I see very little of that among programmers. Programmers debating the origin of life is more akin to watching an old episode of Firing Line with William Buckley (respecting each other's positions, sometimes changing each other's minds because on that show intellectual prowess was displayed by the ability to pay attention to the facts that matter in the aggregate, not shouting when someone proves your position wrong). For example, it's been forever since I heard a programmer try to use a straw-man argument that people who don't literally use logic for their everyday work get trapped by.
This is especially true with most Christian programmers being old-earth creationists (not theistic evolutionists). That alone tells the atheist programmers that they're not debating with a run-of-the-mill young earth Christian who believes things like it didn't rain at all before Noah's flood or that not even a bug or virus died before Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden. Basically, there are less "gotchas" to trip up most Christian programmers because the Christian programmers tend not to adamantly believe a lot of that stuff anyway.
The problem with apologetics is that the path to God is primarily through faith, not intellect. The existence of God is self evident. Either a person sees it or they do not. However, what actually matters is that if God does exist (self evident) who is he and does a person have any obligations to Him. The unwillingness to feel an obligation /duty/or gratitude to the self evident God is where people actually make their decisions as to whether God exists or not. If you believe in God and feel a duty to him then where do you go for instruction.....you are pretty much left with going to an old religion (Christian , new, Muslim, old eastern) because it is irrational to think that God did not reveal himself to all men for all time. That is the intellectual side for me, but in the end conversion is an intervention by God and it is done through repentance and faith.