I really don't understand guys who say (or think) shit like this. Honestly, it annoys me not so much because it's sexist, or misogynistic, or bigoted or whatever, but rather because it's fucking stupid.

I've been doing this stuff professional for around 20 years now, and I've worked with oodles of female programmers over the years, and I've never seen any reason to believe that female programmers are in any way less competent than their male counterparts. None. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

It really boggles the imagination... where do these guys come up with this shit? Making crude jokes, sexually charged statements, some of these other things I can understand (that doesn't make them right mind you, I'm just saying I can understand the place some of it comes from), but I can't even begin to understand a mindset of insinuating that women are less capable as developers/hackers/programmers/whatever.

To anybody who believes that women are somehow inherently inferior at coding, let me just say that you're wrong. Absolutely, totally, completely wrong. Maybe you haven't worked with enough women, or maybe you had the bad fortune to work with the wrong women, or maybe you just weren't paying attention, but it's just not true.

If you program or do operations for a living, know the first of your kind were hard working women who also dressed to the nines when they showed up for work.

Why's it matter that some of the first people entering programs on a computer were women.

Does the converse hold true too - that we should focus on the "engineers" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Bartik, "after learning how the machine worked only by reviewing diagrams of the device and by talking to its engineers: there was no manual") who were presumably* all male (?). And say to everyone look the predecessors of today's computer engineers were all men, and they wore suits to work.

Seems weird.

What also seems weird is that in all the ENIAC articles and the biographical details linked from the ENIAC stuff (eg http://quest.nasa.gov/space/frontiers/bartik.html) when the programming is mentioned it's not mentioned that Mauchly and Eckert were part of the programming team. Indeed it's said in a few places (that NASA link) that the women had no help other than logic diagrams in creating the programs. But elsewhere - Jean Bartik article in Wikipedia - it mentions that they talked with the engineers. It seems they are making pains to say this was a team of females, alone, with no male members; but Mauchly and Eckert were part of the team, no?

Didn't they all work together? Was there segregation that prevented Bartik, McNulty, and the other female workers from being considered peers in the effort along with Mauchly and Eckert. Did they really prevent the programmers from learning from the engineers how to program the machine somehow; didn't the engineers get involved at all in the design of programmes?

- - -

* - as it's not mentioned and surely would be; not because I think all engineers are male.

We don't have to sweat what happened back then too much, I think. What matter is what we choose to do tomorrow.

I guess I just find the "see, see, women can program too" to be pretty hollow; of course some of them can, just like some men can. Why are the men any less of a role model for budding programmers than the women though; focussing on the sex of particular people doing particular jobs doesn't seem like a good way to free children from the idea that they are limited in the careers they can pursue because of their sex alone (as opposed to characteristics that might be influenced by their sex, which is truistic).

This way just seems to me to say "well unless you can find examples of people of your sex doing that job well then forget it", or worse "it's unusual for women to be clever enough to program so we're making a song-and-dance about these ones". These people, the programmers of ENIAC should be noted for their work, not their sex.

I completely agree with the sentiment not to be bound unnecessarily to historic models.

>She liked the fact that other women did what I do //

Are you comfortable with the primary characteristic that people's work is judged is the sex of the person. Why not "that these were early pioneers in my field"? I'm not saying that you can, or should, control your daughters thought output but just asking if this is really how you want to be viewed WRT your work as a female programmer rather than just as a programmer.

I'm going to be cool with the fact you did this with my comment, but you should really consider why you feel this way about it instead of doing a hack job with my comments. I support anyone doing anything they want and if you knew me, you'd know I'm someone who considers someone's worth by their actions, not by what they look, smell or taste like.

That also goes for people who don't quite understand how to state how they themselves feel about important matters.

The more examples you see of people like you programming, the less of a song-and-dance you think it is. And you might perceive it as putting them up on a pedestal, but others don't.

In an ideal world, we don't have to increase the visibility of other genders in programming.

Did you have role models and examples that you looked up to who also looked like you? I think it's a hard thing to empathize with if you've always had those examples.

> "well unless you can find examples of people of your sex doing that job well then forget it"

Which is a stronger message to a child: other genders or ethnicities being held up as examples or never seeing anyone who looks like you doing what you want to do?

- You are a minority in the population where the bully hunts

- You appear to be isolated from others

- You are associated in the bully's mind with a group that the bully considers easy pickings

Bullies in general are not interested in the ideologies or politics associated with their attacks. They've just learned what buttons to push in order to cause maximum fear and powerlessness. When their victim feels disempowered, the bully feels empowered for causing it.

The only way to stop a bully is to hit them back. They're cowards at the core, and will go looking for easier victims if you fight back.

Follow the logic to its conclusion and what you're ending up with is "there's no such thing as sexism (or racism, or ageism); there is only exploitation and abuse, and sexism happens to be one of its vectors". About the best thing you can say about an argument like that is that it's a flight to abstraction, demanding that we litigate epistemology instead of dealing with the circumstances that are staring us in the face.

The signal these tangential arguments tend to send is "the author of this comment is profoundly uncomfortable confronting sexism". It is OK to be uncomfortable with sexism; you don't have to engage.

Mindcrime expressed confusion that anyone could actually believe such a thing. Protonfish expressed his belief that such comments are primarily intended to hurt, by which he's implicitly agreeing with Mindcrime. He doesn't think the attackers actually believe such a thing.

He's not trying to minimize the attack. He's just attempting to help Mindcrime understand how someone would say something that they both believe to not be true.

What he's not doing is addressing the origin of the desire to hurt, which likely is based (at least so I believe) in misogyny.

No one has at any point said there is no such thing as sexism or misogyny.

Consider 1960's era Chicago real estate agent who makes money by the following process:

1) Scare white people out of the neighborhood by having a black woman push a baby in a stroller outside their house.

2) Buy their house for cheap

3) Rent-to-own the house to black people and just as they are about to own it, bring up some bullshit thing and evict them.

He is more likely motivated by greed than a desire to fuck over black people for the sake of racism. But he's still acting racist and contributing to the system of systemic racism. A troll how picks sexist remarks to fuck with people isn't really motivated by a sincere desire to advance sexism...but they are still contributing to sexism as a systemic problem.

Those people want to be cruel, sure, but they are also sexist (or racist).

Also, being sexist (or racist) is as much defined by actions and words as it is by intent. Actually, intent is pretty irrelevant (at least for the victim). What matters there are the actual actions and words.

In some ways these people scare me more than actual sexists/racists/whateverists, because they're not ignorant, they just take joy in suffering, and actively manipulate people in such a way that maximizes chaos and pain. That mindset concerns me much more than someone who actually believes women/blacks/minority_group are inferior.

Someone who is saying it even though they know they're wrong, just to get a rise out of people, is sociopathic, and engaging with them would be a waste of time.

In other words, some people are bigots of circumstance - having been born, raised in a time and place, or otherwise exposed to certain views at certain moments. They can become allies, or at least brought to a position that isn't firmly bigoted. I think it's worthwhile to recognize the difference if only for the pragmatic purpose of knowing which arguments might be worthwhile and which are clear wastes of time.

It's like making fun of someone because they are short. That doesn't make someone a "shortist." It just shows that they are cruel human beings.

I see sexism as more of a fundamental belief. As in, the person went through some thought process that they think is logical, and they have reached a conclusion (that they think as logical) that women are inferior to men. This then comes out in their behavior even when the intention is not to cause harm. It's an attitude that exists independently of cruelty.

I’m certainly not racist or sexist when I want to be cruel to other people, even if I’m extremely angry and willing to say a lot to hurt the other person. Going there wouldn’t even cross my mind. (I tend to go for age, I think. That exposes my own ageism, something I still have to deal with. I don’t think that’s ok, either, and I also think being ageist is not ok.)

Anything's possible, I guess. But, based on my particular lifetime of experience with people, jerks are usually jerks in multiple aspects of their life.

Stamping out sexism isn't going to stop them from doing that. They're not reading these articles or these comments. If they are, they're just happy that someone is paying attention to them.

I think there are far bigger fish to fry when it comes to fighting sexism than going after some basement-dwelling mouth-breathers who don't actually matter. You could actually focus on normal, good-intentioned people who have just been brought up in a culture of sexism and would happily change if it were pointed out to them how they're hurting others.

edit: I shouldn't say they "don't matter" as I've never been on the receiving end of it, and it probably matters a great deal when you are. I just meant that the ability of these people to affect someone's life beyond making hurtful comments on the Internet is minimal.

There will always be bigots and douchebags everywhere. People who say this stuff don't matter to me and people who matter do say shit like that.

Well, obviously. Sexism is an irrational bigotry; you'd expect them to come across stupid when it comes to this sort of thing.

> I've never seen any reason to believe that female programmers are in any way less competent than their male counterparts.

Ah, but you see, sexists just KNOW. It stands to reason. Anyone saying otherwise is clearly just being POLITICALLY CORRECT. And so forth.

These people don't think women are no good at computers based on evidence, they think it because they hold irrational preconceived ideas about women.

I don't think it's necessarily either.

Suppose, as is common in my country, all your teachers (from ages 3 to 11 years) were female and all the service staff (janitors) were men. Wouldn't it be rational to assume that only women could be teachers and only men could be cleaners? So long as you're open to other rational viewpoints then you're not bigoted and you're going to be disavowed of your position quite readily.

I don't see a reason why any particular person can't be the best programmer in the world [assuming that can be tested/judged] regardless of sex. However, I consider men's brains and thought patterns to be different (as a statistical population) to women's and so consider that one group is more likely to (a) enjoy a particular activity, and (b) be adapted to excel at it. In this case, I consider the intersect of (a) and (b) to be more commonly found in men.

Would I try to hinder girls from pursuing programming, tech or CompSci careers? Why would I; I'd encourage them just as much as I would boys. Would I go out of my way to ensure there are more opportunities for girls to enter those same careers? Same answer.

Am I an irrational bigot?

>It really boggles the imagination... where do these guys come up with this shit? //

Have you ever witnessed this sort of behaviour. Perhaps it's so rare that instead you can level your surprise towards anyone trying to say such misogyny is commonplace.

Would you accept, however, that the very best workers in any particular field are likely to be primarily of one sex or the other?

And by and large, the male colleagues I've had over the years have never struck me as having any such attitudes towards female programmers. I guess that's part of why this whole notion seems so foreign to me.

So, for example, men aren't in any way - as a population - stronger, say, and so more capable as bricklayers [in general] it's just that we're not analysing the populations properly? So, you'd warrant that arm strength, which follows a close correlation with sex (ie if your arms are able to lift more mass you're more likely to be male) has no bearing on ability to manipulate heavy weights. Just as an off-the-cuff example.

In anticipation: Don't come back with the "but there are female bodybuilders who can lift more than most men" type retort either, lets be adult about this. Of course there are, that offers no refutation.

I'm saying take a randomly selected population of 1000 women and 1000 men, teach them a skill. Test them. One population will be better generally than the other across repetitions of the experiment.

FWIW in my country girls perform better on average in maths at school, so maybe women would be better in the proposed experiment than men. Of course that speaks nothing to whether more women want to be programmers; it would be interesting nonetheless. Now take the top 100 [say] performers: sometimes [within an instance of the experiment] their modal sex will be the same as the better performing group, sometimes it will differ but I'd warrant across repetitions of the experiment the modal sex of the top performers is largely stable across many fields.

What you're asking now sounds just as uninteresting. "The population higher in testosterone makes better bricklayers? Call the Nobel committee!"

It's true, you can set up giant psych experiments to demonstrate pretty much any bias you want. Have fun, but don't expect the bodybuilders and math students to care about your results. And try not to wander too close to eugenics.

So as USA has a slightly greater female population the best practitioners of anything, say, will be female?

>"The population higher in testosterone makes better bricklayers? [...]" //

My point is that whilst I find that completely uncontentious and largely unremarkable it's the equivalent assertion that in other fields no one sex can in any way be said to be better, eg based on biological principles, that feminism trumps scientific observation that there are actual differences in the sexes that can manifest themselves in different occupational abilities (across a population).

This is writ large in the assertion which is often found that because there are fewer of one sex than the other in a given occupation there is sexism involved rather than there being the possibility of a sex bias in ability or desire to participate. I might also note that it's almost exclusively "too few females" in higher-paid jobs that are male dominated but that the proponents never seem bothered by their being "too few females" in lower paid jobs or "too few males" in higher-paid female dominated occupations.

>eugenics* //

We're pretty far away from that in asserting that observation of populations show that traits often have a statistical sexual bias. Surely so-called "positive discrimination" is far closer to eugenics than my laissez-faire approach of not concerning ourselves with the sex of people in any occupation but instead providing equal opportunities to the sexes to enter careers their personal inclinations and proclivities favour.

Though TBH I'd be happy to entertain the debate over whether reproduction should be supported by states along more meritocratic lines in order to avoid breeding the population away from desirable traits. So now you can justify commenting on eugenics to me as at least related to concepts I'm happy to explore.

Is all else considered equal here? Obviously not.

As for the rest, any results are guaranteed to be biased and I have a hard time seeing any meaningful purpose (other than discrimination of course). Not interested. Have fun with it, try not to hurt anyone.

It's very simple really. In most parts of the world, female programmers are still a very rare sight. When I was a university instructor, we had approx. 2-3% female CS students attending our lectures and exams. With such gender distributions, the chances are very high that the handful of programming geniuses most people know, are all male. This leads to the widespread wrong conclusions.

But the topic is not about genius programmers, anyway. It's about competent women programmers. If you have never seen women programmers, or the amount that you have seen is not great enough to draw conclusions from, then it is unfair to jump to the conclusion that they do not or can not exist.

So basically, when considering a minuscule, poorly defined and poorly measured data-set, you've decided to draw broad conclusions about half the human population.

I'm not sure how great a programmer you are, but I'll tell you right now that your logic skills need some work.

(If there were reliable science on the subject I would of course prefer to go by that, but that's practically impossible for a question that's so politicised)

Indeed, quite weak; weak to the point of being useless. In ten years of programming, I've only worked with two developers who were comfortable with the use of regular expressions, both were women... what does that tell me about women?

Nothing.

Similarly, whatever experiences you've had with female programmers who are "worse than the average male" programmer is pretty clearly worthless (for the purpose of drawing conclusions about female programmers), especially when one considers that your definition of average is, at best, a nebulous amalgamation of your own subjective impressions.

How noble of you. You're right though. I apologize for disparaging your faculties of logic, it was tongue in cheek but wholly unnecessary.

though it might be, if the effect size is large enough. How large was the rest of your sample, and how big was the difference?

How can effect size be determined when we don't even know what is being measured? What is the criteria for determining the quality of a programmer? How is that criteria applied? Are there controls for education? exposure to programming as a child? years of experience? quality of experience? quality of tools available to the programmer? quality of the work environment in which we seek to evaluate the programmer's quality? It's reasonable for one to leverage professional experience in judging the skill level of colleagues, but it'd be foolish to think that those observations can be generalized across an arbitrary dimension of the programmer population (such as gender, or race, or political leaning).

are you really not even curious about these kind of differences?

I guess? I'm always eager to learn more, but I don't really find the question of programmer aptitude as a function of gender very interesting since I can't identify anything unique about programming that would suggest either gender would be qualitatively predisposed to the craft.

When the difference has an over 95% confidence level you usually have enough ground to start making inferences on new individuals. Just don't cherry pick the data, i.e. "good male programmers" versus "all female programmers".

Generalizing from a sample of 1 girl would indeed be stupid. But at some point you have to start making inferences.

Judge people for who they are. Individually. Do not presuppose things. Done. It’s quite simple.

There are some 3.5 billion women on the planet. Do you think you've reviewed the programming work of enough of them to constitute a representative sample?

> You have to work with what you know

Yes, what I'm pointing out is that you don't have enough information to claim to know anything.

I think Bill Gates is trying to spend his money, not save it.

I touch on this in my comment upthread and you mention it as well, but I really feel like insularity has a strong causative effect here.

That's not intrinsically bad. What's questionable is the quality of the comments. It seems that almost all the remarks on this page are drawn from opinion or personal anecdotes. Don't get me wrong... personal stories can be interesting and insightful; it's just that, in most discussion threads, HN tends to balance opinion with links to more objective qualitative and quantitative sources. That's what differentiates HN from sites like Facebook and Reddit.

So, there should be a barrier to participating in discussions about gender on HN. If you have personal or professional experience that qualifies you to discuss the topic, please share it. If you took the time to research the issue and present a substantial, new perspective, please share it. But if you want to chime in with a vague, unsubstantiated opinion that dozens of others have already shared, please consider using another forum. That's what makes these discussions less productive.

I don't believe it is a bad thing, rather it is the fact that a lot of people reading HN really want to participate in the discussions, but feel they don't have any direct experience so no clear way to participate. Comments like "I agree" do get down voted heavily, and even clever humor. So what does that leave? It leaves topics like gender discrimination or workplace drama.

I've seen similar participation in Ask HN type topics as they again often solicit opinions on a common issue.

Maybe they could work that in to an algorithm that gives you the downvote option..

My point is that there are many, many people who are just readers (of posts and comments) who don't feel the need to comment on everything but are perfectly capable of helping police the content. Right now, I can only upvote if I like something. There is no other option for "this is not good/helpful"

There is, actually. You need 500 karma, and you don't have that yet.

However, you cannot qualify anyone for participation in a discussion, nor should you try and move the discussion elsewhere. The fact that this discussion happens on HN is relevant: there is a cross-section of tech people here. The extremists, the moderates, the neutrals. That is what makes this format work.

Inappropriate comments can be downvoted, abuse can be flagged. Comment-policing is another matter, and we don't want that.

But seriously, I think this is a refreshing article, considering the usual gender in tech articles here. I'd like to think that there are plenty of places a woman can work as a professional developer and not be subject to such rampant discrimination and sexual harassment that most of us find it difficult to believe.

I recommend everybody believe and act as if there are plenty of awesome companies to work at. If you find yourself at a company that sucks, for whatever reason, kick their asses to the curb and find a new one.

The big difference in treatment occurred with the lone female in the course who wasn't a good coder. Despite her having more experience than many in the class, she quickly fell behind. I witnessed a vicious cycle, in which she (probably due to the way she had been treated in the past) was ultra defensive when criticism came down, which then caused a difference in how she was criticized, which was then picked up on by her...... She complained to me about being discriminated against for her gender. While I'm very sympathetic to females in our industry who suffer at the hands of these brogrammer idiots (anytime I see anything remotely like that kind of behavior, I don't hesitate to LITERALLY GRAB the guy/guys, pull them aside, and give them a menacing rebuke), this was a case in which gender wasn't actually the issue. It was personality. And I have no doubt that gender discrimination in her past helped create this personality. Such a challenge to deal with this.

From my general experiences, I believe that the majority of what appears to be sexism, racism, etc is actually about respect, and not what the poor treatment appears to be about. When a person has self-respect and is generally respected in the peer group, these sorts of ridiculous, cruel, ad-holmium type attacks just don't happen, or vanish about as soon as they start.

When a person does not respect themselves, though, or acts in such a way as to lose respect in their group, then there's a certain type of person (mostly those brogrammer idiot types) out there that will seize upon that and attack that person with whatever they think will make them the most uncomfortable and upset. Sexism, racism, bigotry, any way that the person is different from the others, anything that they're insecure or uncomfortable with. The person doesn't really feel that way; they just use it to attack the weak. Of course, that's pretty asshole-ish behavior too, and I'm not sure that I'd call that better than actually being bigoted.

I sometimes wish we could just forget about sex altogether, rather than point the finger to men in conferences and blogposts. I have seen a man being fired after a debate about the harm of illustrating a blogpost about marriages in the company with ball-and-chains, and I keep thinking the solution was extreme. I am now wary of legal consequences whenever I speak with women at work. Which isn't good, compared to my original intent of treating people regardles of their sex.

And don't forget to call them out for it, publicly. I know that's easy to say, and in reality it's going to be hard to deal with the inevitable onslaught of abuse you're going to take for it. But companies have to make an effort to ensure that toxic environments are eliminated.

Many homeowner's policies allow you to pay a bit extra to add defense against defamation lawsuits to your liability coverage. You should at least put this in place, unless you have $30,000 - $100,000 in disposable savings to defend against a defamation suit.

This is what you need to plan for if you intend to make public statements that damage a business' reputation - and that's if you know you're right and have thorough documentation of every claim you make. If you lack any of that documentation, it's going to cost you a lot more.

Note well: I am not justifying what such a company will do. I am merely saying that they almost certainly will do this.

I'm sure that was intended as praise, but it falls short. Astonishingly far short.

A decent coder is far from the competency profile of an average person of their gender anyway, so that average is not even relevant.

It frustrates and angers me knowing the article will almost certainly draw asinine comments and threats that are wholly inappropriate.

It takes a kind of bravery I'm not sure I have, and I can't tell if I do because it isn't required when I write.

The reasons it's needed aside, the signal of this blog that this is a safe place for women to work is important.

To the author, well done, and know that support is out there.

Now, I can't be certain that my resume hasn't been skipped in the pile because I'm a woman. But, it's been my experience that developers on a team just want somebody who can do the work and can appreciate the good work that they do.

With so many articles posted about discrimination and sexism, it's refreshing to see others share their experience as being just one of the gang.

That's basically how one changes social stigmas in a society/industry. Just make sure all cool places are doing the exact opposite of unwanted behaviour. If that's not possible, then everybody needs to fake it with PR stunts like this until everyone else believes that's the thing to do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_y...

Well, this is another point for the distributed, asynchronous programming championed by http://asyncmanifesto.org/

I would be happy to hire a woman programmer at our company provided she was awesome at the stuff we need -- Javascript, PHP, etc. In fact if someone here is reading this (man or woman) and thinks they would like to work with us on http://github.com/EGreg/Q, I would be very happy to talk to you -- if you can figure out how to contact me from there.

In programming, the internet is the great equalizer. Have your work speak for itself, have your reviews speak for themselves, and this may be a faster vector for advancement than at a job.

PS: Recently I did reach out to one woman who I found on oDesk and she was busy with a project, but recommended someone else, a man. And now I'm talking to him, because she recommended well.

PPS: We do have a woman working in our company, doing sales. I really hire based simply on competence with the stuff we need and so far it's ben mostly men doing the programming.

The problem is that it shouldn't require anonymity to get people to simply treat each other like people.

This is the meritocracy argument. I am sympathetic to it, and agree to a great extent. But the main objection—and it's an important one—is that an unbalanced, male-dominated workplace becomes less attractive to women. In most cases, it probably isn't even conscious - but it can become pretty hostile.

https://netguru.co/blog/posts/brace-no-more-going-from-java-...

    @Override
    public boolean equals(Object object) {
        if (!(object instanceof Gallery)) return false;
        Gallery other = (Gallery) object;
        return (this.gid != null || other.gid == null) && (this.gid == null || this.gid.equals(other.gid));
    }

Actually, the logical structure of the final line is a bit obscure to me; i'd write it:

        return this.gid != null ? this.gid.equals(other.gid) : other.gid == null;

        return Objects.equals(this.gid, other.gid);

Liberally stolen from Anil Dash, consider this sentence and how it compares to yours:

> I'm an iPhone user, and I've been in and out of a lot of organizations where I also work with Android users, and they're always complaining about bugs. I can't ever reproduce their bugs on iOS.

Seriously, what kind of a dick says that to anybody - even if it was nothing to do with gender, it's an egregious offence.

This struck a chord with me.

I work in the healthcare sector, so I deal with what is, for IT, an unusually high proportion of women. I've dealt with bad female developers, but I've also worked with absolutely great ones. Just like I've dealt with incompetent and solid male developers.

Maybe it's just my exposure and the fact that it's a normal thing for me, but gender just doesn't even register on my radar when I have to work with someone. All I care about is the ability to get the job done.

While I think the dearth of women in the tech sector is systematic on a deep enough level that it's very difficult to "solve" in any manner that won't take decades, I do find myself somewhat worried about the byproducts of tech's current insular nature. I feel that normalizing dealing with people -- diverse groups of people -- on a regular basis yields healthy benefits well beyond simply saying "we're inclusive!" It breeds openness to just plain working with people as people.

What I am scared of is some people using what Gosia wrote as an argument to silence other women: "Look! Read! See? It's not bad! So shut up".

Still good to have a positive story as well after all those awful stories of lately.