Gendered pronouns in software: a quick primer | Hacker News Reader

Gendered pronouns in software: a quick primer

werd.io

8 pointsaaronpk12 comments

Back in my English classes, The Elements Of Style was our bible. It says that singular-they is not correct, and that "he" is the correct pronoun for a subject that could be of either gender.

So, if someone were to argue, "we should switch to singular-they because 'he' is old-fashioned", then sure, I would totally be on board with that. Something I didn't know until today, is that singular-they is actually a pretty old idea with a lot of precedent.

But some people (like Joyent) seem to be saying, "anyone who uses 'he' instead of 'they' is being sexist," which is just going totally overboard. Lots of well-regarded style guidelines say the opposite, so quit with your witch-hunt logic.

The Elements of Style has been systematically debunked a number of times. White & Strunk frequently stated some crazy hard-and-fast rule and then broke it in their own usage of English in the next chapter.

When you don't know the gender of the subject, don't use a gender-specific pronoun. Done.

Now, should we refactor a code base to achieve this, that's a whole other kettle of fish. I'd say, why not. It's not like sed is a difficult tool to use. But to each their own on that one.

You're confusing the issue by taking it too personally. Use they because otherwise you are being sexist: no. Use they because it it is easy, will make some people feel more included, and otherwise has no significant effect: yes.

As to who is sexist and not, you can hardly determine from this issue alone. But were true motivations open for my examination, I'd want to look closely at that of folks who fight vociferously against the use of genderless pronouns. That doesn't mean they're sexist, but the lack of other reasons changes my estimate of that hypothesis.

I was taught it was good grammar to use gender-neutral pronouns. On the other hand, people who use open-source projects as platforms for their favourite cause are annoying.

"Sorry, not interested in trivial changes like that."

If you insist on that attitude, don't ask how to get more women in tech.

Don't worry, no one is.

Dear everyone,

Get back to making world changing products that serve your customers and stop spending time arguing about this stupid shit.

Sincerely,

lolwutf

> world changing

You fail to spot the irony? Asking people to consider 50% of the population isn't world changing, but more fucking cat picture is?

Agreed.

The cult of buffoonery should have long stopped using gendered pronouns decades ago.

Let’s also hope the world-changing-software manages to avoid treating every person as a customer.

Let's look at the numbers:

99% of open source developers are men (http://people.cs.umass.edu/~wallach/talks/2011-04-05_JHU.pdf). It appears that women just seem to have better use of their time than writing code for free :) (free seems to be the operative word - not use of gendered pronouns in open-source vs commercial software world)

So let's mutilate english language (which is what referring to one user as 'they' really is - let's be honest) for the sake of some percentage of 1% (and probably larger number of men who feel bad for these individuals) who are unhappy to see a gender pronoun.

Now - I am not saying that one way is better than the other. I merely want to frame the argument honestly.

yeah, let's not think about _why_ 1% of open source devs are women. this is one of those ubiquitous cases in tech where "honesty" actually means "misogyny."

I have a simpler explanation - women (and billions of other people who are not involved in open source programming - including myself) have better use of their time than write code for free.

I actuall think that explaining any group not doing some activity by 'group is hated by people doing it' is just stupid. Minorities not into camping - racism. Women not into working for free - misogyny, etc.

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