“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…
So at what point have you worked with enough women to be allowed to make inferences? At what point do you stop trusting what you've read on the internet and start going by your own experience? Because thinking back over all the people I've programmed with or inherited a codebase from[1], the average female programmer was significantly worse than the average male programmer (which is not to say that I haven't also wor…
So a female programmer walks into a bar…
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Re: So a female programmer walks into a bar…
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
So at what point have you worked with enough women to be allowed to make inferences? At what point do you stop trusting what you've read on the internet and start going by your own experience? Because thinking back over all the people I've programmed with or inherited a codebase from[1], the average female programmer was significantly worse than the average male programmer (which is not to say that I haven't also wor…
Because thinking back over all the people I've programmed with or inherited a codebase from So basically, when considering a minuscule, poorly defined and poorly measured data-set, you've decided to draw broad conclusions about half the human population. I'm not sure how great a programmer you are, but I'll tell you right now that your logic skills need some work.
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 politicised)
Re: So a female programmer walks into a bar…
#73“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…
This is an easy way, especially if you don't have any arguments, to diminish other people. Doesn't matter the gender. If one was a guy, the other one would say "you're a PHP developer, leave this crap to REAL developers". This is not sexist, it's just plain stupid, as you said.
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Re: So a female programmer walks into a bar…
#74“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…
There is a certain class of person with low self esteem, whose mechanism for raising it is to raise themselves up by lowering others. Basically, a bully.
Bullies look for easy targets, because they want to attack someone who won't fight back. You'll appear to be an easy target if:
- You are a minority in the population where the bully hunts
- You appear to be isolated from others
- You are associated in the bully's mind with a group that the bully considers easy pickings
Bullies in general are not interested in the ideologies or politics associated with their attacks. They've just learned what buttons to push in order to cause maximum fear and powerlessness. When their victim feels disempowered, the bully feels empowered for causing it.
The only way to stop a bully is to hit them back. They're cowards at the core, and will go looking for easier victims if you fight back.
Re: So a female programmer walks into a bar…
#75“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…
I am an Indian who has had (multiple) people say ( a version of)
"Go back to answering phones"
There will always be bigots and douchebags everywhere. People who say this stuff don't matter to me and people who matter do say shit like that.
Re: So a female programmer walks into a bar…
#76Have you ever noticed that HN posts concerning gender discrimination tend to attract hundreds of comments? That's not intrinsically bad. What's questionable is the quality of the comments. It seems that almost all the remarks on this page are drawn from opinion or personal anecdotes. Don't get me wrong... personal stories can be interesting and insightful; it's just that, in most discussion threads, HN tends to balan…
Why the need to explicitly police the discussion? Doesn't HN's system of up-and-down votes already accomplish that?
No, HN's system of up-and-down votes do not accomplish that at all. About the best you can say for them is that they send obviously, overtly malicious comments to the bottoms of threads; they do little to combat insidiously malicious comments.
Re: So a female programmer walks into a bar…
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
White men can't play basketball. Japanese people are good at math. Black men just aren't as intelligent. What you said is just as stupid, also you just did this: https://xkcd.com/385/
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.
Re: So a female programmer walks into a bar…
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're not cruel because they're sexist, they're sexist because they're cruel.
How can you know that? That seems like wishful thinking to me.
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. As in, the person went through some thought process that they think is logical, and they have reached a conclusion (that they think as logical) that women are inferior to men. This then comes out in their behavior even when the intention is not to cause harm. It's an attitude that exists independently of cruelty.
Re: So a female programmer walks into a bar…
#79“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…
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.
What purpose is served by trying to argue that an overtly sexist comment ("you're a woman, leave development to the men") has nothing to do with sexism? This is another instance of the "to a certain kind of nerd, every problem can be unproductively reduced to a spreadsheet" fallacy that Joel Spolsky talked about on his blog.
Follow the logic to its conclusion and what you're ending up with is "there's no such thing as sexism (or racism, or ageism); there is only exploitation and abuse, and sexism happens to be one of its vectors". About the best thing you can say about an argument like that is that it's a flight to abstraction, demanding that we litigate epistemology instead of dealing with the circumstances that are staring us in the face.
The signal these tangential arguments tend to send is "the author of this comment is profoundly uncomfortable confronting sexism". It is OK to be uncomfortable with sexism; you don't have to engage.
Re: So a female programmer walks into a bar…
#80Earlier 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.
It tells you something. It might still make the room a good place to pitch your savings product for wealthy investors. Of course more detail is better, but you have to work with what you know (and look to learn more when you can).