So a female programmer walks into a bar… • Hacker News Board

Re: So a female programmer walks into a bar…

#91

Post by arrrg » Thu, May 29, 2014, 4:33 PM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #89

arrrg wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn’t really make sense, does it? Why do you believe that someone who says something sexist (or racist) is not actually sexist (or racist)? I see no reason at all for this assumption. It seems non-sensical to me. Those people want to be cruel, sure, but they are also sexist (or racist). Also, being sexist (or racist) is as much defined by actions and words as it is by intent. Actually, intent is pretty irrelev…

They're real-life trolls. They may not actually believe the things they say, but they say them because they know it will upset you. In some ways these people scare me more than actual sexists/racists/whateverists, because they're not ignorant, they just take joy in suffering, and actively manipulate people in such a way that maximizes chaos and pain. That mindset concerns me much more than someone who actually believ…

I’m honestly not willing to make that distinction. I don’t care about intent, I care about what someone says.

Re: So a female programmer walks into a bar…

#92

Post by song » Thu, May 29, 2014, 4:33 PM UTC

Right now hiring women is a competitive advantage. If you're not an asshole and make sure that the work environment is sane, you get an employee who is grateful for the opportunity to do her job in a nice environment and who is more likely to advertise her job...

Re: So a female programmer walks into a bar…

#93

Post by npizzolato » Thu, May 29, 2014, 4:35 PM UTC

arrrg wrote: post #60

protonfish wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are being distracted by the content of the comment. This kind of nonsense has nothing to do with sexism. (Or if it were racist it has nothing to do with racism, or any other types of 'isms.) Some people are simply cruel, angry, sadistic bullies and the internet gives them the anonymity to get away with it. The reason for the comment was only to hurt.

That doesn’t really make sense, does it? Why do you believe that someone who says something sexist (or racist) is not actually sexist (or racist)? I see no reason at all for this assumption. It seems non-sensical to me. Those people want to be cruel, sure, but they are also sexist (or racist). Also, being sexist (or racist) is as much defined by actions and words as it is by intent. Actually, intent is pretty irrelev…

That's ridiculous. Of course intent matters. I would hope you take someone's intent into account anytime you perceive some slight. Otherwise you're just making the problem worse, elevating everything to a 10. The end result of not caring about intent are ridiculous "zero tolerance" policies.

Re: So a female programmer walks into a bar…

#94

Post by kefka » Thu, May 29, 2014, 4:35 PM UTC

imgabe wrote: post #77

lmm wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the statistical, average sense, those things are true, aren't they? So why are they stupid? I mean sure, it would be stupid to ignore someone's actual, demonstrated basketball skill just because they're not black. But it's just as stupid to stick our heads in the sand and pretend these patterns don't exist. Generalizing from a sample of 1 girl would indeed be stupid. But at some point you have to start making infe…

If a room has 9 people with a net worth of $0 and Bill Gates in it, then in the statistical, average sense the net worth of everyone in the room is $7.6 billion dollars. But the average doesn't really tell you anything about one particular person.

Wrong. Applying basic statistic controls would eliminate Gates from the pool as an outlier. The outlier would then be listed aside the mean. That is... unless you mean median, or range. Then those are terribly different numbers.

Re: So a female programmer walks into a bar…

#95

Post by romanovcode » Thu, May 29, 2014, 4:37 PM UTC

pja wrote: post #9

pestaa wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I was expecting a little more meat in the article, and it turned out not to be primarily an article. On the other hand, I'd love to work with female programmers more. The one I had the pleasure to work with had good insight, took care of legacy code like only a mother can, and documented every wtf line tenfold. There might be tasks men are genetically more suited to, but women could also bring a lot to the t…

That is the most back-handed set of compliments I've seen in a while - you're doing a great job of entrenching the "HN is irredeemably sexist" image so many people already have.

This is one person who states his opinion, saying that "HN is irredeemably sexist" because of one person is irredeemably stupid.

Re: So a female programmer walks into a bar…

#96

Post by lmm » Thu, May 29, 2014, 4:41 PM UTC

vectorpush wrote: post #84

lmm wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Broad conclusions? No, more like weak inferences. Not everything can be a formally-verified proof; a vital skill in programming (for debugging if nothing else) is the ability to make a best guess based on limited data (and to know how much weight to give such guesses). (If there were reliable science on the subject I would of course prefer to go by that, but that's practically impossible for a question that's so poli…

No, more like weak inferences Indeed, quite weak; weak to the point of being useless. In ten years of programming, I've only worked with two developers who were comfortable with the use of regular expressions, both were women... what does that tell me about women? Nothing. Similarly, whatever experiences you've had with female programmers who are "worse than the average male" programmer is pretty clearly worthless (f…

You're right that two probably isn't enough for a significant result - though it might be, if the effect size is large enough. How large was the rest of your sample, and how big was the difference? I won't stoop to insults the way you did, but are you really not even curious about these kind of differences?

Re: So a female programmer walks into a bar…

#97

Post by imgabe » Thu, May 29, 2014, 4:50 PM UTC

arrrg wrote: post #88

enraged_camel wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what he is trying to say is that their cruelty manifests as sexism. As in, they perceive the target's sex as the lowest-hanging fruit that they can attack, and they know it is likely to hurt the target, so they go for it. It's like making fun of someone because they are short. That doesn't make someone a "shortist." It just shows that they are cruel human beings. I see sexism as more of a fundamental belief.…

Again, how do you know that? That seems to be wishful thinking. Also, the end result is the same, either way. The intent doesn’t really matter all that much, if only because the mindset of someone going to sexism or racism to be cruel is seriously fucked up. I’m certainly not racist or sexist when I want to be cruel to other people, even if I’m extremely angry and willing to say a lot to hurt the other person. Going…

So, your working hypothesis based on that comment is that they're an otherwise friendly and fair-minded person, but when they see that a woman wrote a blog about programming they feel the need to go out of their way to write a comment telling them to stfu?

Anything's possible, I guess. But, based on my particular lifetime of experience with people, jerks are usually jerks in multiple aspects of their life.

Re: So a female programmer walks into a bar…

#98

Post by arrrg » Thu, May 29, 2014, 4:51 PM UTC

imgabe wrote: post #97

arrrg wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, how do you know that? That seems to be wishful thinking. Also, the end result is the same, either way. The intent doesn’t really matter all that much, if only because the mindset of someone going to sexism or racism to be cruel is seriously fucked up. I’m certainly not racist or sexist when I want to be cruel to other people, even if I’m extremely angry and willing to say a lot to hurt the other person. Going…

So, your working hypothesis based on that comment is that they're an otherwise friendly and fair-minded person, but when they see that a woman wrote a blog about programming they feel the need to go out of their way to write a comment telling them to stfu? Anything's possible, I guess. But, based on my particular lifetime of experience with people, jerks are usually jerks in multiple aspects of their life.

I mean, sure, of course. But they are still being sexist.

Re: So a female programmer walks into a bar…

#99

Post by prawn » Thu, May 29, 2014, 4:56 PM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #89

arrrg wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn’t really make sense, does it? Why do you believe that someone who says something sexist (or racist) is not actually sexist (or racist)? I see no reason at all for this assumption. It seems non-sensical to me. Those people want to be cruel, sure, but they are also sexist (or racist). Also, being sexist (or racist) is as much defined by actions and words as it is by intent. Actually, intent is pretty irrelev…

They're real-life trolls. They may not actually believe the things they say, but they say them because they know it will upset you. In some ways these people scare me more than actual sexists/racists/whateverists, because they're not ignorant, they just take joy in suffering, and actively manipulate people in such a way that maximizes chaos and pain. That mindset concerns me much more than someone who actually believ…

I don't think the majority stop and think "How can I upset this person?" otherwise we'd see males cop it from males a lot more. I think it happens on a more instinctive level. e.g., "That person is a different gender or race to me so I must attack" and something emotional is a quick and easy thoughtless option.

Re: So a female programmer walks into a bar…

#100

Post by pbhjpbhj » Thu, May 29, 2014, 4:56 PM UTC

kordless wrote: post #30

mindcrime wrote: post #19

“you’re a chick, leave this crap to REAL developers”. I really don't understand guys who say (or think) shit like this. Honestly, it annoys me not so much because it's sexist, or misogynistic, or bigoted or whatever, but rather because it's fucking stupid . I've been doing this stuff professional for around 20 years now, and I've worked with oodles of female programmers over the years, and I've never seen any reason…

Reading about history is usually a good way to educate. ENIAC, the world's first and fastest (at that time) electronic computer, had a full time devops staff of six. ENIAC was a beast of a machine, using a whopping 150kW of power, and broke on a daily basis. ENIAC's devops team was comprised of Kay McNulty, Betty Jennings, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Fran Bilas and Ruth Lichterman: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIA…

I don't really get it.

Why's it matter that some of the first people entering programs on a computer were women.

Does the converse hold true too - that we should focus on the "engineers" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Bartik, "after learning how the machine worked only by reviewing diagrams of the device and by talking to its engineers: there was no manual") who were presumably* all male (?). And say to everyone look the predecessors of today's computer engineers were all men, and they wore suits to work.

Seems weird.

What also seems weird is that in all the ENIAC articles and the biographical details linked from the ENIAC stuff (eg http://quest.nasa.gov/space/frontiers/bartik.html) when the programming is mentioned it's not mentioned that Mauchly and Eckert were part of the programming team. Indeed it's said in a few places (that NASA link) that the women had no help other than logic diagrams in creating the programs. But elsewhere - Jean Bartik article in Wikipedia - it mentions that they talked with the engineers. It seems they are making pains to say this was a team of females, alone, with no male members; but Mauchly and Eckert were part of the team, no?

Didn't they all work together? Was there segregation that prevented Bartik, McNulty, and the other female workers from being considered peers in the effort along with Mauchly and Eckert. Did they really prevent the programmers from learning from the engineers how to program the machine somehow; didn't the engineers get involved at all in the design of programmes?

- - -

* - as it's not mentioned and surely would be; not because I think all engineers are male.