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In defence of Douglas Crockford

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Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#51

Post by ageofwant »

GirlsCanCode wrote: post #4

I'm a woman with an EE degree. I hate non-tech "women" who go to conferences that have no real interest in (like Pycon, Ms. Richards) just to push some wacky agenda. These "women" aren't making it easier for real girls in real engineering programs.

I am a man with an EE degree. Most all placed I worked in my 20 years of professional life I've had female bosses, typically also EE degreed. Yes there were typically less women sure, but as a rule they were better respected as engineers and managers. Especially when they were both. They also drove better cars so I'm going to assume they were adequately compensated too.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#52

Post by alva »

nopit wrote: post #3

Why is crybullying so rampant in the tech community?

It is actually a fairly recent, systematic campaign across all industries. These actions are taking place across medicine, the scientific community and many others.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#53

Post by gavinpc »

tootie wrote: post #2

I'm pretty sympathetic to the cause of feminism especially in technology and I cringe hard at a lot of the casual sexism that gets thrown around, but this is truly baffling. Assuming this is all they actually have on him this is nothing more than very clever word play with zero gender inferences to be made.

It's not even "word play." The word "promiscuous" was used for hundreds of years to mean "indiscriminately mixed" before it had any sexual connotation.[0] And yes, JSLint is opinionated. That's its whole raison d'etre.

It's a tempest in a teapot, not at all comparable to the LambdaConf thing, which I almost wish I hadn't learned about.

[0] http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=promiscuous

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#54

Post by DonHopkins »

Maybe this is long game karma revenge for his notorious role in spreading communicable diseases in Habitat. [1]

Disease

One of the more successful "games" we invented for Habitat was the disease. There are three strains currently defined:

Cooties

Happy Face

Mutant (AKA The Fly)

We only were able to test Cooties with live players, but it was a hit. It works like this: Several initial Avatars are infected with a "Cootie" head. This head replaces the current one, and cannot be removed except by touching another non-infected Avatar. Once infected, you can not be infected again that day. In effect, this game is "tag" and "keep away" at the same time. Often people would allow themselves be infected just so he could infect "that special person that they know would just hate it!" Every time the disease was spread, there was an announcement at least a week before, and for at least a week afterward it was the subject of major discussions. One day that the plague was spread, a female Avatar that was getting married got infected 1 hour before her wedding! Needless to say, she was very excited, and in a panic until a friend offered to take it off her hands.

Some interesting variations to try on this are: Touch 2 people to cure; this would cause quite a preponderance of infected people late in the day. The "Happy Face" plague: This simple head has the side effect of changing any talk message (word balloons) to come out as "HAVE A NICE DAY!"... can you imagine infecting some unsuspecting soul, and him saying back to you HAVE A NICE DAY! ??? ESP and mail still work normally, so the user is not without communications channels. The Mutant Plague: The head looks like the head of a giant housefly and it has the effect of changing talk text to "Bzzz zzzz zzzz". We think these all will be great fun.

[1] http://www.crockford.com/ec/anecdotes.html

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#55

Post by vidarh »

tootie wrote: post #2

I'm pretty sympathetic to the cause of feminism especially in technology and I cringe hard at a lot of the casual sexism that gets thrown around, but this is truly baffling. Assuming this is all they actually have on him this is nothing more than very clever word play with zero gender inferences to be made.

I find it even more confusing on the basis that regardless of gender, calling the second case slut-shaming is bizarre in a context where Crockford is painting the "old web promiscuity" in a positive light for the most part, but pointing out that it has one specific problem in the case where what you want is commitment.

To me it reads as part nostalgia for the old "promiscuity" and lack of need for complex network security. It paints it as a period of innocence. I did not see any "shaming" of anything.

Unless he followed up with something more offensive, it would seem the person complaining didn't even understand what he was saying.

Perhaps you need to be of a certain age (if anyone told me I'd soon be using that phrase about myself...) to be likely to "get" that this was not a description of "bad old days" but of good old days.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#56

Post by olalonde »

danso wrote: post #28
robert_tweed wrote: post #20

I have to wonder if this was a real complaint or if it was done to highlight the obvious problem here, a bit like the guy who patented a "Method of exercising a cat". I mean, if you're going to ban Douglas Crockford from your conference it should at least be for his stated prejudice against comments in data-interchange formats. Not vague allegations that may damage his personal and professional reputation, to which h…

re: whether Crockford has a case about libel. The allegations are published and the OP links to the original complaint on Medium: https://medium.com/@nodebotanist/why-i-won-t-be-speaking-at-... Furthermore, the best defense against libel is the truth. Part of the complaint is an opinion based on public statements made by Crockford (the "slut-shaming"). The other published complaint is that Crockford said to the compl…

> The allegations are published and the OP links to the original complaint on Medium: https://medium.com/@nodebotanist/why-i-won-t-be-speaking-at-...

That passive-aggressive "update" is quite telling of his/her personality: "I’ve switched comments to ‘not visible.’ I won’t be reading them. I don’t feel the need to justify this, either. Thanks <3."

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#57

Post by unimpressive »

thomasfoster96 wrote: post #7

I’d really like to know how a decision like that is made. In Nodevember's statement on the matter[0] (which the parent link doesn’t mention, a rather glaring omission), they quite openly admit that they “...aren't professional organizers or PR people. We are still learning, and will make mistakes.” So why not admit a mistake? I certainly don’t want to see sexist speakers at conferences, but this decision seems to hav…

>I certainly don’t want to see sexist speakers at conferences,

I don't want to see a sexist talk (as opposed to a-sexist talk), but an 'objectionable' speaker really shouldn't be a problem if their talk would otherwise have merit and they can be reasonably expected not to be objectionable on stage.

No-platforming and economic warfare are tactics used by the worst kind of political actors, the kind you should be actively avoiding if you value your own livelihood, let alone anybody elses.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#58

Post by robert_tweed »

danso wrote: post #28
robert_tweed wrote: post #20

I have to wonder if this was a real complaint or if it was done to highlight the obvious problem here, a bit like the guy who patented a "Method of exercising a cat". I mean, if you're going to ban Douglas Crockford from your conference it should at least be for his stated prejudice against comments in data-interchange formats. Not vague allegations that may damage his personal and professional reputation, to which h…

re: whether Crockford has a case about libel. The allegations are published and the OP links to the original complaint on Medium: https://medium.com/@nodebotanist/why-i-won-t-be-speaking-at-... Furthermore, the best defense against libel is the truth. Part of the complaint is an opinion based on public statements made by Crockford (the "slut-shaming"). The other published complaint is that Crockford said to the compl…

As far as I can tell, there's no confirmation that is the specific (or only) complaint. There is an official statement from the organisers here:

http://nodevember.org/statement.html

This does not give much more information, but it does acknowledge that the tweet was poorly worded. Not sure how helpful that is though, now that the genie is out of the bottle.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#59

Post by inopinatus »

"as long as he gives a good talk/presentation"

Given the content of your first remark, I'm strongly inclined to suspect this use of the explicitly masculine pronoun is first-degree trolling.

This serves as a counterexample to your point, because as statements go, it would be simply be factually (rather than politically) correct to have said "they" rather than "he", unless you really do hold an expectation that all conference speakers are male. In other words, neutral language is more rational, not less.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#60

Post by throwway1111 »

This is happening in all parts of society. So-called "social justice warriors" and parts of the liberal left have sprung up that are very hostile to free speech and seek to destroy and silence anyone whom they oppose. Unfortunately, they have the full support of not only college administrations, but increasingly HR departments as they ascend into the workforce, and PR departments as they air their grievances over social media.

I am posting from a throw away account because voicing an opinion such as this is reason enough to be targeted.

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