I like to view it as living authentically and seizing every opportunity to add a little color or whimsy to the mundan, but to each their own.

Yeah, OP's username seems pretty appropriate

Authenticity is in your heart. Putting stickers onto your laptop, which is the least authentic thing for a software developer to do, makes you just look ridiculous.

Authenticity is behaving in a way that is true to yourself. In this case, putting stickers on a laptop or otherwise decorating it is a form of art and self expression. It’s not complicated or controversial.

I do it because it can be creative and fun. It adds color to an otherwise gray and boring surface and provides a practical way of identifying my laptop from everyone else’s.

When I was in school, we used to cover out textbooks with brown paper bags and then drawn on them. How is this any different?

You seem to have you entire identity tied to the notion of what you think a software developer is and that everyone should conform to that idea. I’d rather have people be creative, embrace fun, and add color and self expression to the world. We could all use more color in our lives.

I'll be honest I think that dying on the hill of "putting stickers on your laptop [...] is the least authentic thing for a software developer to do" makes you look pretty ridiculous.

Doing something, which is so extremely commonplace does not make you unique in any way.

Do you really think something, which is so extremely common among software developers, has the potential to showing your uniqueness.

The hill I will die on is that I despise outward signaling, especially outward signaling of something like "uniqueness".

And yet here you are, signaling to others your uniqueness by saying how much you hate the way that they signal theirs. It's not that deep, man. This sounds like a really tough way to live and I genuinely wish you the best of luck with your vendetta against *checks notes* people expressing themselves with stickers on their laptops.

>And yet here you are, signaling to others your uniqueness by saying how much you hate the way that they signal theirs. It's not that deep, man.

I don't think my opinion is particularly unique and certainly I do it to appear unique.

>This sounds like a really tough way to live

It is much easier, because I do not have to be worried whether people see me as unique.

>I genuinely wish you the best of luck with your vendetta against checks notes people expressing themselves with stickers on their laptops.

Thank you.