5 ms·

I must admit I do love these "when real men programmed with soldering irons"-type posts on HN.

by javajosh 9y ago

ChristianBundy 9y ago
"real men"?
- 0xcde4c3db 9y ago
  It's basically a meme referencing the "good old days" of traditional gender expression. It's usually used with some amount of irony or sarcasm, but occasionally in earnest. I think the classic phrase was "when men were gentlemen and women were ladies", but in geek circles it's probably better known from Douglas Adams's riff on it: "In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri." edit: it also occurs to me that "real men" was probably somewhat (re-)popularized by the 1982 book "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche", which was poking fun at rigid and nonsensical concepts of masculinity, but a lot of people use the pattern of "real men don't X" very seriously.
  - 21 9y ago
    As the joke says: The men who program in C++ are Real Men. The women who program in C++ are Real Men too.
    - flukus 9y ago
      There was also the internet variant of "The Internet: where men are men, women are men and children are FBI agents" that was doing the rounds since at least the mid-90's.
  - jszymborski 9y ago
    Just because it's a popular idiom doesn't mean it isn't an unfortunate one. Your Douglas Adams example does, however, give an example of its use where women are also acknowledged and we can all go home not stinking of casual sexism for the sake of a catchy idiom.
    - Boothroid 9y ago
      I bet you're a barrel of laughs down the pub!
  - yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
    I thought it was best known from Linus's "do you long for tho days when men were men and wrote their own device drivers" line (from memory; I may have gotten a word wrong).
amelius 9y ago
Yes, but I wonder what these people are using their skills for today, in this age of apps.
- kierank 9y ago
  Still selling overpriced broadcast hardware of course and trying as hard as they can to make sure software can't enter their market.
  - zaphar 9y ago
    What a depressing and negative post. I'm sure many of them moved on too designing even more impressive hardware and chipsets to power even more impressive computational feats. Or they may have taken those skills into the software development field, creating complex and efficient software.
    - kierank 9y ago
      I'm sure many of them have done interesting things. But the area I write software on in broadcast has a large number of these engineers holding back progress, most of whom are close to retirement age and now have heavy influence in standards bodies. For uncompressed video over IP for example they propose insanely tight standards such as packets must arrive within ~40us (that's us, not ms) of their allotted time, something very difficult to reach in software. (I will be talking about this at demuxed next week...) They also insist that legacy artefacts from the analogue era must remain such as VBI stay for another generation to save around 1ms of latency (and of course their precious line buffers). They are one reason the broadcast industry isn't able to move fast enough compared to the web. As I've explained to them, some of us will have to deal with the mess they have created in 40 years time.
      - paulmd 9y ago
        > packets must arrive within ~40us (that's us, not ms) of their allotted time, something very difficult to reach in software. (I will be talking about this at demuxed next week...) Maybe in Ethernet-land, but this is trivially achievable (actually exceeded by more than an order of magnitude) with off-the-shelf Infiniband gear that is available for peanuts these days. Actually it's close to two orders of magnitude if you want to shell out for the latest gear. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InfiniBand#Performance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InfiniBand#Performance

I must admit I do love these "when real men programmed with soldering irons"-type posts on HN.

ChristianBundy 9y ago

"real men"?

0xcde4c3db 9y ago
It's basically a meme referencing the "good old days" of traditional gender expression. It's usually used with some amount of irony or sarcasm, but occasionally in earnest. I think the classic phrase was "when men were gentlemen and women were ladies", but in geek circles it's probably better known from Douglas Adams's riff on it: "In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri." edit: it also occurs to me that "real men" was probably somewhat (re-)popularized by the 1982 book "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche", which was poking fun at rigid and nonsensical concepts of masculinity, but a lot of people use the pattern of "real men don't X" very seriously.
- 21 9y ago
  As the joke says: The men who program in C++ are Real Men. The women who program in C++ are Real Men too.
  - flukus 9y ago
    There was also the internet variant of "The Internet: where men are men, women are men and children are FBI agents" that was doing the rounds since at least the mid-90's.
- jszymborski 9y ago
  Just because it's a popular idiom doesn't mean it isn't an unfortunate one. Your Douglas Adams example does, however, give an example of its use where women are also acknowledged and we can all go home not stinking of casual sexism for the sake of a catchy idiom.
  - Boothroid 9y ago
    I bet you're a barrel of laughs down the pub!
- yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
  I thought it was best known from Linus's "do you long for tho days when men were men and wrote their own device drivers" line (from memory; I may have gotten a word wrong).

amelius 9y ago

Yes, but I wonder what these people are using their skills for today, in this age of apps.

kierank 9y ago
Still selling overpriced broadcast hardware of course and trying as hard as they can to make sure software can't enter their market.
- zaphar 9y ago
  What a depressing and negative post. I'm sure many of them moved on too designing even more impressive hardware and chipsets to power even more impressive computational feats. Or they may have taken those skills into the software development field, creating complex and efficient software.
  - kierank 9y ago
    I'm sure many of them have done interesting things. But the area I write software on in broadcast has a large number of these engineers holding back progress, most of whom are close to retirement age and now have heavy influence in standards bodies. For uncompressed video over IP for example they propose insanely tight standards such as packets must arrive within ~40us (that's us, not ms) of their allotted time, something very difficult to reach in software. (I will be talking about this at demuxed next week...) They also insist that legacy artefacts from the analogue era must remain such as VBI stay for another generation to save around 1ms of latency (and of course their precious line buffers). They are one reason the broadcast industry isn't able to move fast enough compared to the web. As I've explained to them, some of us will have to deal with the mess they have created in 40 years time.
    - paulmd 9y ago
      > packets must arrive within ~40us (that's us, not ms) of their allotted time, something very difficult to reach in software. (I will be talking about this at demuxed next week...) Maybe in Ethernet-land, but this is trivially achievable (actually exceeded by more than an order of magnitude) with off-the-shelf Infiniband gear that is available for peanuts these days. Actually it's close to two orders of magnitude if you want to shell out for the latest gear. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InfiniBand#Performance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InfiniBand#Performance