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The Ugly Underbelly of Coder Culture
snydeq writes "Today's developers are overwhelmingly young and male, and they're barring the door from a more diverse workforce, writes Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister. 'Software development isn't just failing to attract women. It's actively pushing them away. ... Put all the pieces together, and you're left with an impression of developers that's markedly different from the geeks and nerds they're made out to be in popular culture. On the contrary, developers harbor the same attitudes and engage in the same behaviors you see whenever a subculture is overwhelmingly dominated by young males. They've even coined a clever name for programmers who think and behave like fraternity pledges: brogrammers,' McAllister writes. 'Developers like to think of their culture as a meritocracy, where the very best developers naturally rise to the top. But as long as the industry tends to exclude more than half of the potential workforce, that's nothing but pure arrogance.'"
I win?
If you find this post offensive, don't read it! THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING! I am what I am because of how apes behave.
Except you really meant to say 'developed females'.
Be honest.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
...and that's the problem, isn't it? You're not being actively inclusive. Seriously, how did you get through four years of college without learning about diversity and sexism? It was pounded into my head. This ridiculous meritocracy argument you advance is biased in favor of the patriarchy.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Obviously that time of the month!
I think if you don't realize your bias then you are unwittingly probably part of the problem.
You're making the (unprovable, and thus invalid) assumption that everyone has bias, whether they know it or not. That's ridiculous.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
First off, who thinks that having an Asian-sounding name would cause any problems in a programming interview? Isn't the OPPOSITE the case? Look at the computer science classes. There are a lot of Asians in them. And they're getting good grades.
Those "findings" are generalized and do not seem to apply to this discussion ("brogrammers" and sexism).
You thought that a woman who spoke THREE languages was "less educated" because she spoke your language with a heavy accent?
WTF?
This shoddy sort of evidence is typical of feminist argumentation.
Sure, they get scholarships. They also get harassment. Lots and lots of harassment. Worse than the black kids.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Thank You. At my university, over 99% of the CS majors were male by senior year (97% freshman year). Females aren't applying to the programs, so they cannot be considered for the jobs.
This is typical male arrogance. Females are shut out of tech carees by this structural patriarcy and you blame us women? This is bull. It's the fault of the males. Females are more capable, have higher grades and better language skills as well as possess much stronger social abilities. Females are better employees in every way. Males knows this deep down and discriminate against women to protect their own failed selves.
More progressive countries have much stronger anti-discrimination laws than the US. I would like to point to Sweden for the best practice. Here nearly 80% of college graduates are female, and the dominance is rising. This is the future, little boy.
"NoSQL is widely taken to be a joke by professionals, who can easily achieve the same scalability using relational databases, without giving up their many useful and even necessary features." - I have a problem with this comment. Happy to agree that so far anything that's been publicly demonstrated indeed has been just an exercise in breaking ACID for no reason, but relational databases have their limits as well. So yes, NoSQL movement is a joke, but relational databases aren't necessarily the safe haven as they may seem.
For background: Just this afternoon company I work in lost around USD 500k (estimated) just because our relational database is working hard at the limits. We are one of the reference cases for the vendor.
You use C#. That already leaves you with only the bottom of the barrel developers. On top of that, you only have a kind of development that consists of stringing libraries together and drawing GUI.
Your ideas and policies are irrelevant for anyhing that involves real work.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.