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Bro pages: like man pages, but with examples only

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Re: Bro pages: like man pages, but with examples only

#451

Post by belorn »

Steuard wrote: post #358
overgard wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My argument is that women have a sense of humor and we don't have to infantilize them by acting like they can't take a joke. Clearly I'm a patriarchal monster. Thank god we have all these social justice warriors to protect women from the word bro.

Yes, women have a sense of humor, and in general they're really good at taking a joke from time to time. But if you keep your eyes open, you'll eventually notice that women (especially in tech) wind up having to "take a joke" all the friggin' time. And that gets really old. I mean, seriously, look at this very example. Imagine that the "bro" command became a standard tool. Now picture a woman being stuck typing "bro"…

I type on a regular basis the word "woman" in emacs.

Do I take a tiny but not quite negligible emotional hit of feeling excluded every single time for doing that? what about people who program ada and type the name each day? Do you think most people even will notice that the 3 letter actually represent a name, a person, a woman, each time?

Re: Bro pages: like man pages, but with examples only

#452

Post by LinXitoW »

blahedo wrote: post #99

Great idea; shame about the name. Here's the problem with using words like "bro" (however jokingly): the problem is not with what you [0] are thinking when you read the word "bro", but with what other people , especially newcomers, are thinking. The locker-room atmosphere that stuff like this creates is a huge barrier to entry for a lot of people, women especially, who infer that on top of all the technically difficu…

How is man pages better? Before i knew what it stood for, i thought it was sexist.

Re: Bro pages: like man pages, but with examples only

#453

Post by hinchley »

I know the "man" in "manpages" is short for "manual", but when I first saw this site, I took the "bro" in "bropages" to be short for "little brother". If the "man"-page is the old, official, formal documentation for a command, the "bro"-page was the young, informal, still-evolving version of the documentation. In this sense, the name is rather apt.

The negative connotations of the word bro appear to be rather US-centric. I am Australian, and I have several friends from New Zealand who use the word bro as a term of mate-ship and affection (I've even heard one friend call his mum bro).

With that said, it's great that people are conscious of the affect of matters like this on the inclusiveness of the community - but in this case, when the word "bro" has such a variety of associations, perhaps we should judge the book by its content, and not its title.

Re: Bro pages: like man pages, but with examples only

#454

Post by joyeuse6701 »

dnautics wrote: post #285
joyeuse6701 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. There is nothing wrong with 'bro' just like there is nothing wrong with a programming language 'Julia'. They are both gender specific and you as an individual can infer whatever you like about the term. Only you, the individual, can determine how you feel about what someone says or writes, only you can determine whether or not you're insulted. How something IS vs. how a group FEELS are separate, and one s…

Hm. I always assumed Julia referred to Gaston Julia. Funnily I was working at a place where the HR manager was named "Julia Lang" so we all had a laugh when I discovered (and pitched) the language - with its website "julialang.org".

Hell sure, I mean Julia comes from the latin family name but, that is pretty funny.

Re: Bro pages: like man pages, but with examples only

#455

Post by sharpneli »

anigbrowl wrote: post #105
benatkin wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Lighten up" doesn't solve anything. I'm not against jokes but the implying man in man pages means male and not an abbreviation of manual is exclusionary. http://therealkatie.net/blog/2012/mar/21/lighten-up/

The entire Unix command line is exclusionary. If it wanted to be inclusive 'man' would be called 'help'. We're not using 300bps dumb terminals any more, I fail to see the value in forcing everyone to learn commands like cp and mv instead of copy and move .

http://meyerweb.com/other/humor/pcunix.html

Man pages are called person pages. Also history has been completely rewritten, and is now called herstory.

The nice command was historically used by privileged users to give themselves priority over unprivileged ones, by telling them to be nice. In System VI, the sue command is used by unprivileged users to get for themselves the rights enjoyed by privileged ones

Re: Bro pages: like man pages, but with examples only

#456

Post by LinXitoW »

mscarborough wrote: post #404
overgard wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the problem with your argument: since there's nothing actually hostile towards women on that page, what you're basically saying is that any expression of male culture at all is "hostile". It's like saying "stop being men! it's chasing all the women away!".

So, we have enough issues with improving women's place in STE. It's not like we need to invent new ways to keep technology male. I've helped different women with less experience in commandline stuff and linux/unix in general. In the workplace, and with tutoring middle/high school kids of both genders. If I ever had to say "go check the manpage, and the bropage" I would feel like a huge asshole.

Why is the "man" page somehow better?

Re: Bro pages: like man pages, but with examples only

#457

Post by Jtsummers »

LinXitoW wrote: post #456
mscarborough wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, we have enough issues with improving women's place in STE. It's not like we need to invent new ways to keep technology male. I've helped different women with less experience in commandline stuff and linux/unix in general. In the workplace, and with tutoring middle/high school kids of both genders. If I ever had to say "go check the manpage, and the bropage" I would feel like a huge asshole.

Why is the "man" page somehow better?

It's at least short for manual.

Re: Bro pages: like man pages, but with examples only

#458

Post by LinXitoW »

joe_the_user wrote: post #423
overgard wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way is this sexist? There is not a single word of disparagement on that site. Nobody in their right mind would say that the word "bro" is sexist unless they're explicitly looking to be offended. (IE: picking a fight)

In the off-chance that you somehow don't get the really basic implications here, let me explain it on a simple level. "Bro Pages" associate this piece of software with bros, men. Such an association can imply that the creators and/or user of the pages will be "bros", men, as opposed to women. That could be "just a joke" if you didn't have a significant, visible people of guys who are obnoxious and immature enough to…

how are "man" pages better?

Re: Bro pages: like man pages, but with examples only

#460

Post by vorg »

scythe wrote: post #29
dewitt wrote: post #4

Is the "bro" intended to be ironic, or are the creators actually not aware that the term is used to represent the worst (most misogynistic, most crass, least mature, least dependable) people currently flocking to the industry? It is by its very definition exclusionary. I suppose "brogrammers" might be a target audience, but the concept of the tool itself is pretty good for just about anyone. Shame about the name.

It's a pun on "man", almost surely. It's certainly possible that someone might not have the same interpretation of "bro", which is short for "brother", as the average internet addict. There's nothing inherently bigoted about the term, and it has a long history of use divorced from any puerile or irresponsible behavior. More importantly, it's not any sort of insult, it's a term people use when they're being friendly t…

> "Groovy" has been associated with the psychedelic-drug-using subculture, but we've had no trouble naming a programming language after it.

A lot more people object to Groovy's "G-Strings", its name for interpolated strings, than the "Groovy" name. org.codehaus.groovy's Project Manager even introduced a new operator called "Elvis" (the null-coalescing operator) in an attempt to redefine the meaning of "G-String" from the item of clothing to a string on Elvis's guitar to deflect objections but no-one's fooled.

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