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Hi there. I use the site pretty religiously. I hope that my comments are insightful. I know a few girl hackers. They do mention a lot of what might be called '

Hi there. I use the site pretty religiously. I hope that my comments are insightful. I know a few girl hackers. They do mention a lot of what might be called 'social friction'. In some cases, they stay around through undergrad because computers are a really magical, flexible medium. The good news is that we like a lot of hackers and scientists and technical people. They're interesting. Other fields have their human debris, too. Lawyers have frat-boys. Lit-majors have bullshitters. But rarely do other fields have people getting together to make things, and that's just a lot of fun. :-)

pchristensen 19y ago
Gentlemen, we have our first lady to speak up! Let's take a sample and see if the "insightful comments" thing holds up: "I read somewhere that the blockbuster title 'Gears of War' had only about half a million lines of C++ code" "We're starting a startup in computer vision. We're deploying across the web, but that's just because it's the cheapest distribution mechanism." "I asked: in principle, if these black-boxes handled all the trades, where would the decision to trade or not come from." "I asked if it was moral to play such a risky game with the economy." "my most productive periods (in the sense of producing something) have all involved some kind of death march" "The concept of sending electricity wirelessly has been imagined, but nobody had come up with a decent way to avoid the losses except by using an actively controlled beam method." All of these were in the last 3 weeks. I'd say they definitely qualify as insightful. Glad to have you, DaniFong.
amichail 19y ago
I have a lot of respect for women who like the idea of building novel applications but don't want to get their hands dirty with the programming/computer science involved. This is kind of like architects who want to design buildings but would rather leave implementation details to engineers. That's the way it should be.
- DaniFong 19y ago
  Well, that's the way it often is. But I hesitate to agree that it's the way it should be. I try not to shy away from implementation myself, and I think there's a lot of benefit to exposing oneself to details. To quote PG: "In principle you could make any mark in any medium; in practice the medium steers you. And if you're no longer doing the work yourself, you stop learning from this." I speak for myself, but this true almost everywhere. Small changes in the resistance of medium, and in the convenience of doing one thing or another, often lead to drastic differences in the sort of things people create. I heard that someone actually managed to play 'Flight of the Bumblebee' on Trombone. I'm not sure I can impress upon you how difficult that sounds -- there are like 5 notes per second, each requiring precise intonation, and it never lets up long enough for the poor soul playing it to breath. Apparently, it can be done. But I'm almost certain nothing of the sort would have been composed on it. Programs are often the same way. Sometimes, the idea doesn't occur to you until you understand how to implement it. Or, as the case may be, until you actually implement it. I read that Scheme was in part an attempt to implement an Actor model. When they implemented lexical closures and actors, they discovered that the implementations were the same!
  - amichail 19y ago
    If the medium steers you, then that's not a good thing and you need to fix the situation. For example, if writing by pen tends to force you to write a novel in a particular way that is undesirable, then fix the situation (e.g., use a word processor). As a creative individual, you should be the one calling the shots.
    - DaniFong 19y ago
      Sometimes, while 'creating', it's less like trying to cast my visions onto some medium and more like an exploration. Sometimes it's more fruitful just to let myself be guided by my impulses, my abilities, and the medium. I don't know if it works for everyone, but it works for me. One might worry that I'm being commanded by the medium, but what I make seems to be original, anyway. I actually prefer writing by pen. It's more fluid. And since things can't be easily rewritten, you give a bit of thought before you commit something, and are always driven forward. Knuth et al. notes, in an article on technical writing (http://tex.loria.fr/typographie/mathwriting.pdf http://tex.loria.fr/typographie/mathwriting.pdf): "Towards the end of the editing process you will need to ensure that you don't have a page break in the middle of a displayed formula. Often you'll simply have to think up something else to say to fill up the page, thus pushing the displayed formula entirely onto the next page. Try to think of this as a stimulus to research!" A pen sometimes functions in the same way. And if I find it's results undesirable, then I'll try not to think of it as a problem to fix, and rather as looking for a new medium to explore.
- icky 19y ago
  > I have a lot of respect for women who like the idea of building novel applications but don't want to get their hands dirty with the programming/computer science involved. It seems to me that you were making an assumption that didn't fit the parent poster's actual circumstances. (Not entirely fair, since I have the benefit of hindsight and having read her reply. ;-) I have a lot of respect for people, regardless of gender, who actually know how to do things, so perhaps my bias is showing. (Don't worry: the "big picture" ideas guy, and the fluff-spinning Ph.D. who can't code to save his life, both earn an equal share of contempt. Partly because they're basically the same person. :) But I really couldn't bring myself kowtow to either of them even if they happened to be female, which, frankly, is partly why reading your post leaves me feeling a bit repulsed. (Sorry, I know this sounds awful, but I can't think of a gentler way to accurately phrase it). > This is kind of like architects who want to design buildings but would rather leave implementation details to engineers. > That's the way it should be. All the really interesting architecture of recent decades has been done by architects who could think like artists and engineers. Your ideal architect reminds me of the stupid king in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, who disregards the "implementation details" and builds his castle on a swamp. Definitely not the way it should be.
  - amichail 19y ago
    > It seems to me that you were making an assumption that didn't fit the parent poster's actual circumstances. I wasn't referring to the poster's circumstances. > All the really interesting architecture of recent decades has been done by architects who could think like artists and engineers. Do you have a reference?
    - icky 19y ago
      > Do you have a reference? Sure: tautological by my definition of "really interesting" ;-)

pchristensen 19y ago

Gentlemen, we have our first lady to speak up! Let's take a sample and see if the "insightful comments" thing holds up: "I read somewhere that the blockbuster title 'Gears of War' had only about half a million lines of C++ code" "We're starting a startup in computer vision. We're deploying across the web, but that's just because it's the cheapest distribution mechanism." "I asked: in principle, if these black-boxes handled all the trades, where would the decision to trade or not come from." "I asked if it was moral to play such a risky game with the economy." "my most productive periods (in the sense of producing something) have all involved some kind of death march" "The concept of sending electricity wirelessly has been imagined, but nobody had come up with a decent way to avoid the losses except by using an actively controlled beam method." All of these were in the last 3 weeks. I'd say they definitely qualify as insightful. Glad to have you, DaniFong.

amichail 19y ago

I have a lot of respect for women who like the idea of building novel applications but don't want to get their hands dirty with the programming/computer science involved. This is kind of like architects who want to design buildings but would rather leave implementation details to engineers. That's the way it should be.

DaniFong 19y ago
Well, that's the way it often is. But I hesitate to agree that it's the way it should be. I try not to shy away from implementation myself, and I think there's a lot of benefit to exposing oneself to details. To quote PG: "In principle you could make any mark in any medium; in practice the medium steers you. And if you're no longer doing the work yourself, you stop learning from this." I speak for myself, but this true almost everywhere. Small changes in the resistance of medium, and in the convenience of doing one thing or another, often lead to drastic differences in the sort of things people create. I heard that someone actually managed to play 'Flight of the Bumblebee' on Trombone. I'm not sure I can impress upon you how difficult that sounds -- there are like 5 notes per second, each requiring precise intonation, and it never lets up long enough for the poor soul playing it to breath. Apparently, it can be done. But I'm almost certain nothing of the sort would have been composed on it. Programs are often the same way. Sometimes, the idea doesn't occur to you until you understand how to implement it. Or, as the case may be, until you actually implement it. I read that Scheme was in part an attempt to implement an Actor model. When they implemented lexical closures and actors, they discovered that the implementations were the same!
- amichail 19y ago
  If the medium steers you, then that's not a good thing and you need to fix the situation. For example, if writing by pen tends to force you to write a novel in a particular way that is undesirable, then fix the situation (e.g., use a word processor). As a creative individual, you should be the one calling the shots.
  - DaniFong 19y ago
    Sometimes, while 'creating', it's less like trying to cast my visions onto some medium and more like an exploration. Sometimes it's more fruitful just to let myself be guided by my impulses, my abilities, and the medium. I don't know if it works for everyone, but it works for me. One might worry that I'm being commanded by the medium, but what I make seems to be original, anyway. I actually prefer writing by pen. It's more fluid. And since things can't be easily rewritten, you give a bit of thought before you commit something, and are always driven forward. Knuth et al. notes, in an article on technical writing (http://tex.loria.fr/typographie/mathwriting.pdf http://tex.loria.fr/typographie/mathwriting.pdf): "Towards the end of the editing process you will need to ensure that you don't have a page break in the middle of a displayed formula. Often you'll simply have to think up something else to say to fill up the page, thus pushing the displayed formula entirely onto the next page. Try to think of this as a stimulus to research!" A pen sometimes functions in the same way. And if I find it's results undesirable, then I'll try not to think of it as a problem to fix, and rather as looking for a new medium to explore.
icky 19y ago
> I have a lot of respect for women who like the idea of building novel applications but don't want to get their hands dirty with the programming/computer science involved. It seems to me that you were making an assumption that didn't fit the parent poster's actual circumstances. (Not entirely fair, since I have the benefit of hindsight and having read her reply. ;-) I have a lot of respect for people, regardless of gender, who actually know how to do things, so perhaps my bias is showing. (Don't worry: the "big picture" ideas guy, and the fluff-spinning Ph.D. who can't code to save his life, both earn an equal share of contempt. Partly because they're basically the same person. :) But I really couldn't bring myself kowtow to either of them even if they happened to be female, which, frankly, is partly why reading your post leaves me feeling a bit repulsed. (Sorry, I know this sounds awful, but I can't think of a gentler way to accurately phrase it). > This is kind of like architects who want to design buildings but would rather leave implementation details to engineers. > That's the way it should be. All the really interesting architecture of recent decades has been done by architects who could think like artists and engineers. Your ideal architect reminds me of the stupid king in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, who disregards the "implementation details" and builds his castle on a swamp. Definitely not the way it should be.
- amichail 19y ago
  > It seems to me that you were making an assumption that didn't fit the parent poster's actual circumstances. I wasn't referring to the poster's circumstances. > All the really interesting architecture of recent decades has been done by architects who could think like artists and engineers. Do you have a reference?
  - icky 19y ago
    > Do you have a reference? Sure: tautological by my definition of "really interesting" ;-)