21–30 of 32 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As opposed to the gender-neutral 'they', which is the Best Thing (that few people seem to realise).
Many people still like to claim that 'they' can only be used as a plural.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many people still like to claim that 'they' can only be used as a plural.
If epicene "they" (that is, "they" used for the purpose of gender-ambiguity) is good enough for Shakespeare, it should be good enough for any high school English teacher, or other small-minded prescriptivist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they#Generic_they
I presume the author is female, according to her use of the feminine pronoun in referring to programmers generally. Nice to get a female perspective. I appreciate her emphasis on all the qualities beyond coding itself that contribute to a good programmer.
I presume the author is female, according to her use of the feminine pronoun in referring to programmers generally. Nice to get a female perspective. I appreciate her emphasis on all the qualities beyond coding itself that contribute to a good programmer.
I've actually noticed only a weak correlation at best between gender of the writer/speaker and the generic pronoun e uses. It's pretty common for people of the progressive set to use the feminine personal pronoun for programmers generically, which is a Good Thing (tm).
Cheeky side note: it'd be nice if the author could program their web server to send the correct character set so that the © symbol doesn't show up as �. It's being served with: Content-Type:text/html; charset=UTF-8 whereas the charset is actually in ISO-8859-1.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've actually noticed only a weak correlation at best between gender of the writer/speaker and the generic pronoun e uses. It's pretty common for people of the progressive set to use the feminine personal pronoun for programmers generically, which is a Good Thing (tm).
As opposed to the gender-neutral 'they', which is the Best Thing (that few people seem to realise).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I personally think it just sounds awkward. Spivak pronouns can pick up all of the benefits of a singular "they" without the drawbacks, though.
I would say the opposite, actually. "They" as a gender neutral singular pronoun is, to me, perfectly natural. I use it dozens of times a day as such without noticing. Spivak pronouns, on the other hand, are blatantly marked, and were I to come across them in writing or speech, I'd find them very distracting.
I guessed - correctly - it would be the same Spivak who wrote the excellent Calculus textbook.
a short summary?! i could learn python in the time it takes to read this.
It takes a lot of work, study, reading, patience, and diverse skill-sets to become a successful programmer.
Cheeky side note: it'd be nice if the author could program their web server to send the correct character set so that the © symbol doesn't show up as �. It's being served with: Content-Type:text/html; charset=UTF-8 whereas the charset is actually in ISO-8859-1.
Unsure of the charset standards history, but article is from 2003 and hosted on an edu domain. So possibility since then site has been moved around?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many people still like to claim that 'they' can only be used as a plural.
I personally think it just sounds awkward. Spivak pronouns can pick up all of the benefits of a singular "they" without the drawbacks, though.
Another benefit that these novel pronouns can't pick up is that _they_ is the normal gender-neutral pronoun in use by native speakers, and has been so for centuries. The Spivak pronouns are not. If you have to explicitly teach pronouns to adult native speakers, or if using a pronoun requires deliberate thought, then there is something wrong.
I can think of two drawbacks of the normal gender-neutral pronoun, but I can't see how they are solved by Spivak pronouns, in fact, one of them is much worse.
1) Some people think that singular _they_ sounds awkard. However, considering the Spivak pronouns are a novel coinage in a closed class of words, it's almost certain that more people would find them more awkward than the normal gender-neutral pronouns.
2) There is a possibility for ambiguity with the plural pronoun. However, I can't think of a situation in which it wouldn't also be ambiguous with an distinct singular gender neutral pronoun.