I am not a woman, but I'm sure a woman would be just as frustrated as me reading that section and going "oh come on, tell me if I should read this article based on what I know, not what sex I am."
(And BTW, these same people I know occasionally mention HN as a cesspool of reactionary ideologies, mythologies about how the tech/startup industry actually works, and general absurdity. So like most places online, beware the comments section. Then again, it's a great place to discuss the latest nontechnical thing DHH said.)
I think it's safer to say that anyone would be annoyed by being treated in a condescending manner.
I think this is the problem other people are picking up on. Implicit in the idea that you need special technical explanations targeted to women is some notion that women have difficulty with "regular" tutorials. What is that notion? Is there a gender bias to most technical explanations? If so, how does it work, and how is this different? Perhaps there is something, but it needs to be stated and applied.
Without making your "we need explanations specifically targeted to women" theory explicit and robust, you just come off as saying "women need tutorials, so I made you one", which is why it comes off as condescending. Worse, since the tutorial seems perfectly "normal", it's easy to think you're just name-checking a concern as intro boilerplate and then writing a totally unrelated thing about Clojure.
The thing is, it's good article about Clojure. It can stand on its own, and women will read it because it's useful and because they want to know about the language. Perhaps they do need a tutorial, but not because they're women.
There is a possible answer to this. I'm just thinking out loud here, but hear me out.
There is a huge gender gap when it comes to programming, as we are all well aware of. A lot of tutorials (even some of the more basic ones, I struggled a lot when trying to move on from "hello world", and "Animal -> Dog" style OOP into actual programming, and this tutorial seems to address that (I've not read it yet, so I hold my judgement).
If those two assumptions hold, then it could be argued that: due to the gender gap, we can assume that females who are starting from scratch may not have the base knowledge for "regular" tutorials to fit them properly.
Now: This may not be true. And usually I'm the first to argue that gender, race, etc. should have no impact on technical writing and knowledge sharing. However, nearly every other tutorial in the worlds body of knowledge is written gender neutral, and the gender gap remains.
That statement could be said to be conflating two issues; Somehow I don't feel like tutorial writing is the missing link to fix the gender gap in our industry. But it was interesting to think about, for me at least.
So I doubt your theory. And so it seems that either those tutorials have a more intrinsic gender bias (defensible but needs defended) or the problem has nothing to do with tutorials on the internet and has deeper and broader causes, which is my default position. Or, like you said:
> Somehow I don't feel like tutorial writing is the missing link to fix the gender gap in our industry.
I'm not sure what this has to do with gender/race/sexual preference disproportions...
I don't really mind "being left out" as a straight white male that's been into hard sciences and computers since I was six (before then it was all dolls, if I am to judge by our family albums) -- but it does strike me as a little strange to read an entire page about "who's this for" and still not getting any real information other than that if I were slightly gay, I'd be more in the target audience? What does that even mean?
As a side note, I've never heard the tech/science community nor higher education was discriminating on sexual preference -- race and gender (as largely a function of wealth and old bias) -- yes -- but there's a gay issue as well? If true that's sad, and I'm glad to be made aware of it -- but I still think the entire about-page could do with a rewrite.
You keep reinforcing these stereotypes about IT that (a) women aren't capable, (b) men are antagonistic towards women (c) they will never be promoted or accepted amongst their peers and (d) there is rampant sexism. These stereotypes are not pervasive, not unique to just IT and simply don't exist at many types of companies in particular many enterprises.
But don't worry women despite all of this you have come to save the day with a beginner's Clojure article that will gain you the respect of your peers. Give me a break.
If you don't like how others are trying to raise awareness or encourage women in IT, then get off your high-horse and do something yourself that you do agree with. Sitting there lambasting others' efforts does nothing to improve the situation.
Necessary disclaimer: I am a guy and I have no expertise. I am just thinking out loud.
I think you should check your assumptions.
You don't realize it but your words are extremely condescending toward women, you might want to ask someone to help you understand what your position about this really is, because from what I read so far, you certainly seem to believe all these stereotypes about women being less capable than men in the computer area, you just happen to be in strong denial about it.
I certainly don't think that follows from what he has written at all.
While I can certainly appreciate your objective point, and even agree with it, you're making the same mistake you're accusing the writer of: generalisation based on limited information, at least in my opinion.
I think the section is misguided, and conflating two points (the gender gap in programming is unlikely to be because of the lack of "female targeted" tutorials). But I am not so sure it follows that the author is misogynistic.