Re: Mark Shuttleworth's keynote at LinuxCon
I retired last year from 40 years of programming.
One of the first things I learned was that the concept of programming was invented by a woman, who wrote under the name of "George Sanders", IIRC, because women, at the time, "weren't capable of high intellectual thoughts". Another thing I learned was that the term "debugging" was used by Commodore Grace, who invented COBOL, when she removed a bug from the guts of a vacuum tube computer after it electrocuted itself shorting out a heater filament. COBOL is STILL in use.
And, in 40 years of programming, I've worked with men and women who could code circles around me, and with some who couldn't think their way out of a wet paper sack. The gender of the programmer is immaterial in the operation of the code, And, in all that time, I NEVER found any genitalia in any code. Firing an incompetent male programmer was easy. Firing an incompetent female programmer was fraught with political danger because some attempted to play the gender card and claim sexism. The WORST "coder" I ever had the misfortune to work with was a woman who LIED on her resume about her coding experience, in fact, even about her computer experience. She didn't know the difference between Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer, but she drove to work a black Mercedes because she sued her previous employer for discrimination after he fired her for incompetence.
Why was she hired? You can check the references of male applicants and give them coding tests. In many environments you can do neither with female applicants, unless you want to risk charges of discrimination or sexism. The reason is simple. In a court of law one is usually presumed innocence unless convicted by a jury of their peers who saw evidence which withstood rebuttal. In the court of PC one is guilty until proven innocent, and even then it doesn't seem to matter, because evidence doesn't have to be rebutted or vetted, merely posited.
If you give me enough writings from any person I can, with the standards being used today to "prove" sexism, "prove" anyone guilty of sexism. Even women! A word here, a phrase there, pretty soon it can "add up to damning evidence".
The problem is the standard: As one person explained it to me, "sexism is what ever the offended party says it is". From my POV, that's just another way of describing a kangaroo court. It seems strange to me that after CENTURIES of being treated as and considered to be nothing more than chattel property, and having achieved equality, some women now want to employ the same system that was used against them to tilt the field yet again.
My view is this: everyone is equal in rights and responsibilities, regardless of gender, race or religion. HOWEVER, it cannot be denied that not all people are equal in talent. Gender, race or religion should NEVER be used to favour or disfavour talent.
IOW, Show me the code. If it works better than the existing code it will replace the existing code. Otherwise, it won't.
I retired last year from 40 years of programming.
One of the first things I learned was that the concept of programming was invented by a woman, who wrote under the name of "George Sanders", IIRC, because women, at the time, "weren't capable of high intellectual thoughts". Another thing I learned was that the term "debugging" was used by Commodore Grace, who invented COBOL, when she removed a bug from the guts of a vacuum tube computer after it electrocuted itself shorting out a heater filament. COBOL is STILL in use.
And, in 40 years of programming, I've worked with men and women who could code circles around me, and with some who couldn't think their way out of a wet paper sack. The gender of the programmer is immaterial in the operation of the code, And, in all that time, I NEVER found any genitalia in any code. Firing an incompetent male programmer was easy. Firing an incompetent female programmer was fraught with political danger because some attempted to play the gender card and claim sexism. The WORST "coder" I ever had the misfortune to work with was a woman who LIED on her resume about her coding experience, in fact, even about her computer experience. She didn't know the difference between Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer, but she drove to work a black Mercedes because she sued her previous employer for discrimination after he fired her for incompetence.
Why was she hired? You can check the references of male applicants and give them coding tests. In many environments you can do neither with female applicants, unless you want to risk charges of discrimination or sexism. The reason is simple. In a court of law one is usually presumed innocence unless convicted by a jury of their peers who saw evidence which withstood rebuttal. In the court of PC one is guilty until proven innocent, and even then it doesn't seem to matter, because evidence doesn't have to be rebutted or vetted, merely posited.
If you give me enough writings from any person I can, with the standards being used today to "prove" sexism, "prove" anyone guilty of sexism. Even women! A word here, a phrase there, pretty soon it can "add up to damning evidence".
The problem is the standard: As one person explained it to me, "sexism is what ever the offended party says it is". From my POV, that's just another way of describing a kangaroo court. It seems strange to me that after CENTURIES of being treated as and considered to be nothing more than chattel property, and having achieved equality, some women now want to employ the same system that was used against them to tilt the field yet again.
My view is this: everyone is equal in rights and responsibilities, regardless of gender, race or religion. HOWEVER, it cannot be denied that not all people are equal in talent. Gender, race or religion should NEVER be used to favour or disfavour talent.
IOW, Show me the code. If it works better than the existing code it will replace the existing code. Otherwise, it won't.
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