Fog Creek's interview series is making a pretty nice bid to be listed on http://allmalepanels.tumblr.com/
Programmers like Fogus are like Fogus and if StackExchange wants to interview programmers like Fogus then they are going to tend to get programmers like Fogus. Or to put it another way, Spolsky's high standards are understandable and reflecting them in the brand is a rational decision, but it is a branding decision. Even if StackExchange handles branding decisions better than Cognitect has with their podcast, the same forces are still in play so long as the objective is branding StackExchange rather than doing what ought to and could be done.
Aside from looking between his legs, one thing that caught my eye was he listed Bagwell's paper as a book, and maybe it is available in an anthology somewhere, but anyone who wants to read his paper for free can find it at:
http://lampwww.epfl.ch/papers/idealhashtrees.pdf
Its an old paper, I read it a long time ago and remembered it and when I saw it in the interview list I wasted some time on Amazon guessing that maybe Bagwell wrote a book about data structures or something, and to save the rest of you the time, no he didn't, or more accurately, hasn't yet. As mentioned above maybe the paper made it into an anthology collection somewhere that I couldn't find.
A remarkably bad one line summary of the paper would be something like "Store hashes in something like a filesystem tree where everything is O(1)". I've never used it, I'll probably never use it, and its still pretty cool to think about. Thats probably why it made it on his list of cool books, its like a meme that gets stuck in your head, what a cool idea!
I know one of the authors of Learn Haskell authors, superginbaby, is a mother by reading her about page after her very cool "Teach Haskell to a 10 Year Old" post.
https://superginbaby.wordpress.com/2015/04/08/teaching-haske...
She seems awesome. I would love to read about contemporary programmers, specifically in the open source world (I know, ironic given this in response to Fog Creek).
Maybe something more contemporary than the CMU Ada project, which I just found.
https://www.women.cs.cmu.edu/ada/Resources/Women/
As a beginner, I want to read about anyone who can do this better than me. I would read from anything, but if I could read machine code better I would be busier with that instead of procrastinating on HN.
Granted, I totally only skimmed the article. But once I read the title and checked the first few paragraphs, I decided I'll pass as this is the kind of article I avoid. I know there is a problem, but I know these women are getting shat on in some circles. I want to see how the productive ones handle their craft, not shitty company politics.
But I will re-read in depth. You usually post cool stuff, so I do not want to write you off from the gate.
So, thanks again. Good find.
The learnhaskell guide (https://github.com/bitemyapp/learnhaskell) is the product of 41 individual contributors. I got the ball rolling on the guide a year ago.
So are the 41 net hackers, but not so relevant to my point. :-)
Assuming your point is "we need more women in panels", here's my take as a consumer: I want to listen to experts, not experts who are women, or experts who are black or experts who are gay or experts who are latino.
And anyway, say we get a 50-50 split for women-men in panels. Then what? A population proportionate mix of asian/latino/black/white women?
How about we listen to what people have to say based on just that? Rather than what your preconceived notions of what constitutes as a disadvantage blah blah that needs to be artificially corrected.
And anyway, that would still be treating the symptom, not the cause.
As an engineer, I'm personally interested in different perspectives.
But the lack of overt intention in the cause doesn't mean it is something to ignore, or that it can't be fixed. But being aware of "My life circumstances have led me to a situation such that if I don't pay attention when putting this panel together, there's a pretty good chance I'm going to end up with a bunch of dudes on stage." is important.
Usually it's more of a (usually unnoticed) bias of "he is probably more likely to be an expert than her". With that bias keeping the perpetrator in the dark sexism can masquerade as meritocracy.
That's what I address with "Assuming your point is "we need more women in panels""
Its just that when all of the people interviewed or on panels are white men, it makes you wonder what kind of interesting people you aren't hearing from.
I don't believe expertise is solely the province of straight white men.
If the interviews I see are overwhelmingly with straight white men, then there is surely expertise I'm not being exposed to.
It's not complicated.
My point wasn't actually "active promotion of diversity", merely representation of the diversity that already exists.