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Comment by codahale | Hacker News Reader

You appear to be confusing my article with a comprehensive document of all incidents of sexism in the Ruby community.

Perhaps this will be more to your liking:

http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents

That list of privileges isn't particularly relevant to Ruby. Again, the evidence here is scant, anecdotal, and misdirected. And I support feminist ideals.

Read the last link on the bits about male privilege that go under the radar. You'll learn something.

Proof's in the pudding, gents. If there's nothing wrong with computing and women, how come more women aren't doing it? There are proportionately more women in physics, math, and other "harder math" disciplines than there are in CS, let alone the number of women in the life sciences where it's either 50/50 or maybe even more women than men. So what's different about CS?

Proof's in the pudding, gents. If there's nothing wrong with computing and women, how come more women aren't doing it?

I don't think it's that simple. There is definitely sexism in CS. There's sexism everywhere. But your argument is that there aren't more women in CS because of inherent sexism. What other profession removed sexism from its ranks before gender integrating? Women have had to fight to get into other professions and still face open sexism in many fields. But that hasn't stopped them from getting jobs in many fields and excelling despite glass ceilings.

I don't know why there aren't more women in CS and I don't think anyone does. I always find it interesting that the word first 'computers' were women sitting at mechanical adding machines computing artillery and other mathematical tables. They were all women.

A woman, Grace Mary Hopper, wrote the first compiler and coined the term 'debugging'. If people had viewed programming then like they do today would that first chance been given to a woman? The first 6 programmers of the ENIAC were women. Is that because people viewed programming like we view typing today?

I wasn't making that argument -- I was merely suggesting that those who swear that they're not sexist for putting T&A all over slides at a supposedly respectable conference might want to reevaluate a few things. Sexist or not, I mean, we all know women, right? How do they typically react to you blatantly objectifying them in serious settings? Especially brainy settings?

Agree on viewing computing then like we view typing today. Says something about us then and now. And what it says is not "hey, we're a postmodern society, i'm a white male and I don't feel any exclusion, so all you PC whiners should shut up".

Right on. Glad that we're basically on the same page.

I found this oral history interview of Jean Bartik one of the 6 original ENIAC programers. Read the anecdote from page 41-42 for a view of how it was for women in computing back then. http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/Ora...

It's a crazy read where they discuss the invention of the concept of parity in memory, late 40's sexism in the work place and McCarthyism. I find this absolutely fascinating.

I'm not sure why, but when I replied to this comment earlier, HN wouldn't let me actually reply under the comment. See my answer above.

There's a timeout before replying is allowed, and it grows with thread depth. It's intended to slow down flamewars.

Interesting. Simple as it is, I feel like I learn something new about HN's system every day.

There's actually a straightforward workaround, but it still probably works well enough to slow down people furiously responding.

I repeat: not relevant to Ruby.

Re: your question about women and computer science, who knows? These kinds of questions are for psychologists and sociologists.

I know that many many feminists like to claim that they are not "logical" or "linear" and so do not like computing.

I doubt that claim is true, but that is the popular idea in academia...

The timeline is interesting.

"Launchpad users encouraged to use real names"

"Also in 2001, Schwartz wrote an article for WebTechniques magazine about how to make a "hot or not" style voting system in Perl. Originally, his article referred to Hooters..."

"Amaya Rodrigo Sastre asked the candidates what they were planning to do to encourage women in the Debian project...The responses frequently harped on meritocracy,"

"Marvel [sexy] halloween costumes"

Meritocracy and sexy wonder woman, oh noes! Those mean geeks. I hate them so much.

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