Increasing the general level of knowledge (awareness) about mental health issues is certainly a benefit when talking about the issue of depression in a certain subgroup.
Many people I run across in tech circles have positively medieval notions about mental illness - people who are depressed are depressed because of personal weakness/defects, etc. As a result, many will not be willing to acknowledge that they, themselves, are experiencing depression, or might think that they should just toughen up and gut it out, and eventually the consequences can be quite dire.
Making it easier to get help when you need it - without judgment and without making people jump through hoops (outreach) will also help.
Imagine how much better things could be if people stopped being ashamed over shit they had no control over and were able to easily get help to make it better? Imagine how much better things could be if you didn't have people actively mocking and dismissing even the mere suggestion that things could and should be better.
You guys are also thinking in the wrong terms - social issues don't get "solved" - they get improved. Real life is messy and complex and there isn't one true solution - it's not as simple as most engineering problems. That you guys don't seem to recognize that says more about your inability to think clearly outside of your discipline than it does about the disciplines you dismiss so easily.
Here's an example that should be near and dear to those reading this site:
Open source.
Or, do you think that somehow, magically, open source became a thing without activists helping to increase awareness of benefits (or even existence) of OS solutions and reaching out to various organizations and individuals to get them to try it?
And here are some social issues that have been greatly improved by outreach and awareness:
When I was a child, if you were physically disabled you were pretty much fucked. Want to go to school but you're in a chair and there are no ramps? Tough luck. Want to go to college but you can't hear the lectures or can't see the blackboard? Tough luck. Want a job but your potential boss is creeped out by your withered hand and refuses to hire you? Tough luck. Today? Substantially better. Activists educating the public and reaching out to those who can change things helped make it something worth remedying because clearly based on the status quo before, most able bodied people didn't give a shit.
When my mother was a child, it was perfectly legal to discriminate against people of color, and the right to do so was in fact enshrined into law in many states. Today? Much better. Largely because of activists reaching out to educate people who were in a position to do something about it but previously hadn't felt it was important enough to do.
When my grandmother was a child, women were essentially the property of their husbands and had very few legally guaranteed rights, and mostly unable to vote. Today? Much better. Again: activists, awareness and outreach, and people in power being forced to acknowledge that it was something worth doing.
If you really can't think of things that activism has helped and you really are dismissing social workers because they haven't "solved" problems, you really, REALLY need to pull your head out of your ass. So, too, do the people who called you insightful.
I'm violating my statement I wouldn't come back but:
You said Lucasarts was worried about having same sex relationships in the game because of previous controversy and that they had to protect their profits, correct?
Who, other than homophobes/bigots would raise a stink over gay relationships being available in a game to the point where it would hurt profits from reduced sales?
Tell me. Please. Explain how someone raising controversy because gay relationships are treated the same as straight relationships in the game isn't a homophobe or a bigot. Explain to me how not putting gay relationships into the game at the start - was not catering to the homophobes and bigots initially, and had nothing to do with not upsetting the delicate sensibilities of homophobes and bigots.
You said they were worried about protecting their profits for controversy, so back it up and show how that has nothing to do with catering to bigots and homophobes in this case, when the only people who would cost them money in lost sales would be the homophobes, and the only increased costs in production could have been avoided by simply reducing the number of straight relationship options to get a couple of gay ones in.
Difficulty: if you mention moral/religious objections you then also need to make sure the moral code you're citing doesn't allow gayness to be ok but has nary a problem with constant mass murder and torture.
Bonus: explain how gay relationships only being available behind a paywall while straight ones are in by default, or how there are no gay options for companion NPCs is somehow equal and should be gratefully accepted.
This ought to be good.
Also, on a side note: you've been making a lot of personal assumptions about me and you've also now accused me of lying. I've been paying you the courtesy of at least assuming you are honest in your opinions, even if I disagree with them. I'm going to change that assumption now - I don't think you're arguing in good faith, I think you're just spoiling for a fight and not willing to listen openly to arguments from other points of view, and I think you do have an agenda other than what you're claiming. I'm in this argument because it involves the decent treatment of people - you are involved because someone said something you don't like about a corporation. There is no way a reasonable person without an agenda would be so invested in defending a corporation - so you're either unreasonable or dishonest,
I'm at least honest enough to wonder why I bothered engaging with you past the first reply, but fortunately that's something I can remedy.
Lucasarts and Bioware chose to CATER TO HOMOPHOBES/BIGOTS rather than implement same-sex relationships in their game.
When it became clear that they wouldn't profit by CATERING TO HOMOPHOBES/BIGOTS they then implemented a lesser version of relationships for players interested in same-sex relationships.
Some people are saying that Bioware and Lucasarts are wrong because they are doing this half-assed implementation that is half-assed because BIOWARE AND LUCASARTS CHOSE TO CATER TO HOMOPHOBES/BIGOTS and designed their game in a way that reflects that choice.
You, on the other hand, are now saying that these people who are upset at Bioware and Lucasarts because of their ORIGINAL DECISION TO CATER TO HOMOPHOBES/BIGOTS are wrong because Bioware and Lucasarts decided to belatedly pull their heads out of their asses and offer same-sex relationships as a fucking marketing point for an expansion to their vastly underperforming game. You seem genuinely mystified that people aren't just saying "YIPPEE!!! There is absolutely nothing cynical about them including this feature as a big bullet point on the package and they certainly will not ever CATER TO HOMOPHOBES/BIGOTS LIKE THEY DID INITIALLY and we should be happy that we get this little bit that obviously reflects their choice to CATER TO HOMOPHOBES/BIGOTS!"
I bolded the important part because maybe it just needs to be louder and bigger to sink in.
Bioware chose to Implement relationships in the game in a way that clearly did not value inclusivity - they could have written the relationship lines of dialogue to be gender neutral, they could have had the actors record an extra line when the line was gendered, etc. they obviously have a flag for determining what conversation options are available for a given NPC based on player gender, so it should have been relatively easy to plug in those other lines.
But, they obviously - because they are choosing to implement the same-sex relationships now in a very awkward way - did not consider same-sex options important during design.
They do not get to come back and say "before we prioritized profits over people, but now that we realized it doesn't matter, we are going to do the right thing" and then pretend like they're good people.
Moreover, other people don't have the right, when someone else points this out, to basically accuse the people who had been disregarded before,of whining or telling them they should be grateful they at least got something. Well, I mean, they have the right to, but it just makes you look silly.
As to your final point - that Bioware is including all players. Yep, they sure are, except that because of their choices and biases going in, not all players are being included equally, but people are now saying to those players who were obviously an afterthought, that they should be grateful and any complaints are just whining. You don't think there's something just a little off about that? I know I do.
I actually understand the mechanics, but I'm getting at the laughably tone deaf way this is handled when I talk about the way the new stuff is being implemented.
And, again, it actually IS regressive the way this is handled, even if Bioware isn't solely responsible for how things were implemented.
Anyway, the issue here is that gay folk are being treated like second class people and using this as an example of how, but everyone's just so eager to tell them to stop whining about it that they're missing the reason it happened in the first place and why these folks might be upset about it.
If you're going to have relationships in the game and you're also going to claim that you are inclusive, it's a big sign that you aren't very inclusive when you wind up having to retrofit that inclusion after the fact AND you designed your systems so badly that the only way you can add inclusion later indicates it was never actually a consideration. Bioware and Lucasarts (and a lot of people here on Slashdot) are pretending like its the people who have been excluded who are in the wrong here, not the people being exclusionary. It's adding insult to injury.
And the problem here is that your entire argument basically sums up why gay folks are bothered by this in the first place:
They weren't included at the beginning because of concerns about profit, but then when people decided that not being discriminatory (or, to be kind, pretending gay folks don't exist) wouldn't cost them money, THEN they decided to relent and give those gay people their VERY OWN PLANET where they can be as gay as they want (but only there for now - if you want to go anywhere else you have to stop acting gay). Oh, and if you complain that this is kind of not a very good way of handling things, well, you're just being a whiny gay and GEEZE why can't you people ever just be grateful? (Not you saying this, but many people in the comments here are being exactly like that).
Gay stuff wasn't included originally based on a business decision. The fact that it was a business decision doesn't somehow abrogate the parties who made that decision from being discriminatory dickheads ESPECIALLY when they were making that decision and using the name of a company that had previously been decent about implementing gay stuff in their games.
Now they're implementing gay stuff in the game, but because of their original (stupid) decision not to, it's really hard to retrofit it to the whole game, so instead they're making a little gay ghetto planet and acting like people should be just thrilled with how progressive they are, without realizing just how horribly tone-deaf that implementation is.
It's craven and condescending. They were more concerned with profits than people before, and then when they realized profits weren't going to be hurt (because the game is not doing well), they gave in and are now trying to hold themselves up as bastions of progress and tolerance, and they have people like you coming in here to say "Geepers, they were just trying to protect their investment, but once they realized that they could treat gay people like, well, people, they relented, it's ever so reasonable!" and making excuses for them.
I would have respected them more had they simply said "We don't think it's worth catering to gay people in this regard and need to protect our profits" and left it at that. At least it would have been honest.
One of the heterosexual relationship options in the game for male Sith Warriors is the ability to take and torture a woman with a shock collar. Eventually you can more or less break her to the point where, if you marry her, she will joke about haha, remember when you used to torture me by shocking the shit out of me while I wore that shock collar, well, let me go get it so we can get frisky...
You can also commit (gleefully) mass murder, psychological torture on families by killing their loved ones and then rubbing it in their faces, blackmail for profit, and a whole host of other unsavory activities that you are rewarded for.
I guess what I'm saying is that any parent who is worried Little Timmy might get the offer to sit on Darth Fabulous's Meat Saber should *probably* not let their kid play this game in the first place, and definitely shouldn't be catered to when they express their preferences for what should/shouldn't be included in a video game for their kid.
I played it only for a few months, but I remember being struck by just how particularly bloodless and neuter the "romantic" dialogue was - I assumed it was written that way to facilitate more diverse relationships if people wanted to go down those paths. I don't recall much in the way of gendering in the language etc. Honestly, they could probably just disable the gender check in relationship options and other than a few possibly awkward lines it wouldn't be any worse than it already is.
Then again, my observation might be entirely based on the fact that I was an absolutely terrifying, psychotically evil Dark Side Sith chick and my relationship option was Quinn, who really, he's NOT gay, you're *sure* Bioware?
In previous Bioware games they allowed people to have same-sex relationships by default. In this latest Bioware game, they did not allow people to have same-sex relationships by default, and are only bolting it on in a clumsy fashion after the fact.
It's literally regressive in that this newest game by Bioware handles same-sex relationships less well than previous Bioware games. It's a step backwards for Bioware, even if it's a step forward compared to some other game makers.
Imagine the complaints if you took any $franchise and removed $feature that said $franchise was known for. People would rightly call it a step back.
As I said elsewhere, I find relationships in RPGs to be almost always poorly executed and pointless because they're not handled well, but as a gamer I can certainly see how people who come to a publisher expecting that publisher to deliver on something they usually deliver would be bothered when they don't get what they expected.
The "regressive" statement pretty clearly refers to the difference between Mass Effect, where gay relationships were included right away and this later game by the same company where gay relationships were not included right away and are only being bolted on afterwards. It is literally regression in that it is a step (or multiple steps) backward in how Bioware handles diversity of relationships in their games. It's a perfectly valid term to use in a valid complaint from the segment of people who care about how relationships are implemented in RPGs.
Personally I don't care about the relationships in RPGs since 99/100 times they're just poorly executed theater used by sub-par writers as a shortcut to get the player to care about an NPC, but I can understand that people who like Bioware games and who liked the diversity offered in earlier games would be bothered that Bioware did a worse job of implementing diversity of relationships in their latest game.
It's not "whining" any more than it would be "whining" if a maker of any other kind of game where they were known for certain features in their games were to suddenly scale back that feature.
I wonder how you're approaching the idea of exceptions with people if they're getting upset when you explain exceptions to them. I've worked in multiple different businesses and environments ranging from extremely corporate to extremely casual and have literally never experienced someone causing me of trying to detail their idea when I ask them to help me figure out potential weak spots in an implementation and how to address them.
Maybe it's just that I make it clear that, if we're pursuing the idea at all it must be a good one, and figuring out failure modes just means we are going to make sure it's as bullet-proof as possible? Seriously, exceptions exist EVERYWHERE in every different type of environment - I mean, I've had people start giving me laundry lists of exceptions and ways they get handled in things ranging from cars (fuel gets cut off in a crash etc) to cooking (you're missing an ingredient, replace it or change plans) to, well, everything.
I'm not saying you're coming off like a jerk to those people who get upset, but it just seems like such an absolutely bizarre experience, since in almost 20 years of professional life in a wide range of environments I've never had that experience. Ether I'm just a ridiculously lucky person, you're an unlucky one, or something else is afoot.
Oh, I absolutely agree that it would be impossible (and not desirable) to have everyone attempt to master every field. I think I took your "should a policeman learn to grow a potato" types of examples as an argument in favor of hyperspecialization. On the other hand, I'm having a hard time understanding how anyone would take "we need to make the basic tools more approachable for the novice" to lead iany way to "we want to make everyone a software engineer" - it seems strange anyone would throw that out since nobody was suggesting that.
And, to be honest, this is kind of a hot button for me - I love programming, I love the feeling I get when I've taken some problem, large or small, and developed a tool to address it. I want to share that feeling and that capability with other people (because of this I volunteer teaching computer skills - including programming - to largely undereducated adults) so it tweaks me when I see people seemingly down on the idea of making it easier for people to get started. I know that it is extremely unlikely any of my students will ever become professional developers, but that isn't really the point - the point is helping them get started when they didn't know how to.
Not that you were down on it - just so many in this story have been, so I got into it with you.
I don't disagree with the idea that the casual scripter doesn't take exceptions into account (or even, unfortunately, many "professional" developers) - they either trust that the user won't screw up on accident or intentionally or they don't think of the cases where something else might go wrong etc.
But, I think it's actually not THAT hard to teach the concept and necessity of handling exceptions. I volunteer teaching adults programming classes, and exceptions and exception handling is integrated into every lesson - in fact, the first lesson ('How to think like a computer") wherein I have my students write a recipe to make an omelette, spends most of the time with them figuring out exceptions, classifying them from fatal to recoverable to annoying but ultimately able to be ignored, etc. My students have always taken to it easily - people get the concept of shit not working right and breaking in weird ways.
On your other point - that people working in less safe domains with limited knowledge - what makes programming so special, when that is true of literally any other technology I can think of? An untrained person with very little experience working on something important in any field can cause very serious problems, and yet society goes on. We have ways of handling the exceptions that come up from people with limited skills breaking things (safety measures, liability, common sense - "No, Bob, I don't care if you read about it on the Interwebs, I'm not going to let you use your ShopVac to perform liposuction on me!" and so on).
I'm not talking about "letting people off the reservation" so that they can do whatever the hell they want to anything anywhere. Just as I wouldn't let my idiot brother work on the electrical wiring in my home or work on my car or my plumbing, I wouldn't let any random yahoo touch any other system that I believed important. Nor would I buy a product or use a solution for anything that I needed to rely on from just anyone cause they kinda sorta have a version that might work sometimes. Personal responsibility comes into play in a huge way.
Sometimes people even find ways to break other people's shit when they didn't get permission - something they did with a technology they barely understood or didn't fully appreciate winds up causing someone else harm. Some years ago the apartment building next door burnt down because one of the residents didn't know to clean the lint filter in his dryer. Should we then complain that the barrier to entry to doing laundry is too low because an idiot can burn down a building in a worst case scenario? I know someone who died from salmonella poisoning they got from having under-cooked chicken at a dinner party. Do we need to require that someone who wishes to turn on their stove only be able to do so after being retina scanned and confirmed to have basic food safety knowledge?
My point here is that people misuse potentially dangerous technology all the time, yet society goes on, and programming is no different. More people having a basic understanding of it - making it easier for people to learn that computers are not just some magic box that shows them porn - is actually a really good thing BECAUSE of the concerns people here are having. First, it will mean that more people will know enough to make a more informed decision when letting someone else make software for them, which will help filter out the idiots. Second, it will mean that society will find ways to adapt to all those bad things that shitty software can do.
Personally, I think the arguments against it reek of the same kind of nerd arrogance that fueled arguments way back when regular people first started getting online - they'll break things because they're stupid, they'll make it worse for us, blah blah blah. And yep a lot of bad shit happened - but we got over it, adapted, and now have more robust systems in place. And, even better - all those people who are just "regular" (read: not CS/Engineering students) folks wound up making the Internet a lot more interestin
As I said in both my original post and the follow-up to your reply, I am not talking about people joining the profession but rather people developing a simple basic level of understanding of programmatic concepts.
That you cannot get this through your head despite my saying it clearly two times, means you are not worth talking to; either you aren't capable of comprehending what you read or you are intentionally ignoring what I'm saying.
Well, the first problem I see is the thinking in terms of "sides" - that encourages bullshit grandstanding and that whole rah rah we can't ever say we were wrong about anything because then THE OTHER SIDE wins. It makes us all stupider as a result - we can't ask questions without the other side thinking we're trying to trap them or saying that we're ignorant, we can't admit fault because HOLY SHITBALLS we were wrong about one thing and therefore we must be wrong about EVERYTHING EVER and all that nonsense. Fuck that noise, it's stupid, and we can do better - and I expect people to be better than that.
The good news is that if we're smart we can do small changes that will gently push us onto the right track. The bad news is that we have people who are too fucking stupid to understand any of this, and many of those people are in positions of power. Anyway.
We have 2 parts to this: Raising Revenue and Cutting Spending.
Raising revenue is, by and large, pretty easy: Raise taxes a couple of points, more on people who can afford it, less on those who can't afford it, putting more money in the hands of the people who will most likely spend the money they aren't paying in taxes. I'm not talking about soaking the rich or anything of the sort - a few points, that's it. Also raise revenue for social security by removing the income cap, but still keeping a cap on maximum benefit payout. I know, it's not "fair" to the people who make millions of dollars a year but who will only receive benefits as if they made a hundred k a year or so, but somehow I think they'll be just fine. And no, as long as we don't get stupid ("OMG LOL LETS JUST TAKE EVERYTHING THEY HAVE!!!!!") there won't be some massive "Gone Galt" extravaganza - by and large, living in the US is pretty fucking amazing compared to many other places in the world, and even with higher taxes, living in the US and being rich is HUGELY FUCKING AMAZING compared to many other places in the world. You'll still be able to live the lifestyle you want, and even better you can do so with a slightly lowered risk of being executed by a mob of armed peasants with nothing left to lose. It's a win-win!
But for cuts:
I'm hugely in favor of cutting the fuck out of spending on social programs and defense but we have to do it INTELLIGENTLY. Simply saying "hey, welfare, you have 25% less money to spend, figure it out" is fucking retarded because it winds up being done in the most brutal way - reducing services or cutting some people in need off of services. Simply saying "Hey, DOD, you have 25% less to spend, figure it out" is fucking retarded because there are so many vested interests involved that we would wind up with, like, 3 hot-shit pilots flying the most amazingly expensive fighter jets ever, a couple of billion dollar cigarette boats cruising around the gulf, and I don't know what the fuck else. In any case, I used cuts in my initial comment as a shorthand - and I regret that I did. What I mean to say is that we need to be more efficient in how we spend our money - we need to figure out what mission we want to accomplish with whatever we're spending money on and then really REALLY look at whether or not our dollars are actually contributing to that mission.
One problem we have with many cuts is this: Things that are obviously fucking stupid and can be cut with impunity tend to be actually pretty small portions of any budget. But, yeah - cut them anyway, because it all counts. The things that are REALLY expensive, though, aren't so obvious and easy to cut, and come with trade offs.
Another problem is that so many programs are inextricably linked together, where changes in one have an effect on another. Ex: law enforcement and mental health services. Turns out, if you cut mental health service budgets, you wind up with an increase in crime - many people who are seeking health for substance abuse treatment or depression or other, more serious, issues wind up getting turned away and then committing crimes. It turns out that, when these people commit
Because that alone won't fix the problem we shouldn't do anything, gotcha.
Tax those who can afford it a bit more. Cut where we can cut without causing undue hardship. Stop spending stupid quantities of money on blowing people up (funny thing - it would have been cheaper to build every family in Iraq and Afghanistan a decent home and some infrastructure than it would have been to bomb the fuck out of them for the last 10 years, and generated more goodwill and stability over there). Spend the bomb budget instead on things that can provide a real ROI rather than a bunch of craters and "whoops, we killed a bunch of kids/wedding party" news stories that just get ignored.
Exactly. We need the people who ran and run Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers and the other banks to run the country. After all, they not only managed to make huge profits from their actions, but when the shit hit the fan they also managed to skate away completely unscathed by gaming the system.
Surely you agree - I mean, If success in business is your primary consideration (and obviously it must be since you cited it above all other concerns for a chief executive) you would have to agree.
Or, you know, maybe there's a difference between running a nation and running a business. Maybe the person running a nation should be concerned with more things than just increasing profit.
So congratulations, I guess, in so completely missing my point.
Please explain to me what is bad about more people learning enough about programming to be able to write software - even bad software - to scratch an itch. Because that's what I was talking about, which I made perfectly clear in my post.
Difficulty: do it without being a condescending asshole, if you can.
Uh, basic understanding of any given useful domain is EXTREMELY desirable for people to have.
Nobody is saying random person X should become a software engineer, just that random person X should have an easy entree into picking up some basic understanding of programming.
An IT professional doesn't need to learn enough about hair care to become a professional stylist, but they certainly need to know enough to be able to groom themselves. A police officer may not need to become a professional farmer, but it certainly couldn't hurt for them to learn the basics of plant cultivation.
As for your stupid example of "why not hire a real programer" - how much would a "real programmer" charge to come to my friend's office and write a simple "if...then" case for her Excel spreadsheet so that it color codes values based on how far they are from the median? How much would a real programmer charge to go to my dad's office and write a batch file to automate a few repetitive tasks he needs to go through every time he runs a certain legacy application? How much would a real programmer charge to go to my mom's house and make a couple of changes to a form on an Access database she's forced to use to track contacts she's had with her therapy clients?
The reason people don't "choose a real language and hire a real programmer" is because most people don't need either of those things, but it sure would be useful for them to get some basic skills.
You're suggesting that people should cultivate helplessness and dependence on other people, which seems to me to be a staggeringly shitty idea.
You say that in order to become a programmer one needs commitment and interest. How, unless there are readily accessible entrees into programming, will one find that interest in the first place, so that they may become committed to learning?
You also seem to fail to grasp the larger idea here: Not everyone could, should, or would become a software engineer (or even an entry level code monkey, or even a hobbiest), but everyone can, should, and (hopefully) would get at least some basic concepts of programming because it can help them in little ways. Programmatic logic can help in a wide range of fields - it's a very useful thing with which to have at least a basic level of familiarity.
You thinking that it being easier to start learning about programming would lead to more horrible programmers in the field is like a statistician freaking out that more people learning basic arithmetic will somehow lead to more shitty statisticians.
What's wrong with more "really bad" software being written? What's wrong with "everybody and their grandmother" thinking they can make software?
I *want* more people to have simple to use tools. I *want* more people to believe that they can write software. Why?
It exposes more people to software development (and maybe more people get passionate about it and become good). Most people I've run across who are REALLY good at this whole software development thing got their start fucking around with simple, accessible tools and no idea of how complex being a good developer actually is.
It also lets people who don't know anything about computers but do have expertise in another field come up with useful (even if poorly written) tools and create them when they don't have a budget to get a "real" developer involved. In some cases, these "smears" as you would call them have been the first steps to completely changing how an entire field does their work.
The downside you cite - that more shit software is created as a result - is frankly just a case of geek arrogance. Who gives a fuck if there's a ton more shit software out there since by and large you will NEVER have to deal with it?
As to the times you WIL have to deal with it, anyone who is skilled enough at software development to not be a hypocrite to complain about it as you just did will also be skilled enough to handle those situations where they come up.
Boss hires shitty people to work with you and you have to re-write everything they make because they suck, and is completely inflexible because that shitty coder is his gammy gam? Quit and get a new job - surely if you're some amazing software developer you won't have a problem with that since good developers are always in demand.
You have to work with a codebase that is a horrifying mass of spaghetti code? Either make the business case to re-write or replace it or accept that the tool that exists is deemed good enough. If it's untenable, again, if you're any good you can walk and work elsewhere.
Shitty amateur code will pretty much never get used in this day and age in TRULY critical applications. Yes, there are horror stories, but they are, statistically speaking, irrelevant.
Er, I meant to say, it was frustrating when I was younger to be told I could never succeed in math/science heavy fields because I have 2 X chromosomes. I guess I can be bitter that I have issues posting from my iPad.
If you're still "extremely bitter" about something that happened in school when you were a child despite your claims of success, you have some issues you need to work out. That isn't meant as an insult, but rather a suggestion - it can't be happy to be "extremely bitter" about something that turned out to be essentially irrelevant, if what you say about your achievements is true.
I was one of those girls, though in my case I've never gotten anything less than an A in a math or science course, and I am on my second career that is heavily math/science oriented. First career was in tech as a developer then manager, and once I cashed out of that I went back to school for an advanced degree and now work as a researcher applying technology and complex statistical modeling techniques in my work.
It was frustrating when I was young to be told this, but rather than get bitter about it, i took it as a challenge and I do what I can to help other girls who are interested in math and science pursue it. I suppose I could focus on the negative, as you seem to have, but that seems pretty pointless to me.
Slashdot Mirror
Increasing the general level of knowledge (awareness) about mental health issues is certainly a benefit when talking about the issue of depression in a certain subgroup.
Many people I run across in tech circles have positively medieval notions about mental illness - people who are depressed are depressed because of personal weakness/defects, etc. As a result, many will not be willing to acknowledge that they, themselves, are experiencing depression, or might think that they should just toughen up and gut it out, and eventually the consequences can be quite dire.
Making it easier to get help when you need it - without judgment and without making people jump through hoops (outreach) will also help.
Imagine how much better things could be if people stopped being ashamed over shit they had no control over and were able to easily get help to make it better? Imagine how much better things could be if you didn't have people actively mocking and dismissing even the mere suggestion that things could and should be better.
You guys are also thinking in the wrong terms - social issues don't get "solved" - they get improved. Real life is messy and complex and there isn't one true solution - it's not as simple as most engineering problems. That you guys don't seem to recognize that says more about your inability to think clearly outside of your discipline than it does about the disciplines you dismiss so easily.
Here's an example that should be near and dear to those reading this site:
Open source.
Or, do you think that somehow, magically, open source became a thing without activists helping to increase awareness of benefits (or even existence) of OS solutions and reaching out to various organizations and individuals to get them to try it?
And here are some social issues that have been greatly improved by outreach and awareness:
When I was a child, if you were physically disabled you were pretty much fucked. Want to go to school but you're in a chair and there are no ramps? Tough luck. Want to go to college but you can't hear the lectures or can't see the blackboard? Tough luck. Want a job but your potential boss is creeped out by your withered hand and refuses to hire you? Tough luck. Today? Substantially better. Activists educating the public and reaching out to those who can change things helped make it something worth remedying because clearly based on the status quo before, most able bodied people didn't give a shit.
When my mother was a child, it was perfectly legal to discriminate against people of color, and the right to do so was in fact enshrined into law in many states. Today? Much better. Largely because of activists reaching out to educate people who were in a position to do something about it but previously hadn't felt it was important enough to do.
When my grandmother was a child, women were essentially the property of their husbands and had very few legally guaranteed rights, and mostly unable to vote. Today? Much better. Again: activists, awareness and outreach, and people in power being forced to acknowledge that it was something worth doing.
If you really can't think of things that activism has helped and you really are dismissing social workers because they haven't "solved" problems, you really, REALLY need to pull your head out of your ass. So, too, do the people who called you insightful.
I'm violating my statement I wouldn't come back but:
You said Lucasarts was worried about having same sex relationships in the game because of previous controversy and that they had to protect their profits, correct?
Who, other than homophobes/bigots would raise a stink over gay relationships being available in a game to the point where it would hurt profits from reduced sales?
Tell me. Please. Explain how someone raising controversy because gay relationships are treated the same as straight relationships in the game isn't a homophobe or a bigot. Explain to me how not putting gay relationships into the game at the start - was not catering to the homophobes and bigots initially, and had nothing to do with not upsetting the delicate sensibilities of homophobes and bigots.
You said they were worried about protecting their profits for controversy, so back it up and show how that has nothing to do with catering to bigots and homophobes in this case, when the only people who would cost them money in lost sales would be the homophobes, and the only increased costs in production could have been avoided by simply reducing the number of straight relationship options to get a couple of gay ones in.
Difficulty: if you mention moral/religious objections you then also need to make sure the moral code you're citing doesn't allow gayness to be ok but has nary a problem with constant mass murder and torture.
Bonus: explain how gay relationships only being available behind a paywall while straight ones are in by default, or how there are no gay options for companion NPCs is somehow equal and should be gratefully accepted.
This ought to be good.
Also, on a side note: you've been making a lot of personal assumptions about me and you've also now accused me of lying. I've been paying you the courtesy of at least assuming you are honest in your opinions, even if I disagree with them. I'm going to change that assumption now - I don't think you're arguing in good faith, I think you're just spoiling for a fight and not willing to listen openly to arguments from other points of view, and I think you do have an agenda other than what you're claiming. I'm in this argument because it involves the decent treatment of people - you are involved because someone said something you don't like about a corporation. There is no way a reasonable person without an agenda would be so invested in defending a corporation - so you're either unreasonable or dishonest,
I'm at least honest enough to wonder why I bothered engaging with you past the first reply, but fortunately that's something I can remedy.
Let me try one last time:
Lucasarts and Bioware chose to CATER TO HOMOPHOBES/BIGOTS rather than implement same-sex relationships in their game.
When it became clear that they wouldn't profit by CATERING TO HOMOPHOBES/BIGOTS they then implemented a lesser version of relationships for players interested in same-sex relationships.
Some people are saying that Bioware and Lucasarts are wrong because they are doing this half-assed implementation that is half-assed because BIOWARE AND LUCASARTS CHOSE TO CATER TO HOMOPHOBES/BIGOTS and designed their game in a way that reflects that choice.
You, on the other hand, are now saying that these people who are upset at Bioware and Lucasarts because of their ORIGINAL DECISION TO CATER TO HOMOPHOBES/BIGOTS are wrong because Bioware and Lucasarts decided to belatedly pull their heads out of their asses and offer same-sex relationships as a fucking marketing point for an expansion to their vastly underperforming game. You seem genuinely mystified that people aren't just saying "YIPPEE!!! There is absolutely nothing cynical about them including this feature as a big bullet point on the package and they certainly will not ever CATER TO HOMOPHOBES/BIGOTS LIKE THEY DID INITIALLY and we should be happy that we get this little bit that obviously reflects their choice to CATER TO HOMOPHOBES/BIGOTS!"
I bolded the important part because maybe it just needs to be louder and bigger to sink in.
I'm done here.
You are missing my point. I will make it simple:
Bioware chose to Implement relationships in the game in a way that clearly did not value inclusivity - they could have written the relationship lines of dialogue to be gender neutral, they could have had the actors record an extra line when the line was gendered, etc. they obviously have a flag for determining what conversation options are available for a given NPC based on player gender, so it should have been relatively easy to plug in those other lines.
But, they obviously - because they are choosing to implement the same-sex relationships now in a very awkward way - did not consider same-sex options important during design.
They do not get to come back and say "before we prioritized profits over people, but now that we realized it doesn't matter, we are going to do the right thing" and then pretend like they're good people.
Moreover, other people don't have the right, when someone else points this out, to basically accuse the people who had been disregarded before,of whining or telling them they should be grateful they at least got something. Well, I mean, they have the right to, but it just makes you look silly.
As to your final point - that Bioware is including all players. Yep, they sure are, except that because of their choices and biases going in, not all players are being included equally, but people are now saying to those players who were obviously an afterthought, that they should be grateful and any complaints are just whining. You don't think there's something just a little off about that? I know I do.
I actually understand the mechanics, but I'm getting at the laughably tone deaf way this is handled when I talk about the way the new stuff is being implemented.
And, again, it actually IS regressive the way this is handled, even if Bioware isn't solely responsible for how things were implemented.
Anyway, the issue here is that gay folk are being treated like second class people and using this as an example of how, but everyone's just so eager to tell them to stop whining about it that they're missing the reason it happened in the first place and why these folks might be upset about it.
If you're going to have relationships in the game and you're also going to claim that you are inclusive, it's a big sign that you aren't very inclusive when you wind up having to retrofit that inclusion after the fact AND you designed your systems so badly that the only way you can add inclusion later indicates it was never actually a consideration. Bioware and Lucasarts (and a lot of people here on Slashdot) are pretending like its the people who have been excluded who are in the wrong here, not the people being exclusionary. It's adding insult to injury.
And the problem here is that your entire argument basically sums up why gay folks are bothered by this in the first place:
They weren't included at the beginning because of concerns about profit, but then when people decided that not being discriminatory (or, to be kind, pretending gay folks don't exist) wouldn't cost them money, THEN they decided to relent and give those gay people their VERY OWN PLANET where they can be as gay as they want (but only there for now - if you want to go anywhere else you have to stop acting gay). Oh, and if you complain that this is kind of not a very good way of handling things, well, you're just being a whiny gay and GEEZE why can't you people ever just be grateful? (Not you saying this, but many people in the comments here are being exactly like that).
Gay stuff wasn't included originally based on a business decision. The fact that it was a business decision doesn't somehow abrogate the parties who made that decision from being discriminatory dickheads ESPECIALLY when they were making that decision and using the name of a company that had previously been decent about implementing gay stuff in their games.
Now they're implementing gay stuff in the game, but because of their original (stupid) decision not to, it's really hard to retrofit it to the whole game, so instead they're making a little gay ghetto planet and acting like people should be just thrilled with how progressive they are, without realizing just how horribly tone-deaf that implementation is.
It's craven and condescending. They were more concerned with profits than people before, and then when they realized profits weren't going to be hurt (because the game is not doing well), they gave in and are now trying to hold themselves up as bastions of progress and tolerance, and they have people like you coming in here to say "Geepers, they were just trying to protect their investment, but once they realized that they could treat gay people like, well, people, they relented, it's ever so reasonable!" and making excuses for them.
I would have respected them more had they simply said "We don't think it's worth catering to gay people in this regard and need to protect our profits" and left it at that. At least it would have been honest.
One of the heterosexual relationship options in the game for male Sith Warriors is the ability to take and torture a woman with a shock collar. Eventually you can more or less break her to the point where, if you marry her, she will joke about haha, remember when you used to torture me by shocking the shit out of me while I wore that shock collar, well, let me go get it so we can get frisky...
You can also commit (gleefully) mass murder, psychological torture on families by killing their loved ones and then rubbing it in their faces, blackmail for profit, and a whole host of other unsavory activities that you are rewarded for.
I guess what I'm saying is that any parent who is worried Little Timmy might get the offer to sit on Darth Fabulous's Meat Saber should *probably* not let their kid play this game in the first place, and definitely shouldn't be catered to when they express their preferences for what should/shouldn't be included in a video game for their kid.
I played it only for a few months, but I remember being struck by just how particularly bloodless and neuter the "romantic" dialogue was - I assumed it was written that way to facilitate more diverse relationships if people wanted to go down those paths. I don't recall much in the way of gendering in the language etc. Honestly, they could probably just disable the gender check in relationship options and other than a few possibly awkward lines it wouldn't be any worse than it already is.
Then again, my observation might be entirely based on the fact that I was an absolutely terrifying, psychotically evil Dark Side Sith chick and my relationship option was Quinn, who really, he's NOT gay, you're *sure* Bioware?
Nah, you're missing the point:
In previous Bioware games they allowed people to have same-sex relationships by default. In this latest Bioware game, they did not allow people to have same-sex relationships by default, and are only bolting it on in a clumsy fashion after the fact.
It's literally regressive in that this newest game by Bioware handles same-sex relationships less well than previous Bioware games. It's a step backwards for Bioware, even if it's a step forward compared to some other game makers.
Imagine the complaints if you took any $franchise and removed $feature that said $franchise was known for. People would rightly call it a step back.
As I said elsewhere, I find relationships in RPGs to be almost always poorly executed and pointless because they're not handled well, but as a gamer I can certainly see how people who come to a publisher expecting that publisher to deliver on something they usually deliver would be bothered when they don't get what they expected.
The "regressive" statement pretty clearly refers to the difference between Mass Effect, where gay relationships were included right away and this later game by the same company where gay relationships were not included right away and are only being bolted on afterwards. It is literally regression in that it is a step (or multiple steps) backward in how Bioware handles diversity of relationships in their games. It's a perfectly valid term to use in a valid complaint from the segment of people who care about how relationships are implemented in RPGs.
Personally I don't care about the relationships in RPGs since 99/100 times they're just poorly executed theater used by sub-par writers as a shortcut to get the player to care about an NPC, but I can understand that people who like Bioware games and who liked the diversity offered in earlier games would be bothered that Bioware did a worse job of implementing diversity of relationships in their latest game.
It's not "whining" any more than it would be "whining" if a maker of any other kind of game where they were known for certain features in their games were to suddenly scale back that feature.
Very cool - you should definitely give it a shot!
I wonder how you're approaching the idea of exceptions with people if they're getting upset when you explain exceptions to them. I've worked in multiple different businesses and environments ranging from extremely corporate to extremely casual and have literally never experienced someone causing me of trying to detail their idea when I ask them to help me figure out potential weak spots in an implementation and how to address them.
Maybe it's just that I make it clear that, if we're pursuing the idea at all it must be a good one, and figuring out failure modes just means we are going to make sure it's as bullet-proof as possible? Seriously, exceptions exist EVERYWHERE in every different type of environment - I mean, I've had people start giving me laundry lists of exceptions and ways they get handled in things ranging from cars (fuel gets cut off in a crash etc) to cooking (you're missing an ingredient, replace it or change plans) to, well, everything.
I'm not saying you're coming off like a jerk to those people who get upset, but it just seems like such an absolutely bizarre experience, since in almost 20 years of professional life in a wide range of environments I've never had that experience. Ether I'm just a ridiculously lucky person, you're an unlucky one, or something else is afoot.
Oh, I absolutely agree that it would be impossible (and not desirable) to have everyone attempt to master every field. I think I took your "should a policeman learn to grow a potato" types of examples as an argument in favor of hyperspecialization. On the other hand, I'm having a hard time understanding how anyone would take "we need to make the basic tools more approachable for the novice" to lead iany way to "we want to make everyone a software engineer" - it seems strange anyone would throw that out since nobody was suggesting that.
And, to be honest, this is kind of a hot button for me - I love programming, I love the feeling I get when I've taken some problem, large or small, and developed a tool to address it. I want to share that feeling and that capability with other people (because of this I volunteer teaching computer skills - including programming - to largely undereducated adults) so it tweaks me when I see people seemingly down on the idea of making it easier for people to get started. I know that it is extremely unlikely any of my students will ever become professional developers, but that isn't really the point - the point is helping them get started when they didn't know how to.
Not that you were down on it - just so many in this story have been, so I got into it with you.
I don't disagree with the idea that the casual scripter doesn't take exceptions into account (or even, unfortunately, many "professional" developers) - they either trust that the user won't screw up on accident or intentionally or they don't think of the cases where something else might go wrong etc.
But, I think it's actually not THAT hard to teach the concept and necessity of handling exceptions. I volunteer teaching adults programming classes, and exceptions and exception handling is integrated into every lesson - in fact, the first lesson ('How to think like a computer") wherein I have my students write a recipe to make an omelette, spends most of the time with them figuring out exceptions, classifying them from fatal to recoverable to annoying but ultimately able to be ignored, etc. My students have always taken to it easily - people get the concept of shit not working right and breaking in weird ways.
On your other point - that people working in less safe domains with limited knowledge - what makes programming so special, when that is true of literally any other technology I can think of? An untrained person with very little experience working on something important in any field can cause very serious problems, and yet society goes on. We have ways of handling the exceptions that come up from people with limited skills breaking things (safety measures, liability, common sense - "No, Bob, I don't care if you read about it on the Interwebs, I'm not going to let you use your ShopVac to perform liposuction on me!" and so on).
I'm not talking about "letting people off the reservation" so that they can do whatever the hell they want to anything anywhere. Just as I wouldn't let my idiot brother work on the electrical wiring in my home or work on my car or my plumbing, I wouldn't let any random yahoo touch any other system that I believed important. Nor would I buy a product or use a solution for anything that I needed to rely on from just anyone cause they kinda sorta have a version that might work sometimes. Personal responsibility comes into play in a huge way.
Sometimes people even find ways to break other people's shit when they didn't get permission - something they did with a technology they barely understood or didn't fully appreciate winds up causing someone else harm. Some years ago the apartment building next door burnt down because one of the residents didn't know to clean the lint filter in his dryer. Should we then complain that the barrier to entry to doing laundry is too low because an idiot can burn down a building in a worst case scenario? I know someone who died from salmonella poisoning they got from having under-cooked chicken at a dinner party. Do we need to require that someone who wishes to turn on their stove only be able to do so after being retina scanned and confirmed to have basic food safety knowledge?
My point here is that people misuse potentially dangerous technology all the time, yet society goes on, and programming is no different. More people having a basic understanding of it - making it easier for people to learn that computers are not just some magic box that shows them porn - is actually a really good thing BECAUSE of the concerns people here are having. First, it will mean that more people will know enough to make a more informed decision when letting someone else make software for them, which will help filter out the idiots. Second, it will mean that society will find ways to adapt to all those bad things that shitty software can do.
Personally, I think the arguments against it reek of the same kind of nerd arrogance that fueled arguments way back when regular people first started getting online - they'll break things because they're stupid, they'll make it worse for us, blah blah blah. And yep a lot of bad shit happened - but we got over it, adapted, and now have more robust systems in place. And, even better - all those people who are just "regular" (read: not CS/Engineering students) folks wound up making the Internet a lot more interestin
As I said in both my original post and the follow-up to your reply, I am not talking about people joining the profession but rather people developing a simple basic level of understanding of programmatic concepts.
That you cannot get this through your head despite my saying it clearly two times, means you are not worth talking to; either you aren't capable of comprehending what you read or you are intentionally ignoring what I'm saying.
Well, the first problem I see is the thinking in terms of "sides" - that encourages bullshit grandstanding and that whole rah rah we can't ever say we were wrong about anything because then THE OTHER SIDE wins. It makes us all stupider as a result - we can't ask questions without the other side thinking we're trying to trap them or saying that we're ignorant, we can't admit fault because HOLY SHITBALLS we were wrong about one thing and therefore we must be wrong about EVERYTHING EVER and all that nonsense. Fuck that noise, it's stupid, and we can do better - and I expect people to be better than that.
The good news is that if we're smart we can do small changes that will gently push us onto the right track. The bad news is that we have people who are too fucking stupid to understand any of this, and many of those people are in positions of power. Anyway.
We have 2 parts to this: Raising Revenue and Cutting Spending.
Raising revenue is, by and large, pretty easy: Raise taxes a couple of points, more on people who can afford it, less on those who can't afford it, putting more money in the hands of the people who will most likely spend the money they aren't paying in taxes. I'm not talking about soaking the rich or anything of the sort - a few points, that's it. Also raise revenue for social security by removing the income cap, but still keeping a cap on maximum benefit payout. I know, it's not "fair" to the people who make millions of dollars a year but who will only receive benefits as if they made a hundred k a year or so, but somehow I think they'll be just fine. And no, as long as we don't get stupid ("OMG LOL LETS JUST TAKE EVERYTHING THEY HAVE!!!!!") there won't be some massive "Gone Galt" extravaganza - by and large, living in the US is pretty fucking amazing compared to many other places in the world, and even with higher taxes, living in the US and being rich is HUGELY FUCKING AMAZING compared to many other places in the world. You'll still be able to live the lifestyle you want, and even better you can do so with a slightly lowered risk of being executed by a mob of armed peasants with nothing left to lose. It's a win-win!
But for cuts:
I'm hugely in favor of cutting the fuck out of spending on social programs and defense but we have to do it INTELLIGENTLY. Simply saying "hey, welfare, you have 25% less money to spend, figure it out" is fucking retarded because it winds up being done in the most brutal way - reducing services or cutting some people in need off of services. Simply saying "Hey, DOD, you have 25% less to spend, figure it out" is fucking retarded because there are so many vested interests involved that we would wind up with, like, 3 hot-shit pilots flying the most amazingly expensive fighter jets ever, a couple of billion dollar cigarette boats cruising around the gulf, and I don't know what the fuck else. In any case, I used cuts in my initial comment as a shorthand - and I regret that I did. What I mean to say is that we need to be more efficient in how we spend our money - we need to figure out what mission we want to accomplish with whatever we're spending money on and then really REALLY look at whether or not our dollars are actually contributing to that mission.
One problem we have with many cuts is this: Things that are obviously fucking stupid and can be cut with impunity tend to be actually pretty small portions of any budget. But, yeah - cut them anyway, because it all counts. The things that are REALLY expensive, though, aren't so obvious and easy to cut, and come with trade offs.
Another problem is that so many programs are inextricably linked together, where changes in one have an effect on another. Ex: law enforcement and mental health services. Turns out, if you cut mental health service budgets, you wind up with an increase in crime - many people who are seeking health for substance abuse treatment or depression or other, more serious, issues wind up getting turned away and then committing crimes. It turns out that, when these people commit
Because that alone won't fix the problem we shouldn't do anything, gotcha.
Tax those who can afford it a bit more. Cut where we can cut without causing undue hardship. Stop spending stupid quantities of money on blowing people up (funny thing - it would have been cheaper to build every family in Iraq and Afghanistan a decent home and some infrastructure than it would have been to bomb the fuck out of them for the last 10 years, and generated more goodwill and stability over there). Spend the bomb budget instead on things that can provide a real ROI rather than a bunch of craters and "whoops, we killed a bunch of kids/wedding party" news stories that just get ignored.
I bet if we
Exactly. We need the people who ran and run Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers and the other banks to run the country. After all, they not only managed to make huge profits from their actions, but when the shit hit the fan they also managed to skate away completely unscathed by gaming the system.
Surely you agree - I mean, If success in business is your primary consideration (and obviously it must be since you cited it above all other concerns for a chief executive) you would have to agree.
Or, you know, maybe there's a difference between running a nation and running a business. Maybe the person running a nation should be concerned with more things than just increasing profit.
Naaaaah, that's just crazy.
So congratulations, I guess, in so completely missing my point.
Please explain to me what is bad about more people learning enough about programming to be able to write software - even bad software - to scratch an itch. Because that's what I was talking about, which I made perfectly clear in my post.
Difficulty: do it without being a condescending asshole, if you can.
Uh, basic understanding of any given useful domain is EXTREMELY desirable for people to have.
Nobody is saying random person X should become a software engineer, just that random person X should have an easy entree into picking up some basic understanding of programming.
An IT professional doesn't need to learn enough about hair care to become a professional stylist, but they certainly need to know enough to be able to groom themselves. A police officer may not need to become a professional farmer, but it certainly couldn't hurt for them to learn the basics of plant cultivation.
As for your stupid example of "why not hire a real programer" - how much would a "real programmer" charge to come to my friend's office and write a simple "if...then" case for her Excel spreadsheet so that it color codes values based on how far they are from the median? How much would a real programmer charge to go to my dad's office and write a batch file to automate a few repetitive tasks he needs to go through every time he runs a certain legacy application? How much would a real programmer charge to go to my mom's house and make a couple of changes to a form on an Access database she's forced to use to track contacts she's had with her therapy clients?
The reason people don't "choose a real language and hire a real programmer" is because most people don't need either of those things, but it sure would be useful for them to get some basic skills.
You're suggesting that people should cultivate helplessness and dependence on other people, which seems to me to be a staggeringly shitty idea.
Your argument does not make sense.
You say that in order to become a programmer one needs commitment and interest. How, unless there are readily accessible entrees into programming, will one find that interest in the first place, so that they may become committed to learning?
You also seem to fail to grasp the larger idea here: Not everyone could, should, or would become a software engineer (or even an entry level code monkey, or even a hobbiest), but everyone can, should, and (hopefully) would get at least some basic concepts of programming because it can help them in little ways. Programmatic logic can help in a wide range of fields - it's a very useful thing with which to have at least a basic level of familiarity.
You thinking that it being easier to start learning about programming would lead to more horrible programmers in the field is like a statistician freaking out that more people learning basic arithmetic will somehow lead to more shitty statisticians.
What's wrong with more "really bad" software being written? What's wrong with "everybody and their grandmother" thinking they can make software?
I *want* more people to have simple to use tools. I *want* more people to believe that they can write software. Why?
It exposes more people to software development (and maybe more people get passionate about it and become good). Most people I've run across who are REALLY good at this whole software development thing got their start fucking around with simple, accessible tools and no idea of how complex being a good developer actually is.
It also lets people who don't know anything about computers but do have expertise in another field come up with useful (even if poorly written) tools and create them when they don't have a budget to get a "real" developer involved. In some cases, these "smears" as you would call them have been the first steps to completely changing how an entire field does their work.
The downside you cite - that more shit software is created as a result - is frankly just a case of geek arrogance. Who gives a fuck if there's a ton more shit software out there since by and large you will NEVER have to deal with it?
As to the times you WIL have to deal with it, anyone who is skilled enough at software development to not be a hypocrite to complain about it as you just did will also be skilled enough to handle those situations where they come up.
Boss hires shitty people to work with you and you have to re-write everything they make because they suck, and is completely inflexible because that shitty coder is his gammy gam? Quit and get a new job - surely if you're some amazing software developer you won't have a problem with that since good developers are always in demand.
You have to work with a codebase that is a horrifying mass of spaghetti code? Either make the business case to re-write or replace it or accept that the tool that exists is deemed good enough. If it's untenable, again, if you're any good you can walk and work elsewhere.
Shitty amateur code will pretty much never get used in this day and age in TRULY critical applications. Yes, there are horror stories, but they are, statistically speaking, irrelevant.
Er, I meant to say, it was frustrating when I was younger to be told I could never succeed in math/science heavy fields because I have 2 X chromosomes. I guess I can be bitter that I have issues posting from my iPad.
If you're still "extremely bitter" about something that happened in school when you were a child despite your claims of success, you have some issues you need to work out. That isn't meant as an insult, but rather a suggestion - it can't be happy to be "extremely bitter" about something that turned out to be essentially irrelevant, if what you say about your achievements is true.
I was one of those girls, though in my case I've never gotten anything less than an A in a math or science course, and I am on my second career that is heavily math/science oriented. First career was in tech as a developer then manager, and once I cashed out of that I went back to school for an advanced degree and now work as a researcher applying technology and complex statistical modeling techniques in my work.
It was frustrating when I was young to be told this, but rather than get bitter about it, i took it as a challenge and I do what I can to help other girls who are interested in math and science pursue it. I suppose I could focus on the negative, as you seem to have, but that seems pretty pointless to me.