Hacker News Reader

Comment by raganwald | Hacker News Reader

51 pointsraganwald29 comments

This has really jumped the shark now:

> If you were sitting in Matt’s presentation, or have experienced similar presentations or associations in the past: [...]

> You might expect women to be more submissive; to accept delegated tasks more easily, or question process less, or accept lower pay.

Enough.

That sounds overblown to me, too. This presentation doesn't make me think less of female developers.

But, it doesn't matter what I think, because I'm a dude.

I don't have to come to work and feel marginalized by this slideshow. It doesn't matter if the slideshow makes people think about female hackers differently; what matters is whether female hackers feel alienated by the slideshow on a basis of gender.

I like to think that the hacker community is equal-opportunity. It is (or should be) a meritocracy. Unless things like gender, race, sexual orientation, etc. are hacker merits, shouldn't we be opposed to alienating minority groups?

I'm glad she doesn't accept the response given by Matt Amionetti. If you are still telling the offended party why they shouldn't be offended, you are not apologizing. Remaining unapologetic for perpetuating stereotypes about a marginalized minority is completely unacceptable.

This is all making me pretty ashamed of my peers, I would have hoped we were all past this. We all saw Anchorman, right? We all realize that was funny because that sort of treatment of women is archaic and obviously wrong, right? This is stuff that is behind us and below us and is being used by Hollywood to provide entertainment, there's no way such a new field should be struggling with anything close to it.

Disgusting.

This makes me wonder something. In my experience, women in programming has been treated extremely well, if only because they are so rare. My first (and best) programming teacher was a woman, and since then I've had woman as collegues and subordinates. Also I've met a very good (and respected) woman manger.

So I can't help but ask (I'm from Eastern Europe): other then being few, is there really so much discrimination against women in your culture? Or obstacles against choosing this career or advancing in it? Again, in my environment things are exactly the opposite: any young women programmer is always encouraged to continue working, and they tend to be quite enthusiastic too.

>> "This is all making me pretty ashamed of my peers"

This is all making me pretty bored of more articles about it. We get it. Endless discussion/bitching/moaning isn't adding anything.

This is an excellent read, very well thought out and clearly identifies the not so obvious pitfalls of doing things like Matt Aimonetti did in his presentation.

When I first saw the "Just another Wordpress blog" default template, I was skeptical, but it is well worth the 5 minute read.

"Not so obvious pitfalls"? Don't put porn in professional presentations. Lesson learned. Can we move on?

Data point: I'm married to a female Rails developer. She thinks the presentation is retarded. But I'm pretty sure this one guy and his frat-boy-flavored social autism hasn't convinced her one way or the other on gender bias.

Did you read that post or just glance over it? By not so obvious pitfalls I was talking about the conscious vs. subconscious effects things like this has on us, which was the entire point of the article.

A great way to get me not to read anything you have to say at this point is to mention that stupid talk. I say this because I'm worried that some people may be writing blog posts that are not really "about" the talk, but appear to be at first glance because they mention it. Which, as I said, is a great way to get me not to read what you have to say.

Because holy fuck am I sick of hearing about this stupid fucking talk.

(I can't be the only one getting frustrated with the coverage).

You wouldn't hear about it if the Rails Core and Rails Activist team members would address the issue rather than simply defend themselves and insult everyone else.

I also wouldn't hear about it if everyone involved would simply shut the fuck up about it. I agree everyone's being defensive. But I don't need the fucking Magna Carta from these people. I'd just like to stop having to weed these stories out of the real Ruby news.

You have a potty mouth :-)

I also think you ought to think long and hard about the hostility your online persona is projecting. I'm pointing this out because it is rapidly converging on the behaviour being vilified. You're swearing at people and belittling their concerns.

Do you intend it to be taken that way?

It's boring. It's not news. It's nothing. Some guy put porn in a presentation. wow. Move on. I thought techies would be able to resist falling for this sort of ridiculous hysteria witch hunt thing.

(Assuming your definition of porn is some women wearing clothes).

Same thing about the 'Women in tech' thing. Guess what. I, like most other people I'd wager, started programming at home, on my own. I didn't have to ask permission, I didn't need acceptance from some 'community'. I just decided I wanted to do it.

Please stop complaining, and just get on with it.

> Please stop complaining, and just get on with it.

Done! May I offer:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=586140

I'm not swearing at you, raganwald. I'm swearing near you.

Okay, okay, humour is by far the best way to diffuse tensions and give people an opportunity to really reflect on matters without making knee-jerk reactions.

Well done!

We also wouldn't hear about it if every tit and tat of this flamewar weren't posted here as if it were news.

Add to that the even worse problem that everyone who has an opinion on this, even when not directly involved, has posted on their blog about it, and those have been submitted here as well.

Normally I'm able to ignore these flare-ups, but this one really is getting old.

tptacek: been flagging them all day, glad to know I'm not alone.

Why this need to build up a public resentment and attempting to cut some members of society to size? Sorry, but I really despise that in humans. To me this is little better than those reality talk shows where the audience gets to boo at the guy who cheated on his wife. Only they are all watching it because they secretly hope to learn how to cheat on their wives. Why not just let other people alone in what they do and don't do?

Backlash and outrage perform a number of useful functions in a society, call it cultural garbage collection. Typically when someone does something outside what the society sees as a norm, the person is outcast and made an example of. This acts as both a kind of standardization of a code of conduct for its members, and also intimidates others that might engage in similar behavior.

But fear not, usually after a member has been ostracized there are other types of group members who seek to reconcile and bring that person back into the group - now that they have assimilated to the rules.

Group dynamics is a very interesting thing, and anytime you have more than one person you have politics.

"This acts as both a kind of standardization of a code of conduct for its members, and also intimidates others that might engage in similar behavior."

I get that, and I think it is very interesting (to think of societies as evolutionary competing constructs). I still resent it a lot - and I don't like the mindless running of the herd.

Think about the TV show about the wive cheaters. It does not make sense for the audience to boo, because they secretly want to cheat on their wives themselves. They actively hurt themselves by booing (I have no proof that they all want to cheat, but I am fairly certain of it).

I'd say the presentation itself didn't do much damage to Ruby, but the pissing match between the bloggers sure did. Thanks to them there's no way I'm going anywhere near Ruby anytime soon.

If you choose a language based on who else is using it, you're probably making a mistake.

Judge it on its merits for a particular problem.

Counterpoint: code is to be written by humans and only incidentally executed by machines (paraphrase from SICP). But can we please not rehash this debate here?

I think I'm going to sue Apple because the of the "I'm a Mac" ads. Do you know how difficult life has become for short, chubby people since that ad campaign came out? It's horrible.

I'd like to sue Apple as well, because it makes people associate mac users with smug hipsters like Justin Long.

I might agree with the association idea, but making this a gender issue is incredibly unfair. If a t-shirt with a pair of breasts creates bias, it is absolutely nothing compared to how a sexy dressed woman affects a man. If we go this path, it is absolutely normal to ban short skirts. For both the sake of men's hormones and women's image.

Overall, the old principle "you have no right not to be offended" stands.

If people just ignored it, it would have gone away all on it's own. Instead they chose to shine the light on it, and countless more people were exposed to it, beyond the original 100 or so people in the room.

I think from now on, i will have the subconscious association that if i dare to make a presentation that can in some strange way offend a woman or other minority group i will for sure be punished buy this long verbose articles trying to explore how my brain makes associations, so trying to avoid this pain i will not ever do the same mistake as Matt. Mission Accomplished.

Ruby on Wails. If only they put half this energy into improving the framework.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com