Young people with a natural affinity for an in-demand skill often are. A hundred years ago you could have written this about pilots. 500 years about painters (apprentices to the great masters in the Renaissance were notorious for it).
As an aside, for every genuine Aspbergers case, there are 10 who simply think they have a god-given right to act like dicks. It's like dyslexics, you can always tell the real ones because they're quietly getting on with it, not making a huge attention-getting fuss.
It's interesting that you mention apprentices to the great masters, which squares with my experience--- the most arrogant people, or at least the most abrasive and outgoing with their arrogance, are usually the 2nd and 3rd tiers, not the top tier. There are arrogant people at the top tier, but many fewer than I would've thought. I suspect it has something to do with no longer feeling a need to prove themselves, no longer feeling in competition with people, etc. There might also be a bit of branching out into other areas later in one's career that causes them to be a bit more humble, since famous people often try to become more generalist once they've gotten famous in a specific area, and it's harder to be arrogant in a very wide area than in a niche.
Among people I interact with, there seems to be sort of a peak of arrogance among people who are very good in a narrow area in their 20s and 30s, while famous people in their 40s or 50s are often quite humble and generous in their evaluation of other people. At CS conferences, for example, you don't find folks like Donald Knuth asking pedantic dick questions very often, but you do find the "ugh how could anybody not have read [x], did you even do any research?" type attitudes from junior profs and grad students.
I agree with this, I've worked in health care and programmers have nothing on physicians when it comes to arrogance. I don't know any programmers who would coach a physician on the proper way to design a course of treatment...
I think the same rule holds with doctors as with programmers - there are tremendously arrogant people who use their position as a surrogate for competence, and there are people who really are competent and don't have much time to deal with fools.
The only way to tell the difference is to watch their results for a while.
Jacquesm mentions the "save my life" thread. Yeah. Read that. I'm one of the programmers would damn straight coach a physician on the proper way to design a course of treatment - until I know which of the above groups the physician in question falls into.
It's like dyslexics, you can always tell the real ones because they're quietly getting on with it, not making a huge attention-getting fuss.
I think a good deal of individuals that draw attention to it do so because they are generally embarrassed by some of the manifestations of this particular problem. You can have an otherwise intelligent person, who's writing can give the indication that there thoughts are somehow less valid, because there intelligence should be questioned due to gramatical errors.
I think stating it, is a way of an individual saying "hey don't discount my thoughts due to the vessel they come it"
I know for me personally, it is a source of major embarrassment and this damned iPhone keyboard only makes it dreadfully worse.
As an aside, for every genuine Aspbergers case, there are 10 who simply think they have a god-given right to act like dicks. It's like dyslexics, you can always tell the real ones because they're quietly getting on with it, not making a huge attention-getting fuss.