This trends is so fucking old that it's growing hair out of its ears.
1. Some idiot (a confirmed idiot, in this instance) says something potentially offensive depending on your panty bunching quotient.
2. Someone decries said idiot, flips tables, talks about how the industry needs to change, and can't believe others aren't as outraged as they are.
3. Everyone has their own opinion, and the discourse on HN is relatively polite, but there's also a ton of shadowy downvotes for rational comments that don't seem all that inflammatory.
Here's the reality - idiots say stupid things. Whether it's denigratory to women, men, blacks, Asians, the mentally challenged, furries, or yes even redditors, it will get said. There's no point getting your feathers all ruffled over something like this - I assume it's not a common sentiment among the people who don't get fired from Facebook, and there's plenty of self-aggrandizing idiots out there to give the outragist fodder to the end of days.
Finally, this is just silly:
> start thinking of computing as a professional discipline, instead of a boy’s club.
Computing is neither a professional discipline nor a boys club. Historically, it's been a sausage fest, and computing will never be a professional discipline so long as there are people out there willing to write PHP for fifteen dollars an hour and engineers are put out to pasture at 35.
Because I think it bears repeating in the context of your comment, I'm going to post the same link to "Lighten Up," that danso posted above. By dismissing the sexist behavior described in the OP we give it a free pass. And your comment is dismissive. If we really care about the dearth of female talent in our communities we should be creating an environment where they want to hang out.
Idiots do say stupid things. But just shrugging it off as Yet Another Idiot does not improve the situation. People getting their "feathers all ruffled" is how we can show that this sort of behavior is not acceptable and should not be supported.
Computing may be a sausage fest, but there's no reason we can't change that and there's no reason we can't aspire to being a professional discipline.
There may always be idiots who say stupid things, but when they are given a venue there is nothing whatsoever wrong with calling them out. That’s the reality.
Why are you getting your panties in a bunch by people pointing idiots out? I really don’t get that.
Not to be a pedant, but historically computing was considered "womens work" in its initial stages.
I would address the the actual problematic elements of your comment, but I'm afraid in this forum such communication usually falls on deaf ears. Suffice it to say its easy to have a fatalist attitude towards "idiocy" when you're not the target in question.
>Not to be a pedant, but historically computing was considered "womens work" in its initial stages.
It's becoming quite fashionable to bring this up lately, as if its inherently a trump card to the discussion. The obvious follow up to this statement should be to ask: why did the state of things change? Without any attempt at getting to the bottom of why things changed, the statement itself seems to create more ambiguity rather than clarity.
Were women hired for software design back then? That sounds surprisingly open-minded for the day. I thought they were mostly doing data entry (e.g., software which had already been written on paper) as a transition from stenography. This was the distinction between "systems analyst" and "programmer" before one person was expected to do both.
Computing is neither a professional discipline nor a boys club. Historically, it's been a sausage fest, and computing will never be a professional discipline so long as there are people out there willing to write PHP for fifteen dollars an hour and engineers are put out to pasture at 35.
Aside from the fact that PHP, while I personally would never use it, can and has been used to write scalable software, computing is more than just a few poor coders.
It's a bit like saying that being a doctor can't be considered a profession because there are homeopaths. Your argument is neither convincing or logical.
There's nothing wrong with PHP as a language, but I've never seen people offering to write python for fifteen dollars an hour.
And it's not like saying that doctors aren't a profession because there are homeopaths, because homeopaths aren't doctors. The segment of our industry that is more EE than CS is highly professional, somewhat organized, and relatively mature for an industry only fifty years old, but they are a small, nonvocal segment of our industry and they tend to distance themselves from the people who call themselves "developers."
Defining what is and isn't a profession can't be defined by hourly rates of pay for low level work.
Let's put it another way - just because some people dig ditches doesn't stop construction from being a profession.
The fact is that Computer Science is a profession. You might not like certain things about it, but you are deadset wrong if you don't consider it a profession.
Don't burst a vein arguing over the definition of a profession.
The litmus test is whether or not an occupation has a policing organisation who dictates who is allowed to practice it. Lawyers, doctors, civil engineers are professions. Homeopathers, developers and ditch diggers are not.
Off topic really, but there's people willing to write pretty much anything for $15 an hour. That's what you'll pay the company that employs them, they obviously won't get paid it...
I think the argument is closer to the fact that we don't let physicians in India immediately be physicians in the US.
People writing PHP for $15 an hour in India are seen as the same level as people writing PHP (or other language) for $125 an hour in the US and Europe.
You realize you just used the phrase "panty bunching quotient" in a thread about sexism? Not only does this severely undermine your point, it also makes you look surprisingly similar to the so-called confirmed idiots you're describing.
1. Some idiot (a confirmed idiot, in this instance) says something potentially offensive depending on your panty bunching quotient.
2. Someone decries said idiot, flips tables, talks about how the industry needs to change, and can't believe others aren't as outraged as they are.
3. Everyone has their own opinion, and the discourse on HN is relatively polite, but there's also a ton of shadowy downvotes for rational comments that don't seem all that inflammatory.
Here's the reality - idiots say stupid things. Whether it's denigratory to women, men, blacks, Asians, the mentally challenged, furries, or yes even redditors, it will get said. There's no point getting your feathers all ruffled over something like this - I assume it's not a common sentiment among the people who don't get fired from Facebook, and there's plenty of self-aggrandizing idiots out there to give the outragist fodder to the end of days.
Finally, this is just silly:
> start thinking of computing as a professional discipline, instead of a boy’s club.
Computing is neither a professional discipline nor a boys club. Historically, it's been a sausage fest, and computing will never be a professional discipline so long as there are people out there willing to write PHP for fifteen dollars an hour and engineers are put out to pasture at 35.