Rise of the Brogrammer
cnn.com
cnn.com
The thing is there's a huge difference between the perception that people have of a field and what happens in the field. It reminds me of how CSI (the show) shows police work: super high tech. solving of cases. Sorry to break it, it's not the case, it's long interviews with people and little lab work with overused equipment. In the same spirit slowly since the Social Network this notion of "cool programmer" has emerged in the media. The reality is that we're still very far from it, and it's mostly guys sitting in front of desks typing on keyboards (not so sexy, uh ?).
Anyway, this article is ridiculous, but I don't trust CNN anymore to provide accurate news. Let them read tweets live, that's their line of work now.
It seems akin to the "D&D enthusiasts are devil worshipers." hysteria back in the day. More than a few people when asked what they did when they played by those that had no idea what it was like would say something like "Oh. You know; we don our blackest robes and light candles at midnight etc. etc." Of course, this would get around and then you'd end up with 'that guy' trying to join your gaming group.
No one seriously considers themselves a brogrammer and if they do, they just mark themselves as someone not to be taken seriously...
Oh well, I guess we have to declare the joke over because now there is a weird feedback loop creating a self fulfilling brogrammer subculture.
That's what I thought at first, but there are actually programmers who do that. There's been a lot of discussion here about it, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3168038 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3663244
There's no "rise" of anything, except idiots who get big heads because they got 2M in funding...and that's nothing new. The more attention we give them, the bigger their heads get. As many get embarrassed by being called out, there are just as many who would wear it as a badge of honor.
All the programmers I know are great guys who treat women with respect and just want to focus on their work instead of having subservient big breasted bimbos prancing around their office.
There's no epidemic here except bored journalists.
Sure, some of us like to drink. Some of us even drink what some might consider "a lot", but then we live in a part of the world where beer is a socially accepted lubricant legal for purchase at age 16.
I don't particularly like the tone of the these articles, associating beer consumption with immature fratty/bratty behaviour. Nor do I like it when people interpret the relative scarcity of programming females to sexism. Or -- in my area -- the scarcity of black programmers to racism.
I would really love to see some hard backed evidence/statistics about this, instead of some contextless anecdotal bullshit.
Until someone can prove otherwise, programmers are no more sexist/racist/bratty than anyone else from a similar social/educational background.
To all you bored reporters, you might want to investigate cooks, bakers & chocolatiers next, I hear they're an over-sexed bunch who engage on orgies on a frequent basis.
Sigh.
Also, whether or not you notice mistreatment of others is not the best metric. Try asking people in those groups.
If you'd like to see an interesting analysis of the relative scarcity of female computer scientists, this is a classic: http://people.mills.edu/spertus/Gender/why.html
Yes, it is the age-old issue of sexism in the workplace, but when I was in computer engineering school, there wasn't much overt sexism...because there was just little awareness of it given the rarity of female programmers/engineers among my fellow students.
Both are stereotypes (with some basis in reality here and there). But of course it makes a good story for the mainstream media. <sigh>
"Geek is the new Chic" - USA Today, October 2003 http://www.usatoday.com/life/2003-10-22-geek-chic_x.htm
"The new Worker Elite" - Ad Age, November 1997 http://www.qualitydigest.com/nov97/html/qualtech.html
"Forget what you think you know about the benignly geeky computer programmer who lives for the thrill of finding a single misplaced semicolon in thousands of lines of code."
For as long as I've been programming, the art has been about more than syntax. Although, while teaching new programmers, I find one of the biggest barriers learning to program is getting stuck on syntax, and trying to memorize every little syntactical detail. Better to focus on how to create an algorithm.
Perhaps that's why the writer of this article went into journalism rather than programming.
At some point you have to get people's attention - once that happens, maybe we can see improvement. Until then, brogramming just makes assclowns easier to spot.
I'm not concerned at all. Ideas are just that: vapor. Show me a concrete implementation. Someone has to actually build that.
Anyway, the article on CNN is quite funny, but I'm slightly saddened in that there are people who will read this and honestly believe that this is a real problem.
"Rise of another idiotic idea that applies to less of 0.1% of the population of programmers, but makes for a nice headlines (or the idiots at media outlets thing so".
Here, I fixed it for CNN.
'Brogramming' feels like a knee-jerk reaction to boot out the socially awkward, reclusive stereotypes ignorantly associated with being technically proficient.
Interesting to note that in its attempt to do this, it's merely exchanging one set of stereotypes for another. It doesn't really solve the perception problem these people seem to have.