Comment by irahul | Hacker News Reader

Comment by irahul | Hacker News Reader

> I saw Dave’s behavior as a challenge, a call to action. And it was at that moment that the gender difference became most apparent to me.

Oh, for fuck's sake, how is some Dave being jerk is making gender difference apparent? The guy was at the wrong place, and was being a show-off. But no, you must attribute it to his gender.

<edit> As pointed out by threads below, the author was talking about how the room tuned out when Dave started derailing conversation, and he saw it as call to arms. The author sees this as apparent gender difference - FWIW I don't agree with his assessment. As long as we are talking anecdotes, I couldn't see a clear patterns(based on gender or any other trait) in the reactions of the people I know to this scenario.

I am leaving my incorrect comment as there are replies, and the replies will become meaningless if I remove it. </edit>

> Looking at her screen, she’d made significant progress towards finishing the project, but when she asked me a question she giggled and told me she had no idea what the project was about, or what to do.

> Studies have shown that especially bright women have this reaction to difficult material and that women learning computer science do better in an single sex classroom (though those studies have critics).

I think you are better off not basing off your approach on some controversial study. If you are compartmentalizing, no two students are same. And if you are generalizing, I find it hard to believe that 3291805000 females of the world show the same behavioral and learning traits. Unless you have proved it otherwise, I would stick to a feedback based approach where I see how students are coping up, and then introduce variations.

>Oh, for fuck's sake, how is some Dave being jerk is making gender difference apparent? >The guy was at the wrong place, and was being a show-off. >But no, you must attribute it to his gender.

If you read the article again, you may find that the gender difference which became apparent to the author has to do with the /response/ to Dave's behaviour, and not with his behaviour /per se/.

Also, here is a (perhaps interesting) thought experiment: Among the folks you know well enough, how many would care to respond to an opinion in a discussion forum which starts off with the words "Oh, for fuck's sake" ? How do the women fare in this count? Is there a gender difference?

Yes, it has to do with the response, but I can't agree with the main point of it which is due to selection bias I think (not gender differences):

  To me, and I suspect most men, we’d see Dave’s behavior 
  as a call to arms. Dave was raising the stakes and even 
  though his behavior was clearly rude, it also demonstrated 
  that he had a mastery over the material.

If this is the core of the article's point, I don't agree with it. People such as "Dave" waste everyone's time, it doesn't really matter what gender Dave and his audience are. When I encounter a Dave, I don't see it as a pointless "call to arms", I tune out and ultimately leave. I'm not wasting my time fighting people like Dave. I don't like how the article implies this makes me less of a man. It's simply good sense in my opinion not to waste your energy on trolls.

If there are groups where everyone feels challenged and is in a fighting mood after seeing Dave in action, it's probably because everyone else already left the room or had the sense not to come to the event in the first place.

I don't like how the article implies this makes me less of a man.

I don't think it does that, but nevertheless, this raises an interesting question that I've been having real trouble answering, so maybe you (or others) could help me out: why do you dislike it when people make such implications? Do you feel you're worth less if you're perceived to be less manly?

> Do you feel you're worth less if you're perceived to be less manly?

No, I simply dislike it when other people tell me how I'm supposed to act based on their proprietary rules. I don't give a shit about my masculinity per se, but I do not like to be mashed in by association with stereotypes that feel alien and artificial to me.

I'm sad that you feel that the post was dictating behavior based on gender.

I'm surprised and frustrated at how many people are reading things in the article that I never wrote, and never implied- like the sentiment you expressed, or the idea that I'm somehow an advocate for single sex education, or (as one poster on another forum put it, I come off like a "feminist bitch".

> I'm sad that you feel that the post was dictating behavior based on gender.

No, I think you're perceiving it more strongly than I meant it to be. Like I said, I don't actually think this is the most interesting point of the article - so my response here is more a testament to the general reception by our little group than anything else. Overall, I thought it was a good piece to read, actually.

> I'm somehow an advocate for single sex education

I didn't perceive it to be. I too think single sex education is a huge mistake, and one we should not be repeating again. In fact, I believe the more recent conflict of the sexes is largely based on baggage we're still carrying around from that era.

> I come off like a "feminist bitch"

If someone says something like that, just ignore it. It's really not worth responding to people who talk like that. Their phrasing already tells you everything there is to know about them. They're trolls.

I would regard being referred to as a "feminist bitch" (or feminist anything, for that matter) as a point of pride.

or the idea that I'm somehow an advocate for single sex education

Hmm, that was the message I read. From the conclusions section, "Lessons Learned: I’d never really believed in single sex education... but my experience last weekend changed my view."

Perhaps it isn't clear which of your views have changed, if different people are associating that last part of the quote with different parts of the article.

Less manly sounds stupid. Saying that other people are performing a status play intended to raise their status at your expense conveys the same information without making anyone sound like an idiot.

When I encounter a Dave, I don't see it as a pointless "call to arms", I tune out and ultimately leave. I'm not wasting my time fighting people like Dave.

Same here. I think this is mostly a matter of personality. I see no point for bothering with destructive personality types as long as I am not forced into some long-time work/social relationship setting. Life is to short too confront negativity if one can just go out of its way.

I'm wondering if Dave was actually guilty of what he's been accused of, or if his behavior was misinterpreted.

In college and grad school I was usually the guy asking advanced questions, not because I was trying to show off or be a jerk, but because I was trying to gain a particular level of mastery of the material, and the way I gain that mastery is to ask questions during the process of absorbing the material. I gain understanding of, say, a particular algorithm by asking if a particular extension of that algorithm is appropriate.

This makes me wonder if others mistakenly viewed me as a troll, or felt like I was dragging the classroom down, due to my learning style being something of an outlier. (Being on the autism spectrum, if anyone tried to signal me about this without being explicit, I would have missed it.)

From what I understood, it seems like Dave wasn't asking questions to better understand the material. His intent was to stump the instructor of the class, validating his mastery of the material.

Are you making an independent observation (ie, you were at the workshop and observed Dave) or repeating what was in the writeup?

Also, I'm genuinely curious: how do you tell the difference? What's the difference between Dave's (presumed) "stump the instructor to validate ego" questions and my "push the edges of my understanding, which may happen to stump the instructor if they haven't thought about it, and which may confirm to me that I've understood things correctly" questions?

It sounds to me (someone with a fair amount of teaching experience) like Dave was an enthusiastic student. Without seeing a transcript or video, it seems more likely Dave had a lot of things he wasn't clear on regarding Python and was excited to have a chance to ask an expert (the teacher) a lot of questions to clarify his understanding.

In a basic intro class, this can be a problem because other students will start to think they are in the wrong class and don't understand the material and drop out! A common example is language classes. You have a college German 101 class and a bunch of people show up that are native German speakers looking to get an easy A. Or they had 3 years in high school, or lived there a while with their military parents on base, and are looking for a refresher and thought 101 was a good place.

If the teacher lets these students (who are not jerks, bullies or douches any more than I think this Dave was) proceed at their own pace, then the rest of the students will leave in frustration. That happens a lot and the teachers often like it because then they can teach at a more fun higher level with students who already know the material. But it's not fair to the actual intro students.

This also happens a lot in engineering classes where schools pretty much have to assume students have learned basic programming, soldering, and electricity on their own before enrolling in engineering school. In this case it is probably best to let the students who were never interested enough in the topic to study it previously, just drop out.

In this particular case I agree with the suggestion made here by another that students be put into basic/advanced tracks or Dave be encouraged to take another class. Another route to take, which is what I do, is to say "Dave, these are really excellent and interesting questions, but they are way above the introductory level of this class. I'd like to keep things for now on a more basic level since many people here are just getting into programming for the first time, but I'd definitely be more than happy to talk with you in detail about these issues during office hours. Is that OK?"

The solution of labeling him a "bully" and calls for "kicking him out" of the class are irresponsible, immature and signs of an unskilled unprofessional teacher. But it's what goes on at many American primary schools. If you have an excited, intellectually interested first grader who asks a lot of questions, most American teachers will personally diagnose the child with "ADHD" and demand the parents put him on amphetamines to zone him out so he won't keep asking questions and will sit and listen because that's what you do in school nowadays. Sit down, shut up, be quiet, and do as you are told. An approach that most of the posters in this thread seem to approve of given their hatred for poor curious Dave.

Without seeing a transcript or video...

Or actually paying attention the article, apparently. "Poor Curious Dave" was a VOLUNTEER at the workshop. Just like the author of the article, Dave's purpose being there was to assist the students of the workshop with the projects (presumably, or to assist in some other capacity).

Maybe Dave thought his questions and comments would help clarify or improve the instructor's content...but on the other hand I really don't find the article author's evaluation of Dave as just a showoff/bully much of a stretch. I assumed that we've all seen this behavior tons of times and that it is pretty obvious when someone is being "That Guy" versus trying to clarify or expand on the material for themselves or others.

The fact that quite a few here are eager to challenge the author's evaluation of Dave and jump to Dave's defense is...funny, I guess.

Yeah if you ask questions that are way more advanced than the material being covered or the level of the other students, you probably were a net negative on the class. Class settings work only if everybody is at roughly the same level, so that you can all improve at the same rate. One person taking up a disproportional amount of time is being rather selfish, which is generally regarded as a negative thing in most circumstances.

> If you read the article again, you may find that the gender difference which became apparent to the author has to do with the /response/ to Dave's behaviour, and not with his behaviour /per se/.

This is correct.

I'm the author of the article, and the tough part about writing this was trying to balance my personal perspective with making a larger point.

What I may not have expressed well was that before last Saturday, I did not see any point in single sex workshops. I felt they were segregating the community, and that they perpetuated the idea that either women were meek, or that men were predatory.

What I came out of the experience with was an appreciation of the differences in interaction between men and women, how women were more comfortable in an environment full of other women, and how there was a difference in the way I reacted to a challenge in comparison to these students.

Of course individual differences will override any generalized statement, but my experiences led me to reconsider my position regarding women oriented groups and their role in the Free Software community.

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