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In defence of Douglas Crockford

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Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#201

Post by nnq »

Am I the only person here who would be 100% A-OK to, hypothetically, even inviting Adolf Hitler as a JS conference, as long he/she would be great at what he/she does, had enlightening things to say about the topic, and at least 50% of attendants would learn a lot from what he says or at least be entertained?!

Heck, I wouldn't even care even if he/she wasted 5 mins or so blabbering about his political ideology, if his/hers advice on, let's say, JS programming, would be as valuable as Douglas Corckford's! Imho, it would be even acceptable if he/she would crack a few very politically incorrect jokes during the social event smalltalks if the jokes had good enough humor to compensate for their content.

Let's grow some thicker skin for fuck's sake! MDs, physicists, chemists etc. are all pretty comfortable with even cracking bad sex jokes at a party or conference from time to time and they get away with it pretty well.

Or maybe it's the fact that 90% of what most software developers is so meaningless and useless, especially those that have the time to speak at conferences and "evangelize", that they need to find meaning in some other shit and they gravitate to this uber-PC crap... Even a banning everyone which titles himself "developer evangelist" from speaking at a conference could probably raise the average talk quality for that event, event if that would a bit too un-PC even for my taste ...imagine the emotional damage inflicted by such a need for personal rebranding in order to still be able to attend.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#202

Post by nhaehnle »

scrollaway wrote: post #193
throwway1111 wrote: post #60

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 soc…

I'm really tired of shit like this being bucketed as "the liberal left" when it has just about nothing to do with liberalism or leftism. I suspect I'm just as tired of that, as actual conservatives are of their views being mixed in with Trump's. It's censorship and bullshitocracy.

It's not related to liberal or left logically, but it is related to the liberal left socially, because these SJW movements mostly arose from the liberal left (specifically, IMHO, from the part that somehow lost track of the scope of real problems - kind of ironic, since it means they're generally a pretty "privileged" bunch themselves!).

As someone who considers himself to be liberal left, I'm annoyed by that but I do feel that it's fair to point it out. We shouldn't just bury our head in the sand in the face of an inconvenient reality.

But yes, let's please point out again and again that large parts of the SJW movements have lost track of what being liberal and left is all about, even if that's where they originally started out from.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#203

Post by justinlardinois »

A couple thoughts here:

I'm not familiar with this particular conference, but excluding someone from a conference for a history of making bigoted comments seems totally reasonable in principle.

The particular comments this post offers don't seem at all sexist to me though, so I don't think this situation makes a whole lot of sense. Granted, it would be better if the conference organizers cited the comments themselves; all we have here is what Morgan thinks are the offensive comments, so we're unfortunately not getting the whole picture.

I will say that, having read a lot of Crockford, the guy is a dick. And hey, if you rub a lot of people the wrong way by being a jerk, maybe a conference might think that outweighs the value you could add with your skill and knowledge. But if that's the real reason in this case, I wish they would say it.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#204

Post by douche »

Flying Spaghetti Monster, this is Douglas Crockford. I dunno what it is about Javascript, but the community seems to have a habit of trying to grind up their founders and luminaries. Brendan Eich was crucified and driven out of a job by the mob for a small political contribution more than a half decade before that went against the grain of political correctness.

Meanwhile, Linus has been a dick from square one, and the Linux kernel keeps chugging along.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#205

Post by madeofpalk »

mpweiher wrote: post #195
inopinatus wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok sure. In that case, I'll point out that being "a common practice going back hundreds of years" should lead you to question something, not accept it. It reminds me of the time I recommended (to the Unix team at a major financial institution) that they use ssh rather than telnet, and being rebuffed with "that's the way we've always done it". In this case, since you want to be specific, the practice of defaulting to…

> the practice of defaulting to "he" correlates with hundreds of years of treating women as chattels Er, no. It just means it is the unmarked/unremarkable case corresponding to males being generally worth less and discardable ("save the women"...). It is also a quirk of some of our languages that the gender-neutral pronouns are considered derogatory when applied to people. German and English have this problem ("it",…

But the way that sentence would normally be said where I'm from (Australia) would be "as long as they give a good talk" - no need to use specifics when you're talking about a specific person. I find it disjoining when I hear otherwise.

I also find it weird that German and Spanish inject gender into every noun, although I do get that there's little meaning behind it (from the little quizzing I've given speakers of each)

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#206

Post by labrador »

I wonder how many people complaining about Crockford have posted or support the statement "If you can't handle me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best." Nodevember doesn't deserve Douglas Crockford. And Lipscomb, where the event is being held, is a religiously oppressive institution where "All full-time, undergraduate students are required to take Bible classes and attend chapel twice a week. [1]" Sounds like Nodevember is a lose-lose situation for all involved.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipscomb_University

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#208

Post by trmsw »

mpweiher wrote: post #195
inopinatus wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok sure. In that case, I'll point out that being "a common practice going back hundreds of years" should lead you to question something, not accept it. It reminds me of the time I recommended (to the Unix team at a major financial institution) that they use ssh rather than telnet, and being rebuffed with "that's the way we've always done it". In this case, since you want to be specific, the practice of defaulting to…

> the practice of defaulting to "he" correlates with hundreds of years of treating women as chattels Er, no. It just means it is the unmarked/unremarkable case corresponding to males being generally worth less and discardable ("save the women"...). It is also a quirk of some of our languages that the gender-neutral pronouns are considered derogatory when applied to people. German and English have this problem ("it",…

Only "on" in French is specifically for persons whereas "it" is for things and not persons. It is properly considered derogatory to refer to a person as a thing - hardly a quirk. "On" is also non-specific and can't stand in for he or her. The advantage or quirk in French is the singular possessive pronouns follow the gender of the thing possessed not the possessor. Edit: to clarify, my objection is that "on" is not an example of a gender-neutral all-purpose or sentience-neutral pronoun. Not having one of these is hardly a quirk (just a pita).

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#209

Post by labrador »

jacalata wrote: post #151
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.

Why are you using "quotes" around women? It also sounds like you are unfamiliar with the job of developer evangelist (which Richards held) - it is actually a pretty common position in the programming industry, perhaps not so much around electrical engineering. Here's an explanation - https://sendgrid.com/blog/explained-developer-evangelism-par...

I suspect the quotes around "woman" are about trans men who start speaking for all women after they transition. I imagine some women are bothered by this. I have no evidence of this, just trying to explain the quotes.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#210

Post by emn13 »

35bge57dtjku wrote: post #161
tamana wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the normal thing marginalizes people, marginalized people are hurt. In recent years, they have started to defend themsves in force, the ks to unifying power of the internet. The insecurity you observe is feeling of the erosion of privilege.

I think the disconnect is that the vast majority of people, regardless of gender, do not consider these things to be marginalizing anyone. Why you can't see that and why you want to patrol for everything that only superficially resembles that is puzzling. When the number of people who are complaining about these "normal" things is about 1 in 10,000, it should make you stop and think. Are you really an early adopter o…

Or perhaps the marginalization is felt now, but certainly once wasn't - it's an artificial, unnecessary and divisive perpective. But I can imagine that just like misheard song-lyrics it's something that people pick up on, and won't let go.

It's aggrevating, but it's a battle that may already have been lost.

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