A Bechdel Test For Programmers?

Nerval's Lobster writes In order for a movie or television show to pass the Bechdel Test (named after cartoonist and MacArthur genius Alison Bechdel), it must feature two female characters, have those two characters talk to one another, and have those characters talk to one another about something other than a man. A lot of movies and shows don't pass. How would programming culture fare if subjected to a similar test? One tech firm, 18F, decided to find out after seeing a tweet from Laurie Voss, CTO of npm, which explained the parameters of a modified Bechdel Test. According to Voss, a project that passes the test must feature at least one function written by a woman developer, that calls a function written by another woman developer. 'The conversation started with us quickly listing the projects that passed the Bechdel coding test, but then shifted after one of our devs then raised a good point,' read 18F's blog posting on the experiment. 'She said some of our projects had lots of female devs, but did not pass the test as defined.' For example, some custom languages don't have functions, which means a project built using those languages would fail even if written by women. Nonetheless, both startups and larger companies could find the modified Bechdel Test a useful tool for opening up a discussion about gender balance within engineering and development teams.

Comments

Totally agree with Bechdel

[Anonymous Coward]

My favorite porn always passes the Bechdel Test.

Re:Totally agree with Bechdel

[ChrisMaple]

It is only pervs who consider images of unclothed women degrading.

Re:Totally agree with Bechdel

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, it's just a joke.

By the way, I like to have sex with women because I LIKE IT. Not because I want to objectify women. Not because women are some subclass species that must be subordinate to my every whim. Because it's in my nature to want sex with females of my species. The fact that you feel this is wrong in some way just speaks to how out-of-touch you are with reality.

Re:Totally agree with Bechdel

[ShanghaiBill]

Kinda sad this got modded up so quickly. it seems a kneejerk putdown.

It was a joke. Which is all this idiotic topic deserves. The Bechdel test makes some (although not much) sense for a movie, where the characters and dialog are the whole point. But for a software project? Why should I care about the gender of who wrote the software I am using? Why should I care about whose function calls another function written by whoever?

How many garbage trucks, driven by women, pick up trash cans that were put on the curb by a woman? My suspicion is the percentage is very low. Is Obama doing anything about that?

Re:Totally agree with Bechdel

[Jane Q. Public]

That is the crux of the problem, that you do not care.

Absolute nonsense. No programmer I know gives the slightest damn who wrote a function they use. They just want it to work. And that's the proper way to look at it.

Insisting that a program include functions written by women that access other functions written by women is by definition sexist. The opposite of sexism isn't more sexism in the opposite direction... it's truly not caring.

You don't fight discrimination by institutionalizing discrimination. It hasn't worked, and it doesn't work. You fight discrimination by eliminating its consideration.

I no more care whether a software tool I use was written by a woman or a man than I care whether a bolt or a piece of material used in a weekend project was made by a woman or a man. It just has to work. Who made it is completely irrelevant... and should be.

Here's MY test

[NotDrWho]

If you can substitute the term "white male" into your premise and suddenly find it offensive, then was actually racist/sexist all along.

"a project that passes the test must feature at least one function written by a white male developer, that calls a function written by another white male developer. "

Re:Here's MY test

[shadowrat]

If you can substitute the term "white male" into your premise and suddenly find it offensive, then was actually racist/sexist all along.

"a project that passes the test must feature at least one function written by a white male developer, that calls a function written by another white male developer. "

i'm a white male and most of my projects don't pass. It's a joke i know, but it's a good metric in a way. Really, joking aside, to pass, a project should feature at least one function written by a developer that calls a function written by another developer. i'm aware that sadly, I don't work as well with others as i should. I often reinvent the wheel and isolate my codebases. From what i've seen, this is common.

Re:Here's MY test

[Anonymous Coward]

It offends me because I could give two shits who wrote a function in a program. All I give a fuck about is does the fucking thing work the way it's supposed to when it hits production; and if not whose salary am I cutting in half next quarter? All groups - Men, Women, each with various levels of melatonin dictating skin color and race - contain shit programmers as well as brilliant ones. It's about the fucking dedication of the coder. Fuck the race card. Fuck the gender card. If I have to fucking fix your shit in production cuz you couldn't be bothered to make sure it works in test and model environments, you're a shit coder. I don't give a shit who you are.

The dumbest thing

[JonathanP.Bennett]

Seriously, this is the dumbest thing ever. Just make the code work. I don't care at all if women wrote it. There are so many issues that actually matter, and this isn't one of them.

Re:The dumbest thing

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the kind of thing that discourages women in traditionally male-dominated fields. Nobody cares if a programmer is a man or a woman if they can write good code. But when a team member starts disrupting the work culture with irrelevant things like making things a man vs. woman contest, they're no longer going to be welcome regardless of their sex.

Someone doesn't undestand the Bechtel test.

[gurps_npc]

It isn't about getting jobs for female actors.

It's about people misrepresenting the world as lacking interesting women with something on their mind besides men.

If all you do is insist on two functions, each written by another women calling each other, you have made a mochery of the test.

Author vs. content

[DrYak]

This even stupider, because the original "Bechdel Test" is about the *content* of the movie.

i.e.: the Alien movie discussed in Bechdel's comics happens to have been written and directed by guys. But none the less, it depicted strong female caracters, who actually have motivations, goals, etc. of their own.
the female *characters* of the movie aren't passive decorations, they are not only here to observe (or obsess about) the guys, they have a life of they own, their actions are here to move the plot forward.

counter exemple: you can probably find tons of romantic film or novels, written by author which happen to be female, but completely fail the test as their female protagonists are more or less only here for the sole purpose of falling in love with male caracters.

This "Programmer's test" is stupid because it only considers the *author* of code.
An author should be judged solely based on the quality of the work produced, no matter what sets of reproductive organs the author happens to be equipped with.
What should be judged in theory, is the depiction of gender role in the produced work. As code is sexless, there is no point in that. It doesn't depict roles or creates models for future generation, in merely gives instruction to hardware.