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

Bro pages: like man pages, but with examples only

bropages.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

801–810 of 872 posts

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

#801

Post by jcutrell »

donotsurveil wrote: post #520
jcutrell wrote: post #161

The fun of programming languages and open source software is, guess what, you can change it. You don't like it? Write an alias in your bashrc. OSS authors are not held to a standard defined by all of you - they are welcome to express themselves however they want. For instance, my mother would find Brainfuck quite offensive. That doesn't mean the author should change the name. I think the play on words is quite clever…

You're missing the point. It's not about being offensive but about being self-explanatory. For this initiative to be successful it needs to have a wide support and large user base which is not gonna happen with a name based on an insider joke only. Just look at the effort and energy dispersed in discussing the name here that could have been used to improve their database if they had chosen a good name for their tool.

That's the best argument against the name - that it actually causes the project itself to fail.

Good insight.

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

#802

Post by hackinthebochs »

Perseids wrote: post #797
hackinthebochs wrote: post #774

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I just don't associate man pages with gender. You should ask yourself why this is. Would that be the same for an outsider who is trying to find her way around programming? You don't associate man with gender because in your mind is associated with documentation. The usage of it in that context for X years has superseded the default association with gender. Eventually the same will happen for bropages. Either way, ne…

> The usage of it in that context for X years has superseded the default association with gender. Well, no. ^^ I just looked up `man` in the book I learned basic Linux usage from and the section is labeled "Manpages" and before the first "man" occurs the abbreviation is explained: "You can look up these manual pages with the program `man`." (Translated from German). Not being a native speaker I didn't even associate…

>They can if they are introduced it correctly

Language doesn't work that way actually. Associations persist long past the point of it being "explained" in a different way. Associations are not logical, they're more emotional than anything. You may not experience it the same way because of english being your non-primary language, but the association is real to native speakers. I remember very clearly when I first learned of man pages (as a native speaker) the association with "male" was real and made the term awkward to me. After 15 years its just documentation now.

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

#803

Post by platz »

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…

Monoculture is bad [1]

https://speakerdeck.com/garann/bacon-is-bad-for-you

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

#804

Post by eropple »

tomjen3 wrote: post #753
nostrademons wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risk isn't that someone gets all huffy and makes a big deal about being offended. It's that people who you would want to participate silently think to themselves "I don't want to deal with this" and then go away. It's explicitly not the oversensitive feminists I care about here; it's the reasonable, intelligent women and men who have a number of options on where to spend their time and choose not to spend it in c…

>The risk isn't that someone gets all huffy and makes a big deal about being offended. It's that people who you would want to participate silently think to themselves "I don't want to deal with this" and then go away. It's explicitly not the oversensitive feminists I care about here; it's the reasonable, intelligent women and men who have a number of options on where to spend their time and choose not to spend it in…

That you choose to dismiss others' humanity (as a hand-wave about "feelings") in favor of inert things is to me troubling and I'm pretty glad HN has not done as you'd like. People are important. They're much, much more important than One Weird Trick That Makes You Love Haskell.

"Tech" isn't a thing except in how people--people--use it and are affected by it and how they, in turn affect the world around them. It's natural that, yes, HN turns to discussions of how the tech community marginalizes some who'd like to be a part of it (and some who never had a chance to).

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

#805

Post by eropple »

VexXtreme wrote: post #718
jabelk wrote: post #709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you're being discriminated against and keep saying that "it's just human nature" and you "don't mind" doesn't mean that other people can't campaign against discrimination. Unless you are actively supporting it? Is your argument that we should have more discrimination, or just that we should turn a blind eye? PS - this sort of thing is ingrained in everything technology related. Not just in HN articles a…

> doesn't mean that other people can't campaign against discrimination. Of course not, I never said that. I don't support discrimination in any way. I love different people and all the diversity living in such a society entails. I love living in such a vastly different world and interacting with different people on daily basis, even if it sometimes causes misunderstandings to happen. I am just asking everyone to chec…

> Of course not, I never said that. I don't support discrimination in any way.

But you offer tacit support to exclusion, which is not exactly better.

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

#806

Post by wonderzombie »

ItendToDisagree wrote: post #218
wonderzombie wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should anyone's head explode? A stand-up comic who isn't funny pisses off the audience, it's incredibly painful to watch, and the comic doesn't get invited back.

Seems to work for Dane Cook pretty well doesn't it? Ba Dum Chhhh! In all seriousness though "funny" is in the eye of the beholder. Jon Benjamin and Mitch Hedberg both tell what amount to non-jokes and have intentionally unfunny standup on occasion and that's actually their whole gig.

This is in part why I inserted the "invited back" clause. :)

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

#807

Post by Fomite »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #772
Fomite wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because a shortening of "Manual" is not gendered. "Bro" is.

This isn't an answer. It's still a reminder of genderedness just as much as bro is. The word "niggardly" is offensive to some because of its similarity to the n-word. That doesn't make its offense less real.

Intent, and context, matters.

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

#808

Post by nostrademons »

tomjen3 wrote: post #753
nostrademons wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risk isn't that someone gets all huffy and makes a big deal about being offended. It's that people who you would want to participate silently think to themselves "I don't want to deal with this" and then go away. It's explicitly not the oversensitive feminists I care about here; it's the reasonable, intelligent women and men who have a number of options on where to spend their time and choose not to spend it in c…

>The risk isn't that someone gets all huffy and makes a big deal about being offended. It's that people who you would want to participate silently think to themselves "I don't want to deal with this" and then go away. It's explicitly not the oversensitive feminists I care about here; it's the reasonable, intelligent women and men who have a number of options on where to spend their time and choose not to spend it in…

FWIW if you go back about 3 pages in my comment history there are some highly technical posts that might be exactly what you're looking for. Things about Futamura projections, real-time web scalability, Python 3.4, Google open-source projects (of which I've authored a major one), etc.

"The one place where we only care what is inside peoples heads and not their feelings?"

Here's the thing: no, you can't. At least not if you want your work to have a big impact on the world. The real world outside of technology circles runs on emotions, and if you ignore them you'll isolate yourself into a small bubble of little relevance to the outside world.

This was a hard lesson for me to learn, because I've always been really facile with logic and really dumb about emotions. What made me eventually put in the effort to understand emotions better was that I hit a brick wall in what I could accomplish with code alone. I was writing a lot of code that was technically challenging but nobody was using or caring about, and getting outpaced by people who didn't really know how to code but were adept at getting others to work for them.

There are sites on the Internet - like the technical mailing lists and bugtrackers of specific open-source projects - which do focus exclusively on technical discussions. Hacker News has always had a focus on the impact of technology, though, and that includes social hacks through and about technology.

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

#809

Post by xamebax »

Crake wrote: post #751
xamebax wrote: post #734

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>no one wants to be associated with feminism anymore Oh gosh, you're commenting on HN, you obviously should have some data to back your opinions with? Right?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/16/feminism-poll_n_309... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/9614864/Just-one-in-seven-wo... There's been plenty of butthurt about it: http://jezebel.com/the-many-misguided-reasons-famous-ladies-...

Let me see...

Huffington Post: "Few Identify As Feminists, But Most Believe In Equality Of Sexes" Telegraph: "Just one in seven women describes themselves as 'feminist'" Jezebel: Quotes from privileged, mostly white women, talking about how they don't need feminism. (btw, Beyonce and Lady Gaga had radicalized since this article)

Not sure how the posted links are to prove that "no one wants to be associated with feminism anymore". But it's ok, take your time, I'm still very interested.

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

#810

Post by xamebax »

jacobtracey wrote: post #770
a3_nm wrote: post #736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar moment of realization about gender equality once. I used to believe that IRC was a very nice medium because the gender of the participants was not revealed (unless they wanted to), so (I thought) it was entirely free from gender prejudices. Then, I discussed with someone on the channel of a hackspace I used to go to (but had just started attending so I didn'n know the people well); I had never seen th…

IRC is gender neutral. You made a foolish assumption. Not everyone does that, or even cares in the slightest what a users gender/age/cultural background/disability/whatever is. All you have done is reveal your own past personal prejudice. Congratulations on getting over that.

> IRC is gender neutral.

So you read about someone's experience proving otherwise (I have had similar experiences on IRC, getting treated shitty for being a woman) and you stated something else in an authoritarian fashion, without feeling the slightest need to prove your point. How... interesting.

Post reply on HN