This was an ok article before it started ranting on about privilege and bias and codes of conducts for projects. I lost interest then.
I think those points are extremely relevant for an article targeted at people trying to get involved in open source. The for-pay vs. free-time divide is a fundamental problem with using open source work as an "in" to the industry, and despite being scoff-worthy to some people, it's helpful for people coming into this with fresh eyes (ie. the target audience of the article) to be given some context.
For example, the article says "men have more privilege than women", based on the criteria provided, which are
> 1. Who don’t have families to take care of (kids, parents, whatever)
> 2. who have a good, steady income (i.e. not learning while, say, balancing two part-time jobs)
> 3. who live close to work (minimizing a commute)
And yes, women are more likely to have people to take care of. However, there are also reasons to say women are more privileged than men in this context. For example,
4. Are in college, as a lot of open source contributors are college students.
Women are a lot more likely to get into college than men.
5. Are not in jail or prison.
Women are far less likely to be in those situations.
In other words, it is horribly simplistic to say "men have more privilege than women" in this context. It's just lazy regurgitating of the familiar talking points. It's not helpful.
Yes, it's worth mentioning some people have an easier way into open source. But no, it's a bad idea to turn this into an oversimplified and false matter of "men > women".
Secondly, "the same old familiar points" assumes everyone has the same familiarity with the topic that you do, which of course isn't true in general, and the target audience of the article is actively people who are unlikely to have come across this.
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On privilege:
I completely disagree with the necessity of being engaged in a community to be a compiler developer or to learn any CS domain.
But stating that free time is a privilege is a bit absurd. You could be a 23-hour a day gardener and still write a compiler. It's not as if there's a time limit.
Dividing by gender is ridiculous---the first computer programmer was a woman.
All that it takes to become a compiler enthusiast is the understanding of languages and computers. Having a pencil and paper is a plus.
Alan Turing was gay but it didn't prevent him from inventing a form of universal computer.
People should be celebrated for their differences, not admonished for not having enough outlying characteristics.
Remember, the first programmers had neither computers nor compilers, and the first compiler writers had punch cards, so who exactly is privileged?
So the discussion of privilege shouldn't necessarily be seen as a negative force trying to tear down white men, but should inform our decision making when we take other people's hardships into account. As a white male myself I understand that I have had better opportunities than a large part of the population. I'd rather take that into account and try to improve the fairness in society, than to look away from it. What to actually do about it is another matter... But acknowledging that it's a problem is the first step.
But the "ranting" isn't particularly ranty and has (it seems to me) a specific purpose: the author is concerned that some people reading his article might be discouraged from getting into open source software by the biases he describes, and wants to encourage them not to be. "But it can't stop you", he says: that's the point.
So I think the author is deliberately making a tradeoff: by inserting that material, he hopes to encourage any readers he has from "less privileged" groups not to give up if things get difficult, even if it means that some people from "more privileged" groups who don't like reading about privilege and bias and codes and conduct are put off. Is it a good tradeoff? I dunno. It doesn't seem obviously bad.
As an extension, the entire presumption of the necessity of a "code of conduct" is in itself "problematic", in that it ascribes problematic behavior to what are in fact welcoming, professional, pro-actively inclusive communities that simply do not accept at face value the discriminatory precepts (racial, gender, or otherwise) of intersectionality.
It would be comical if it wasn't so sad.
Beyond that, I cannot refute an argument when none was presented.
I'm a white male, and pretty much 100% of people told me I was not good enough to write a compiler, that I was sure to fail, that I could not possibly compete against Big Corporations, etc. The same goes for inventing a new programming language. Meanwhile, I've had a rewarding career doing it :-)
Sure, like anything in tech most people doing it are likely male and probably white, but I think the entire section is for a different article entirely. Reading it, it appears that the author cares more about making a point about how compiler hackers are mostly "privileged" and how you need to find a code of conduct so you can avoid the assholes (the author admits it won't be a silver bullet, but that's not the point here). In any case, the whole section doesn't really give much advice to people who _already_ want to be compiler wizards, but sounds more like trying to sell becoming one to somebody who is nervous about getting into tech in general. As I mentioned before, it comes off as orthogonal to what the article introduces itself as.