a connection between nerd and software engineering. Maybe I'm just too much of a nerd myself that I can't see the obvious truth. I've worked at several companies as a senior software engineer from startups to Apple through my career and I never noticed that there were a lot a nerds. I think this is a false stereotype of our industry.