Codea is on sale for 1 dollar, grab it and teach your child programming | Hacker News Reader

Codea is on sale for 1 dollar, grab it and teach your child programming

twolivesleft.com

67 pointsantirez30 comments

Title changed, sorry, I did an error because of my poor English. In Italian if you say "your son" there is not a strong correlation with the gender.

EDIT: To everybody that signaled this news because there was an error in the title: now it is outside the listing, and many daughters (and sons) lost the possibility of being exposed to it. Overreacting is always bad.

EDIT2: considering the issue again, overreacting is probably better than overlooking this kind of issue...

Thanks.

(I have removed my flag, and hope everyone else who flagged it removes their flags too.)

Thank you. Btw I'll make sure to avoid this error in the future.

No real harm done. I was not aware that in Italian - having a gramatical dependency on genders - "your son" would be considered as "your kiddo".

I was sure to teach my hypothetical (as in Schroedinger hypothetical) daughter to code anyway ;-)

Everything is a learning exercise.

basically in Italian there is no neutral like "children", you can say "your sons" (i tuoi figli) or "your daughters" (le tue figlie), and to say it generally you use the male gender. There is no way to say it in a mostly unbiased way using the singular, but just the plural, and still it is "your sons".

This is the most interesting thing I learned today! (no really, no sarcasm here)

Thanks for the explanation.

I can definetely relate to the OP. The Indonesian(my native language) language doesn't really use gender specific either. That was one of the biggest problem I had when I moved to the US.

calling people on sexism isn't overreacting, it is simply reacting. and saying people should be silent when they see stuff like this is much worse in the long run for the community.

That was pretty clearly unintentional. Every xmas I do the best of my efforts to purchase gift for my little female cousins that can help them developing skills, while unfortunately many others will buy them a Barbie, so I really care about this kind of issues. But writing a bad title unintentionally is not sexism.

Your English is good enough that I, for one, didn't realise it wasn't your first language.

Thanks, btw thinking about this better, overreacting is better than overlooking at this kind of issues.

for sure! and I try to understand the non-native speaker issue, I live in Switzerland, and am a native English speaker who tries my hand at German sometimes to mixed results. it's hard and easy to make mistakes.

I've been having a lot of fun with the Codea app, props to the founder and thanks again for pointing out the sale

Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated at all with Codea, I just happen to like it and to think it is a very good thing for children.

iTunes link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/codea/id439571171?mt=8

awesome to know! I just saw this the other day and made a note to buy it

you should also teach your daughter to program, the title of your link is pretty much the definition of sexist

Exactly! I'm currently expecting my first child; but putting the purchase of this app on hold until I know for sure I'll get a son. ;-)

This is great news, wanted to buy this for a long time, now there's no reason to do it.

On a linguistic note, though: this small mistake exposes an interesting rift between what's understood to be "sexist language" in the US and in Europe. People are hypersensitive about this issue in the US, typical example is using constructs like "he or she" or just always using the feminine pronoun, with the argument that (I'm simplifying it, of course, so that the margin can hold it) consistent use of "he", say in scientific writing, discourages women from participating.

What always amazed me is that in European countries with a solid track record of feminism, such linguistic issues do not matter. In German, the use of "Mann" is common, there are many female nouns derived from the masculine forms, e.g. "die Hackerin" (discussed on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2908972, akin to the -ess ending in English), etc. In French, even if there is only one male in a group, it is referred to using the masculine plural. Many more examples can be given (the "your son" vs "your child" mistake in the title being another one), which to the US ear would be cases of sexism. Yet, this "sexist usage" does not seem to have the negative consequence on female performance in Europe.

What gives?

Would probably change the title to teach your child programming...

have bought the app anyway :)

This is actually a great title it will draw in more traffic because of the supposed controversy of it

This is a great app.. Just bought it! Makes me take a look at Lua too..

The title is a DISGRACE!

What about the 1% of the audience that will teach their daughter instead?

This extreme sexist attitude is why there aren't enough women startup founders --and not enough women at the parties me and my buddies throw, like last month's "Yacc and Lex Appreciation Party". We even had free Jolt Cola!

The OP is from Italy; it may be the case that English is not his first language, and that he simply made an error.

I have to imagine that the title was written by a non-native english speaker - or it was a crude joke. In this day and age, I can't imagine a native english speaker using gendered language in this situation.

Wow, overreact much?

Did you see the original title before the OP changed it?

I thought dextorious's comment was intended to satirise both the people who complain about sexism in hacker culture, and the people who insist there's no sexism in hacker culture.

I did not, but I know what the original title was. I just don't feel the need to make assumptions based on a line of text when I may not understand the context. I, for one, would not accuse someone of sexism because they chose "your son" over "your child". This is a big world, different people from different cultures have different ways of saying things.

I have to admit, I did sense a hint of sarcasm to the post but I suppose it was too subtle for me.

My objection was only ever that the title was sexist. I didn't accuse antirez of being sexist, and I didn't see anyone else accuse antirez of being sexist.

It's unfortunate that dextorious's comment led you to believe that people opposed to sexism were making assumptions.

It was clearly a tongue in cheek response.

Actually, I find the whole thing a non-issue.

I was just mocking similar responses prevalent in a lot of HN comments...

alas I thought your comment was serious. it's awesome that you have had the opportunity to find it a non-issue and unfortunate that you have decided to.

http://www.amazon.com/Unlocking-Clubhouse-Computing-Jane-Mar... is a pretty good academic references, with plenty of examples of parents who actually do do this (teach sons and not daughters), hard research, and practical solutions. luckily it actually isn't that hard to start on the path to fix for those who bother to find it an issue (CMU and MIT among them).

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