Every coder is a fashionista

We in IT like to think we are above fashion. We mock it. We say we do not follow trends, we follow substance. We wear T-shirts, sometimes caps, often badly. This, we tell ourselves, is proof of seriousness.

It is also nonsense.

Underneath the hoodies, we are complete fashionistas.

Every year, we collectively decide that we must learn a new programming language. Not because it is urgently needed. Not because it is widely used. But because it is fashionable. This year, it is Rust. Last year it was something else. Before that, Perl. The language changes; the ritual does not.

Take my keyboard. I own a ZSA Voyager, a split, aggressively split keyboard. People will tell you it is about ergonomics. It is not. I did not buy it to save my wrists. I bought it for status. It looks cool. It signals curiosity. It gives me something new to fiddle with while pretending it is productivity.

Do I type better? Marginally, perhaps. Do I type differently? Absolutely. Was it necessary? Not even slightly.

This is how fashion works.

We like novelty, but only the safe kind. The new thing must look different while feeling familiar. A new language that resembles the old one, but swaps curly braces for something else. A new framework that promises revolution, yet fits neatly into yesterday’s mental model. Real change is uncomfortable. Cosmetic change is fun.

Stability, on the other hand, makes us uneasy.

HTML is still here. It has evolved, but it remains the language of the web. Is it the best way to represent complex graphics? Almost certainly not. But paired with CSS, it has one unbeatable quality: browsers survive time. Websites written years ago still work. This is not exciting. It is invaluable.

TCP/IP tells the same story. Have we invented better protocols? Of course. Faster, cleaner, more efficient ones. And yet TCP/IP still underpins the entire internet. Stability wins, quietly, year after year.

IPv6 would genuinely change things. It would force us to unlearn, rethink, rebuild. That is why it has been ‘coming soon’ for decades. We admire real change in theory. In practice, we avoid it.

Learning yet another programming language feels bold. It feels modern. It feels like progress. Most of the time, it is just fashion.

And that is fine. Fashion is not a sin. It is how communities signal identity, curiosity, belonging. The problem is not that we are fashionistas. The problem is that we pretend we are not.

In IT, as in clothing, the trick is knowing when you are dressing for function and when you are dressing for the mirror.