![]() I've never worked with any developer that fitted in the cowboy category, while most did their best to fit in the 'good developer' category. Talk about her prejudices showing in conjuring up that straw man. 'good developer' is completely ridiculous. Let me first say that you are right that her comparison of 'cowboy' vs. The software world looks less like a meritocracy, and more like a cushy office job that beats working at Wendy's. Lore abounds of programmers with intimidating resumes who turn out to have problems with basic datastructures. ![]() Most apparently have a hard time solving basic programming tasks (a common complaint here). In fact, it is strange to consider men good at even just the technical aspects of programming. (Not most of us, at least.) The reality is more like Office Space. We are not troglodytes who shuffle into the office at night to partake in an ancient ritual of becoming one with the Platonic forms. Do they keep people like Shakespeare from being considered great writers, though women are said to have stronger verbal ability?Īnyone reading Hacker News knows how important communication, teamwork and the human elements are, in real-world software development. Whatever cognitive differences there are between the sexes, I think they're very minor. Unlike her, I don't see the deep focus and solitude of programming as a bad thing at all-even if it does keep out women.ĮDIT HISTORY: Added "There are good arguments to be made for reverse discrimination." sentence.Īctually, a better analogy would be African-Americans getting extra scholarships, to compensate for the relative lack of wealth their families accumulated. Incidentally, I think the reason for the gender gap is something she pointed out in all of this-women are less likely than men to engage in deeply focused solitary activities. good-developer differences, involving things like "working in teams" and "understanding human elements" and "respecting people" (which are implicitly feminine traits, according to the OP, unlike the focused solitude that "code-cowboys" employ.) This is triply problematic-she dismisses out of hand the idea that men are better than women at abstract reasoning and such, but implicitly argues that the qualities of "good developers" are feminine and the qualities of "code cowboys" are both bad for development and masculine.Īfter all this, she complains that her talents were viewed as better suited to management, when all that supposedly-feminine stuff like teamwork and respecting people are important parts of management. I believe it is these tangential code-cowboy qualities women are unable or unwilling to emulate, and not their skill or capacity for abstraction, problem solving, creative thinking, or communication - All of which actually make them better developers. I believe CS and Web Development currently select for certain masculine qualities that are largely unrelated to someone’s prowess as a coder. Can't you say that about any form of discrimination? "So what if all the nice houses and neighborhoods and schools and drinking fountains and restrooms and universities are all restricted to white people? Can't you be happy for them? Why rain on someone else's parade?" There are good arguments to be made for reverse discrimination, but "can't you be happy for someone else?" isn't one of them. Why not be happy for the female students? Why rain on someone else’s parade? Something good happening to someone else seems to disgust fringley. ![]() On someone's complaint about Google setting up a special grant program for women, OP writes:
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