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What I Didn't Say
81–90 of 601 posts
Re: What I Didn't Say
#82Jakob Kaplan Moss owes PG a public apology for his behavior. The witch hunt tweets that were coming out of him without getting the facts straight are downright disheartening.
I'm of mixed opinions about him. On the one hand, he's been influential in making Pycon more friendly to women, which I support[1]. On the other hand, he appears to have swallowed the feminist kool-aid without reflection. He has a knee-jerk reaction whenever an alleged case of "sexism" comes up - he is inclined to take the side of the "oppressed" group and facts be damned. He takes a guilty until proven innocent stan…
So he's a flawed human being who makes mistakes just pg and the rest of us. What really is scary to me is the group dynamic that has come out of this "social justice" movement in that it seems to fueled by very loud public commentary about very small events. The pronoun incident with libuv really just took this to level of absurdism.
Re: What I Didn't Say
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm of mixed opinions about him. On the one hand, he's been influential in making Pycon more friendly to women, which I support[1]. On the other hand, he appears to have swallowed the feminist kool-aid without reflection. He has a knee-jerk reaction whenever an alleged case of "sexism" comes up - he is inclined to take the side of the "oppressed" group and facts be damned. He takes a guilty until proven innocent stan…
You've described a number of the Django old guard. That is definitely not limited to him. Remember the gendered pronoun brouhaha against libuv? And no, Jacob is already bitching about pg's essay on his Twitter.
He was part of pronoun-gate? That was one of the stupidest, most counter-productive brouhahas of all time. Something tells me that purging your best devs for being insufficiently progressive is not going to attract more females.
Re: What I Didn't Say
#84"I was explaining the distinction between a CS major and a hacker..." "What I was talking about here is the idea that to do something well you have to be interested in it for its own sake, not just because you had to pick something as a major.So this is the message to take away: If you want to be really good at programming, you have to love it for itself. " Labeling "CS major"'s as non hackers, good to know as someon…
He doesn't say they are mutually exclusive, and it is a stretch to interpret it that way.
Re: What I Didn't Say
#85"I was explaining the distinction between a CS major and a hacker..." "What I was talking about here is the idea that to do something well you have to be interested in it for its own sake, not just because you had to pick something as a major.So this is the message to take away: If you want to be really good at programming, you have to love it for itself. " Labeling "CS major"'s as non hackers, good to know as someon…
I didn't read it as him saying the two were mutually exclusive... I thought the distinction was between 'just a [CS major]' as opposed to 'hacker' (who may or may not have a CS degree) - perhaps I just interpreted it the way I wanted to - but giving him the benefit of the doubt, I think he was just saying he wants founders that are intrinsically motivated (by having a desire to build stuff) rather than extrinsically…
Agreed, thats why I said I agreed with his statement "If you want to be really good at programming, you have to love it for itself."
I understand what hes trying to say, I just find it really odd that he would go about it by labeling a group of people as if they were intrinsically different.
Re: What I Didn't Say
#86I didn't find any of the quotes that I read, even if they were out of context, remotely offensive. But I can see how someone who makes it a point to be offended by things might deliberately interpret it in a bad way, and convince other people that that is in fact what was meant by it. For example, you say that you don't know how you'd convince 13 year old girls to be interested in programming. The normal interpretati…
There are things in the edited version of the interview that are problematic - not offensive, and PG also points this out. The very first incorrect quote - "We can't make women look at the world through hacker eyes and start Facebook because they haven't been hacking for the past 10 years." is problematic because it says women are NOT hackers. Given the number of women who are founders of YC companies, or are engineers, this is patently false and therefore problematic.
I for one care about when problematic or false things are said not because I am offended, but because falsehoods make it harder to accurately deal with problems like the low number of women in STEM careers, including tech startups.
Re: What I Didn't Say
#87I'm not sure I want to work in an industry where some offhanded quip can lead to the kind witchhunt and character assassination like we saw over the last few days. Paul Graham may have some views that seem controversial to some people, but don't we all? I really blame the tabloidization of the tech press and the "twitter controversy of the day" bandwagon effect for these kind of incidents.
There are people who wake up in the morning, just like you or me, and instead of doing something productive with their time begin the day's hunt for a topic to be offended about. These are people that spend every day searching for something that offends them so that they can bitch to their followers about it and feel like they are producing some real change in the world. Think on par with "Fox News commentary," excep…
You are so correct, except that some of them don't even hunt for something to be offended about, they simply log onto their favorite websites and take other people's word at what to be offended about!
"Anyone can become angry -- that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way -- this is not easy."- Aristotle
Re: What I Didn't Say
#88As a female founder, I think this is a well-thought-out, articulate response, and I appreciate pg stepping up to say something about women in tech. In a similar vein, I'd love to see YC take on one or both of the following: 1) Do at least one application cycle completely blind. How could you accomplish this? Much like in the concert auditions where this was first tried, put people behind a curtain--and then use techn…
"I appreciate pg stepping up to say something about women in tech."
"Do at least one application cycle completely blind."
Sorry but this comes off as insulting (I know that wasn't your intention), you applaud and agree with him then turn around and pull a "but I still don't trust you". As if PG can't be trusted, or you think that he's secretly sexist and want him to change his successful interview process just to prove himself to you.
I'm positive that women get discriminated in many fields, I've heard my mother's own stories. There's something about seeing a strong woman succeed that makes men feel weak. But this assumption that women are absent or less represented at Y-combinator simply because they are subconsciously discriminated against by Paul and Jessica Livingston just seems absurd. Especially seeing has how politically correct everyone's trying to be now a days. Many people (especially those running Tech Crunch events) are purposely looking for that unicorn female developer to rid themselves of male guilt. The one that's worked on algorithms, programmed since a kid, and coded up numerous apps.
Rather than focus on discrimination ask yourself this: How many times have we seen a female coder's blog? How many frameworks/api/apps have we seen created by females? Is it discrimination or lack of ambition? Take a look at the 10 industries that women rule http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2009/01/26/10-industries-where-.... Are men being discriminated against (one can argue the day care industry) or do they lack the desire and ambition to get into these industries?
Re: What I Didn't Say
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
You've described a number of the Django old guard. That is definitely not limited to him. Remember the gendered pronoun brouhaha against libuv? And no, Jacob is already bitching about pg's essay on his Twitter.
He was part of pronoun-gate? That was one of the stupidest, most counter-productive brouhahas of all time. Something tells me that purging your best devs for being insufficiently progressive is not going to attract more females.
Alex Gaynor was the catalyst for pronoun-gate, and reflects a prevailing attitude among a large number of the founding and old-school Django developers. I had the privilege to meet them and spend some social time with them at a past PyCon and I saw some of the attitudes firsthand, but they were remarkably more muted and respectable in person. Online, well...