I would say that the vast majority of programmers I've come into contact with in the UK are left leaning. Been a few radicals in there as well. I suspect that its a cultural thing. The US is a very right wing place, after all. When the British edition of Wired existed, the US and British articles sat very uneasily next to each other. The British ones being liberal -> left libertarian.
Even in the investment bank that I worked in recently, there were a significant number of programmers who were either liberal, or quite left wing. People who had a good understanding of the Israel-Palestine issue, and people with fairly radical political ideas. Not a majority, but more than you would expect in that environment.
> Contrary to the frequently expressed claims to creativity - computer
> programming involves meticulous following of conventional rules to the
> letter, and routinization of every task.
Erm, so does writing. So does making a film and playing an instrument. If you're any good at it you absorb the rules so that they are second nature, but they're there nonetheless. Its the same with programming. And good programmers know several languages (at least. I know 15-20, and use 6-7 regularly), which requires the ability to be flexible in your thinking - something which transfers wonderfully to other medium. Dogmatic programmers are a pain in my experience, the best ones tend to be very flexible.
> Second, is the programming subculture - which is prediminantly white and
male > and success oriented, and thus tends to be inwardly promiscuous and
> outwardly conservative (i.e. the "our guys can do what they want, but
> everyone else must follow the rules" thing).
This sounds more like sysadmins. That has more to do with the nature of the job I suspect. I have some sympathy, having done frontline support for a short period.
> So what you have is a bunch of not very creative, anal, but overly
> ambitious individuals who are further socialized into a highly
> competitive occupation that highly values conventionalism and routine.
This doesn't sound like very many programmers that I know. Nor does the occupation particularly value conventionalism and routine. Maybe at a low level (VB programmers, or something), but at the high end its like any engineering job. Creative, difficult and requiring the ability to think outside "the box".
Cian