101–110 of 176 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Once you realize that 100% of his writing is about the self-hating gay Mormon experience, you notice a lot more subtext. In this piece, the junior programmer who becomes a middle-manager to please the marketers is a metaphor for gay Mormons who marry women to please the church.
wtf did I just read :s
Was this as ridiculous a pastiche of clichés when it was written in 1995 as it is now? Or did programmers really only start to have social lives, dislike permanent crunch mode and plan before coding in the last 20 years? It sounds to me like Card read through the Jargon file, i.e. the self-image of a considerably earlier subculture of programmers, took it at face value, added some hyperbole and wrote it up as a kind…
What kind of work attracts people that prefer computers to other people?
Front end is about design, which means it is about people. Backend... less so, but most people do full stack these days anway. So if you do web, you do people (or you are unlikely to be good).
But the technology behind web is easier. That isn't to say web is easy - it is two problems, a people problem and a technical problem. But you are writing in a dynamic language which doesn't appear to be sentient and hate you, and a lot of the more technical stuff gets abstracted away.
In 1995, you wrote some C, you wrote some assembely, and as an afterthought, you made an interface featuring horrible IT guy art and an unforgiving number of buttons.
There was a people problem, but the engineers either ignored or didn't notice it. When someone did - MS windows, iphones... well they made a lot of money because caring about user experience was actually a diferentiator back then.
There are still fields of software for people that don't like people. They work in software research, on embedded systems. If they are not so good technically, maybe they work on government / defence software where the user matters less and the ecosystem still uses C++. A lot of them have moved into mathmatical modelling and HFT, because the money is really good there.
There are other reasons for the change - I think Redit and co have created a cultural change. Programmers go to the gym, and feel uncomfortable not having interests outside of LISP.
But yeah, things have changed. I'd say they have changed for the better. But to me, what we really need, is more diversity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You've been doing these for a while, so: thank you for taking the time! It's just that I get the feeling your "job" should be done automatically by a sidebar or something ;) Seriously an automated element containing "previous discussions about this subject" would be a nice addition to HN.
> It's just that I get the feeling your "job" should be done automatically by a sidebar or something ;) I disagree strongly: I would gladly pay a human for curating & summarizing HN just like ColinWright did -- on the order of 4EUR / month.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The difference here, is that it's not the 1800s, and OSC continues to not just hold, but evangelize his hateful positions. See: http://www.nauvoo.com/library/card-hypocrites.html for one of the reasons people find him repellent. Choice quote (after he had a chance to reflect on the response to his essay): "...it has become clearer and clearer to me, since writing this essay, that gay activism as a movement is no long…
This is not a hateful position. It is a political position and a stance of how society should operate. I see no gay hatred there. Simply the strong need for family and society building. Just because you can't understand his reasons and emotionally react to some of his opinions does not a bigot make.
Somehow the lack of throbbing, purple-veined meatsicks must render it less compelling.
EDIT: withdrawing the above childishness, turns out he does write extensively about divorce.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The communist blacklist was merely a list of communists published the Hollywood Reporter, making studios aware of their feelings so studios could make their own decisions. It later expanded to include other communists, who's feelings the studios were made aware of in order to make their own decision. I didn't call you an oppressor. I agree with you that Card, much like the Communists in Hollywood, is an advocate of o…
>>The communist blacklist was merely a list of communists published the Hollywood Reporter Merely a list! You might feel a little differently in 1950s USA with your name on that list. A list that meant the end of your career, blacklisting by friends and family (even sympathetic for fear of association.) You're the second person in 24 hours to downplay McCarthyism as no big deal and it's left me scratching my head in…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The communist blacklist was merely a list of communists published the Hollywood Reporter, making studios aware of their feelings so studios could make their own decisions. It later expanded to include other communists, who's feelings the studios were made aware of in order to make their own decision. I didn't call you an oppressor. I agree with you that Card, much like the Communists in Hollywood, is an advocate of o…
>>The communist blacklist was merely a list of communists published the Hollywood Reporter Merely a list! You might feel a little differently in 1950s USA with your name on that list. A list that meant the end of your career, blacklisting by friends and family (even sympathetic for fear of association.) You're the second person in 24 hours to downplay McCarthyism as no big deal and it's left me scratching my head in…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The communist blacklist was merely a list of communists published the Hollywood Reporter, making studios aware of their feelings so studios could make their own decisions. It later expanded to include other communists, who's feelings the studios were made aware of in order to make their own decision. I didn't call you an oppressor. I agree with you that Card, much like the Communists in Hollywood, is an advocate of o…
>>The communist blacklist was merely a list of communists published the Hollywood Reporter Merely a list! You might feel a little differently in 1950s USA with your name on that list. A list that meant the end of your career, blacklisting by friends and family (even sympathetic for fear of association.) You're the second person in 24 hours to downplay McCarthyism as no big deal and it's left me scratching my head in…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not a hateful position. It is a political position and a stance of how society should operate. I see no gay hatred there. Simply the strong need for family and society building. Just because you can't understand his reasons and emotionally react to some of his opinions does not a bigot make.
Yes, it is stupid, ignorant and unscientific, but not hateful. It might be used by people with hateful intentions however. "Argument from authority" is logical fallacy but a lot of people are still tricked by it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not a hateful position. It is a political position and a stance of how society should operate. I see no gay hatred there. Simply the strong need for family and society building. Just because you can't understand his reasons and emotionally react to some of his opinions does not a bigot make.
If he's so concerned about the fabric of society and the family why doesn't he write about the evils of divorce? The divorce rate is like 50%, whereas gayness hovers around 5% depending on who you ask. Somehow the lack of throbbing, purple-veined meatsicks must render it less compelling. EDIT: withdrawing the above childishness, turns out he does write extensively about divorce.
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2005-11-13-1.html
A quick search suggests he regularly incorporates criticism of divorce into his other writings.