Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

In defence of Douglas Crockford

atom-morgan.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 450 posts

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#211

Post by douche »

wyldfire wrote: post #18
nopit wrote: post #3

Why is crybullying so rampant in the tech community?

I think the significant change is that the tech community is growing to include other subcultures. And some of those subcultures bring new/different focuses on what's important to them. Also, I think there's some amount of momentum behind the legitimate disclosure of unacceptable behavior. The fact that many women and minorities lately feel unashamed in admitting that they were oppressed/assaulted/etc is a net win. T…

Hmm, so increasing diversity increases the level of friction and strife within a particular culture... What a novel concept.

Eventually the people who just want to build shit and get things done will have to splinter off again and go back into an uncool cultural ghetto.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#212

Post by mpweiher »

madeofpalk wrote: post #205
mpweiher wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 eac…

> But the way that sentence would normally be said where I'm from (Australia) would be "as long as they give a good talk"

Yes, language evolves. Currently, this is almost certainly grammatically incorrect, "they" being the third person plural and (not shown here, but assumed) the speaker being singular.

"They" is being pressed into service as the non-derogatory, gender-neutral third person singular that's missing in english. So "they" has started to mean both third person plural and unspecified third person singular. The previous solution was that "he" meant both "male" and "unspecified". So previously women got their own pronoun, men didn't, now we have a harder time telling whether there's a single person or a group.

Both solutions have their quirks, both work at some level.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#213

Post by [deleted] »

rdtsc wrote: post #34

> We will also be removing Douglas Crockford from our keynote speakers list to help make the conference a comfortable environment for all. If they are going to insinuate things about what he said, they should mention exactly what he said or did. The fact that they don't somehow tells me there is not much there to go on. To put it another way, if they have the guts to remove Crockford that should have enough guts to c…

[deleted]

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#214

Post by mpweiher »

trmsw wrote: post #208
mpweiher wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 a…

>Only "on" in French is specifically for persons whereas "it" is for things and not persons.

I think that's what I wrote.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#215

Post by rtpg »

gnarbarian wrote: post #188
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #160

The Nodevember folk(s) posted a statement regarding this whole kerfuffle [1]. It's pretty hollow IMO. > While we have a tremendous respect for Mr. Crockford's abilities as a speaker and his contributions to our craft, we became aware that based on private feedback - not simply the dialogue on Twitter - that his presence would make some speakers uncomfortable to the point where they refused to attend or speak. Okay so…

I'm willing to bet that he didn't pose any danger to these people other than having the gall to publicly harbor opinions they are uncomfortable with. In other words, diversity does not extend to diversity of opinion.

So what?

The talk organizers were faced with a dilemma: either keep Crawford and lose a bunch of other speakers or lose Crawford but keep others

I do think clarification is needed, but I could see "being a jerk " as a legit reason to not want to associate with someone. People do the same with people like Torvalds

Being unliked is also a reason that people won't want to associate with you.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#217

Post by mlsarecmg »

eli wrote: post #92
aikah wrote: post #41

TLDR; personal vendetta against Crockford led to accusations of "sexism", and him getting uninvited from Nodevember conference. There is absolutely no proof of sexism anywhere ,only a bunch of people who want to take him out professionally because he might have pissed them off for whatever reason in the past. Only now these people can use dubious political arguments to justify their vendetta. This can happen to anybo…

I don't think public evidence of sexism matters if other speakers were uncomfortable enough to withdraw from the conference. They're trying to run a conference where people feel comfortable, not hold a public tribunal.

The "speakers" you talk about are two Twitter users. Kas Perch and Nexylove. They started to cry wolf, without any reason what so ever, and that's that, he is out, ruining it for those that actually wanted to learn about Javascript.

Listen to actual conferences these two have held. Calling others assholes, subhuman, human garbage and worse simply for dismissing their twisted ideology. Kas has shamed Twitter users lives. All of this would be against Nodevembers CoC.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#218

Post by douche »

hackaflocka wrote: post #191

David Crockford, if you are reading this: You need to declare yourself a closeted gender-queer trans-sexual immediately. After that, anything you say will be excused due to past oppression. And the conference will re-instate you. Drop a message below if you want my help with this. I will give you a step by step PR strategy to achieve this. Paul Graham: if you're reading this, would this be a viable startup idea? Help…

I don't think that's enough to take out all the stain in the minds of the pitchfork brigade. Just look at Milo Yiannopoulos. Even being gay isn't enough to shield some opinions.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#219

Post by zimbatm »

As an occasional speaker I am a bit worried. It seems very likely that I would say something that could offend someone, given enough time (even if it wasn't my intent). What is the best way to react when faced with that kind of event?
Post reply on HN