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In defence of Douglas Crockford

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Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#241

Post by AsyncAwait »

DanBC wrote: post #230
AsyncAwait wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the thing; I am technically from a "marginalised" group and yet I still often use what you'd call marginalising pronouns. I use them not to marginalise anyone, but because they're commonly used and there's no reason to not use them. When I say "he", it's probably because I am a male so I default to "he", but that DOES NOT mean that I mean to "marginalise" women, in fact be free to substitute "she" in if you fe…

People aren't saying that you are trying to marginalise women and transgendered people. And if they are saying that you can safely call them idiots and ignore them. What they are saying is that switching from "he" to "they" is simple and easy, and will make life better for many people. It's correct English, and has been in use since the 16th century, albeit with some push from prescriptivists. You're right that in th…

> What they are saying is that switching from "he" to "they" is simple and easy

I get that and if I remember to use it, I will, but when I instinctively do not use it, because well, "he" still comes more naturally to me than "they", it should not be assumed that I am sexist, bigoted etc. because I made a particular choice of words that can be reasonably interpreted as not meant to explicitly exclude people, unless they're looking for it.

> will make life better for many people

It's true that it may make them feel better, if they're looking at every use of a gendered pronoun from a "it's sexist" perspective, but I'd argue that's unproductive and not really making their life any better in a meaningful way

> It's correct English

That's good, but that doesn't mean that it's "intuitive" English for everyone and they shouldn't feel bad for it.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#242

Post by mpweiher »

DanBC wrote: post #230
AsyncAwait wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the thing; I am technically from a "marginalised" group and yet I still often use what you'd call marginalising pronouns. I use them not to marginalise anyone, but because they're commonly used and there's no reason to not use them. When I say "he", it's probably because I am a male so I default to "he", but that DOES NOT mean that I mean to "marginalise" women, in fact be free to substitute "she" in if you fe…

People aren't saying that you are trying to marginalise women and transgendered people. And if they are saying that you can safely call them idiots and ignore them. What they are saying is that switching from "he" to "they" is simple and easy, and will make life better for many people. It's correct English, and has been in use since the 16th century, albeit with some push from prescriptivists. You're right that in th…

Just for the record:

- rape has largely been defined so that it is physically close to impossible for a woman to rape a man.

- The official numbers for IPV are very close and there is a strong reason to believe that female on male IPV is dramatically underreported (female on female IPV apparently has levels similar to male on female). The only statistic I could find for murder was murder-suicide.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#243

Post by MaulingMonkey »

MichaelGG wrote: post #181
tzs wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it's easy to look past someone's personal preferences and outrageous comments when you're already part of the club. But respect that that isn't everyone's experience. What specifically did Crockford say that was outrageous?

"I removed comments from JSON because I saw people were using them to hold parsing directives, a practice which would have destroyed interoperability. I know that the lack of comments makes some people sad, but it shouldn't. Suppose you are using JSON to keep configuration files, which you would like to annotate. Go ahead and insert all the comments you like. Then pipe it through JSMin before handing it to your JSON…

I'm now significantly less salty about the lack of comments in JSON.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#244

Post by prance »

This article is based on the assumption that those two statements from Rockford were the actual reason for his disinvitation - because that's "everything [the author's] been able to find". Which is not the case according to nodevember's statement[1].

Besides, the fact that the author is criticising people for calling for a disinvite of a white supremacist speaker from LamdaConf[2] doesn't quite increase my trust in his opinions.

[1] http://nodevember.org/statement.html [2] https://modelviewculture.com/news/lambda-conf-fuckery-white-...

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#245

Post by [deleted] »

Inconel wrote: post #157
madeofpalk wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've kind of just resolved your concerns yourself. > The problem is that there is no way for the person affected to receive "justice", "fairness", or "a day in court". Of course there is. There's 'private arbitration' - just resolve the matters yourself like regular people do. Then then, if the victim feels particularly damaged, there's the courts. > Crockford might just ignore this--it's probably the best course o…

Does "private arbitration" require money? I don't know anything about Mr. Crockford's financial situation but, and this is purely from a self interest perspective, I um, don't have much money to adjudicate such a matter using arbitrators. This is what makes these kind of public accusations so troubling for me. If I happened to find myself on the receiving end of these kind of accusations I would have essentially no r…

[deleted]

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#246

Post by ktRolster »

nradov wrote: post #174
tzs wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. It's not that baffling. Being a victim of harassment raises your status in certain circles. People in those circles tend to accept your word without requiring any other evidence, and so naturally some people will find harassment in anything tha…

Since the number of people actually abducted by UFOs is 0, it's trivially true that the number of claimed abductions is higher than actual abductions.

the number of people actually abducted by UFOs is 0

How can you possibly be certain of that?

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#248

Post by yardie »

cryptica wrote: post #235
Tehnix wrote: post #29

I generally feel like there's a kneejerk reaction from people (especially in the tech community) to be "PC compliant", at the level where you almost can't have any discourse because it's such a minefield (can't imagine a rational person whoms first intepretation of the tweets is "that's sexist" to be pleasant having a conversation with). I almost feel in the minority (or just a silent one?), but I honestly don't care…

I can relate to the feeling of being a 'silent' minority. As an introverted white guy who lives in a foreign country, I feel that I am being discriminated against all the time. I literally have to force myself to act extroverted in order to succeed in the workplace. People just assume that if you're a guy, you're just a confident hussler. I know several introverted white guys who are extremely qualified but missed ou…

> As an introverted white guy who lives in a foreign country, I feel that I am being discriminated against all the time.

This is, literally, what it feels like to be a minority in the US and most European countries. Everything about you is questionable, you get slighted all the time, and you're the representative of an entire ethnicity. So whatever you do or opinions you hold are representative of the entire group.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#249

Post by hermanhermitage »

mpweiher wrote: post #234
niftich wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently it's 'they'. Yes, there's some confusion about whether it refers to one person or more, but that confusion already exists with 'you', in all except regional usages.

The difference is that "you" can be grammatically singular or plural, whereas "they" is definitely grammatically plural. "they gives me the shivers"

In, "they give me the shivers", they is singular.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#250

Post by angry_octet »

tempestn wrote: post #152
Natsu wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That said, from your very link I find this: " douglascrockford commented on Feb 21, 2011 I am sorry I hurt your feelings." I'll take someone who realizes they made a mistake and apologizes for it any day over someone who seeks to get rid of all the people they don't like.

Perhaps. In a vacuum I could see reading "I am sorry I hurt your feelings" as pretty condescending. That's not apologizing for what you said; it's more like pitying the person for their irrational reaction to it. (Or that's how it could feel to that person.) (I'm not saying that's how it was intended or anything. I have no idea. Just saying this could just as easily be evidence for abrasiveness as against it. I'll al…

You may be thinking of when politicians say "I'm sorry if you found what I said offensive", or "sorry for an offence your feel", which is a classic anti-apology.

Normally without the nuance of speech it might be impossible to tell if it was meant in a genuine way. In this case however the context makes it clear he is being arrogant and egotistical in a manner quite consistent with techie internet forum behavior.

The idea of a javascript developer feeling intellectual superiority is of course absurd.*

* Joke

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