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Flat out dead wrong. Don't take things too literally. What he basically meant was "anyone with appropriate aptitude and intellectual maturity" -- like you you

Flat out dead wrong. Don't take things too literally. What he basically meant was "anyone with appropriate aptitude and intellectual maturity" -- like you yourself said later on, pretty much. Which may or may not be entirely correct, but is far from "dead wrong." BTW, please be careful about referring to foreigners, in any context, as "monkeys."

sokoloff 11y ago
Parent may have edited the post (as I don't see "monkey" anywhere), but I frequently hear monkey used for any human (often fellow programmers) and have never read a racial or ethnic overtone into it and the usage has generally been to suggest that humans (of all sorts) aren't particularly different from monkeys. I just got back from an business trip spanning 3 cities and 5 flights. The self-loading cargo in the airports, jetways, and boarding the plane could easily have been described as monkeys. I was literally called a monkey by a colleague for absent-mindedly and needlessly blocking a sidewalk in the parking lot while waiting for someone to pay for parking. I took no offense, of course.
- andrewstuart 11y ago
  I did edit the post, despite the fact that the reference was towards management thinking about programmers as "monkeys" it appears it was being misinterpreted by skim-readers as overseas people being called monkeys. My point is that if you do not understand that programming is highly skilled work (and many companies think this) then you might think you can get anyone to do it for a similar outcome and therefore it is a commodity and therefore the only thing that matters is price.
  - kafkaesq 11y ago
    Right, I understood the intended abstraction, after the 2nd or 3rd skim. Just that even analytical people tend to think "associationally" when they see certain keywords -- and one has to keep in mind that not too long ago, people in many of the countries that software development is frequently outsourced to were, in fact, thought of as monkeys, pretty much (or something on the human-monkey spectrum). So whenever I see associations like that creeping into my own writing, I try to dial it down.
- devdas 11y ago
  There's a lot of history on calling non-white people monkeys. http://theconversation.com/the-ape-insult-a-short-history-of-a-racist-idea-14808 http://theconversation.com/the-ape-insult-a-short-history-of...

sokoloff 11y ago

Parent may have edited the post (as I don't see "monkey" anywhere), but I frequently hear monkey used for any human (often fellow programmers) and have never read a racial or ethnic overtone into it and the usage has generally been to suggest that humans (of all sorts) aren't particularly different from monkeys. I just got back from an business trip spanning 3 cities and 5 flights. The self-loading cargo in the airports, jetways, and boarding the plane could easily have been described as monkeys. I was literally called a monkey by a colleague for absent-mindedly and needlessly blocking a sidewalk in the parking lot while waiting for someone to pay for parking. I took no offense, of course.

andrewstuart 11y ago
I did edit the post, despite the fact that the reference was towards management thinking about programmers as "monkeys" it appears it was being misinterpreted by skim-readers as overseas people being called monkeys. My point is that if you do not understand that programming is highly skilled work (and many companies think this) then you might think you can get anyone to do it for a similar outcome and therefore it is a commodity and therefore the only thing that matters is price.
- kafkaesq 11y ago
  Right, I understood the intended abstraction, after the 2nd or 3rd skim. Just that even analytical people tend to think "associationally" when they see certain keywords -- and one has to keep in mind that not too long ago, people in many of the countries that software development is frequently outsourced to were, in fact, thought of as monkeys, pretty much (or something on the human-monkey spectrum). So whenever I see associations like that creeping into my own writing, I try to dial it down.
devdas 11y ago
There's a lot of history on calling non-white people monkeys. http://theconversation.com/the-ape-insult-a-short-history-of-a-racist-idea-14808 http://theconversation.com/the-ape-insult-a-short-history-of...