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Anyone know what Julia is using for those handwritten slides? I absolutely love everything Julia writes. She writes in a way that makes absolutely zero assumpt

by AJRF 8y ago

Anyone know what Julia is using for those handwritten slides? I absolutely love everything Julia writes. She writes in a way that makes absolutely zero assumptions about your level of technical competence. You could be a junior, mid, senior and still get something from most of her articles. Anecdotally; Almost every female engineer I work with writes and communicates in this fashion and I really bloody wish more of my male counterparts would speak with less jargon/acronyms for the sake of new starts/non-engineers.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
TomasSedovic 8y ago
Julia uses Squid for Android for her zines: https://jvns.ca/teach-tech-with-cartoons/#tools-that-make-it-easy https://jvns.ca/teach-tech-with-cartoons/#tools-that-make-it... Presumably, she uses the same to do the slides. Here she talks some more about her tools: https://usesthis.com/interviews/julia.evans/ https://usesthis.com/interviews/julia.evans/
- AJRF 8y ago
  Thank you very much Tomas!
- ant6n 8y ago
  Julia's now using Ipad with pencil and the Notability app. She previously used a Samsung Chromebook Plus with Squid. She actually wrote a blog post about reverse engineering the file formats when transitioning between them: https://jvns.ca/blog/2018/03/31/reverse-engineering-notability-format/ https://jvns.ca/blog/2018/03/31/reverse-engineering-notabili... (btw, if you go through her drawings over the years, they got better and better. I think a lot of what makes them great nowadays is practice, practice, practice)
  - AJRF 8y ago
    Oh that looks like an interesting read, i've previously missed that post. I'll check both out, going to give that presentation style a try. Cheers for the links.
  - TomasSedovic 8y ago
    Ah right, I thought she was using an ipad, but I couldn't find the source so I blamed a faulty memory. Thanks.
Wintamute 8y ago
Care to share any anecdotes that make sweeping generalisations based on gender that paint female engineers in a bad light instead? Nope, didn't think so ...
- coldtea 8y ago
  Generalizations are the basis of all thought and science -- it's all about abstracting the chaos into a cohesive taxonomy and laws. Without generalization we are lost in paralyzing (and inane) case by case judging of everything. In CS terms, generalizations are basically pattern recognition. Can they be bad? Sure. But not because they are generalizations. I'm not even sure what you're getting at. That you can find all kinds of types in either group? I don't think anybody disagrees. A generalization is still valid though if it recognizes larger tendencies in each group (where there's lot of overlap, but e.g. different peaks at different approaches). Is your position that it's illogical to even consider this? Because a lot of scientific research (never mind the parent's empirical observations) disagrees. The key is not to not make generalizations, but to try to make their as good as you can, and to not insist to apply them to some individual instance that doesn't match them. One should also improve their generalizations over time, as new data come in.
  - Wintamute 8y ago
    I agree with you. My admittedly snarky/oblique point was that these days it's personally, professionally and politically advantageous to make negative generalisations about males, but not about females. Just pointing out a fashionable double standard, as I see it.
    - AJRF 8y ago
      I was providing localised anecdata about the people I specifically work with. I don't think its against site rules to state personal experiences, actually it's the basis of healthy debate. If I said something along the lines of "all female engineers" without the context I provided; i.e its most of the female engineers I personally work with, then yeah I could see how that would be construed as virtue signalling. I assure you that's not my intention, and apologies if it comes across that way.
zerogvt 8y ago
I cannot upvote enough your comment (and I am a guy). Computer Engineering and IT are overcrowded with males and male behaviors which hurt the field and drive away a lot of people that are smart and eager to offer but they cannot tolerate the machismo of the field. A sad state of affairs for any profession. I'm not saying that all males are exhibiting these behaviors but the ones that do are prevalent (and it seems that by doing so they're gaining an edge which makes them successful memes that stick and expand).
albertgoeswoof 8y ago
> Anecdotally; Almost every female engineer I work with writes and communicates in this fashion and I really bloody wish more of my male counterparts would speak with less jargon/acronyms for the sake of new starts/non-engineers. It’s not a good idea to generalise and push gender stereotypes in this way. You’re saying that female engineers have better communication skills than male ones, setting the bar higher for female engineers. You might think you’re improving gender equality with statements like this but really you’re setting a different bar of basic competencies for males vs females.
- AJRF 8y ago
  Honestly couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m not trying to improve anything, I’m stating experience. The clues in the word anecdotally. It’s a shame HN always devolves into contrarian and counter-contrarian tit for tats like this
  - albertgoeswoof 8y ago
    Yes but if you said the same about a race or other marginalised group it would get called out on and you would probably agree. It’s not tit for tat, it’s sexism and it’s important we address it collectively.
    - bostonpete 8y ago
      I don't think people generally get called out for mentioning their positive impressions of people of a race or other marginalised group. I get that they can affect expectations but we shouldn't allow ourselves to be paralyzed by the conceivable negative effects of our well-intentioned comments.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - splatzone 8y ago
      The poster above clearly didn't mean what they said as an attack or an attempt to set unfair standards for women, I don't think what you're saying makes any sense. I work with a lot of gay men and I notice that they can often be more empathic and sensitive than straight men. Different groups behave differently and individuals can act however they like. It's not sexist or homophobic to notice trends. We stand to gain a lot from noticing how people behave and reflecting on how we act ourselves.
randomsearch 8y ago
Very controversial topic to wade into, but: I do think that our field suffers from poor explanation of technical topics. I heard this described at a place I used to work as a "macho culture" - where it was deliberate behaviour as display of aggression, rather than sheer incompetence. Arguably this does relate to traits that men exhibit more than women (on average).
- fullstackchris 8y ago
  I think it is also out of laziness or simply forgetting to step out of one's own shoes sometimes. It's sometimes hard to explain all the technical parts of a project well to a newcomer who has 0 experience with a particular project when its something you've been working on for months at an in-depth level. We're all guilty of skipping small parts of explanation simply because subconsciously we've done it so much, or it is such a 'trivial' component of a given process or system. These poor explanation and documentation patterns I find most often in open source (though it does indeed occur in industry software as well). A huge number of GitHub READMEs reflect this notion (even in npm packages, for example, that are downloaded 1000+ a week!). To the author of software, the README may be perfectly clear, but for first time users of the software, it can be totally lacking and/or just plain confusing. I always try to be explicit as possible in my instructions and documentation in hopes to battle the field's poor explanation reputation. It's definitely a skill I always try to work on and get better at.
seanmcdirmid 8y ago
Have you ever seen Guy Steele’s “growing a language” talk? If you like hand written slides, you’ll like that one. He did require an old fashioned OHP though, since it was all done on transparencies with crayons! Unfortunately that wasn’t very video friendly, so he had to use traditional ones for the recording, you only get the OHP treatment by seeing the talk in person.
Koshkin 8y ago
> zero assumptions I think this means "the assumption of zero knowledge." I love when Scientific American or articles on the web try to give the reader an idea of a recent advance in physics, say, by starting to explain that "atoms are these tiny thingies which are so small that you cannot see them with a naked eye and which were first conceived of by the ancient Greeks." In certain contexts, you cannot make an assumption like that.

by AJRF 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

TomasSedovic 8y ago

Julia uses Squid for Android for her zines: https://jvns.ca/teach-tech-with-cartoons/#tools-that-make-it-easy https://jvns.ca/teach-tech-with-cartoons/#tools-that-make-it... Presumably, she uses the same to do the slides. Here she talks some more about her tools: https://usesthis.com/interviews/julia.evans/ https://usesthis.com/interviews/julia.evans/

AJRF 8y ago
Thank you very much Tomas!
ant6n 8y ago
Julia's now using Ipad with pencil and the Notability app. She previously used a Samsung Chromebook Plus with Squid. She actually wrote a blog post about reverse engineering the file formats when transitioning between them: https://jvns.ca/blog/2018/03/31/reverse-engineering-notability-format/ https://jvns.ca/blog/2018/03/31/reverse-engineering-notabili... (btw, if you go through her drawings over the years, they got better and better. I think a lot of what makes them great nowadays is practice, practice, practice)
- AJRF 8y ago
  Oh that looks like an interesting read, i've previously missed that post. I'll check both out, going to give that presentation style a try. Cheers for the links.
- TomasSedovic 8y ago
  Ah right, I thought she was using an ipad, but I couldn't find the source so I blamed a faulty memory. Thanks.

Wintamute 8y ago

Care to share any anecdotes that make sweeping generalisations based on gender that paint female engineers in a bad light instead? Nope, didn't think so ...

coldtea 8y ago
Generalizations are the basis of all thought and science -- it's all about abstracting the chaos into a cohesive taxonomy and laws. Without generalization we are lost in paralyzing (and inane) case by case judging of everything. In CS terms, generalizations are basically pattern recognition. Can they be bad? Sure. But not because they are generalizations. I'm not even sure what you're getting at. That you can find all kinds of types in either group? I don't think anybody disagrees. A generalization is still valid though if it recognizes larger tendencies in each group (where there's lot of overlap, but e.g. different peaks at different approaches). Is your position that it's illogical to even consider this? Because a lot of scientific research (never mind the parent's empirical observations) disagrees. The key is not to not make generalizations, but to try to make their as good as you can, and to not insist to apply them to some individual instance that doesn't match them. One should also improve their generalizations over time, as new data come in.
- Wintamute 8y ago
  I agree with you. My admittedly snarky/oblique point was that these days it's personally, professionally and politically advantageous to make negative generalisations about males, but not about females. Just pointing out a fashionable double standard, as I see it.
  - AJRF 8y ago
    I was providing localised anecdata about the people I specifically work with. I don't think its against site rules to state personal experiences, actually it's the basis of healthy debate. If I said something along the lines of "all female engineers" without the context I provided; i.e its most of the female engineers I personally work with, then yeah I could see how that would be construed as virtue signalling. I assure you that's not my intention, and apologies if it comes across that way.

zerogvt 8y ago

I cannot upvote enough your comment (and I am a guy). Computer Engineering and IT are overcrowded with males and male behaviors which hurt the field and drive away a lot of people that are smart and eager to offer but they cannot tolerate the machismo of the field. A sad state of affairs for any profession. I'm not saying that all males are exhibiting these behaviors but the ones that do are prevalent (and it seems that by doing so they're gaining an edge which makes them successful memes that stick and expand).

albertgoeswoof 8y ago

> Anecdotally; Almost every female engineer I work with writes and communicates in this fashion and I really bloody wish more of my male counterparts would speak with less jargon/acronyms for the sake of new starts/non-engineers. It’s not a good idea to generalise and push gender stereotypes in this way. You’re saying that female engineers have better communication skills than male ones, setting the bar higher for female engineers. You might think you’re improving gender equality with statements like this but really you’re setting a different bar of basic competencies for males vs females.

AJRF 8y ago
Honestly couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m not trying to improve anything, I’m stating experience. The clues in the word anecdotally. It’s a shame HN always devolves into contrarian and counter-contrarian tit for tats like this
- albertgoeswoof 8y ago
  Yes but if you said the same about a race or other marginalised group it would get called out on and you would probably agree. It’s not tit for tat, it’s sexism and it’s important we address it collectively.
  - bostonpete 8y ago
    I don't think people generally get called out for mentioning their positive impressions of people of a race or other marginalised group. I get that they can affect expectations but we shouldn't allow ourselves to be paralyzed by the conceivable negative effects of our well-intentioned comments.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - splatzone 8y ago
    The poster above clearly didn't mean what they said as an attack or an attempt to set unfair standards for women, I don't think what you're saying makes any sense. I work with a lot of gay men and I notice that they can often be more empathic and sensitive than straight men. Different groups behave differently and individuals can act however they like. It's not sexist or homophobic to notice trends. We stand to gain a lot from noticing how people behave and reflecting on how we act ourselves.

randomsearch 8y ago

Very controversial topic to wade into, but: I do think that our field suffers from poor explanation of technical topics. I heard this described at a place I used to work as a "macho culture" - where it was deliberate behaviour as display of aggression, rather than sheer incompetence. Arguably this does relate to traits that men exhibit more than women (on average).

fullstackchris 8y ago
I think it is also out of laziness or simply forgetting to step out of one's own shoes sometimes. It's sometimes hard to explain all the technical parts of a project well to a newcomer who has 0 experience with a particular project when its something you've been working on for months at an in-depth level. We're all guilty of skipping small parts of explanation simply because subconsciously we've done it so much, or it is such a 'trivial' component of a given process or system. These poor explanation and documentation patterns I find most often in open source (though it does indeed occur in industry software as well). A huge number of GitHub READMEs reflect this notion (even in npm packages, for example, that are downloaded 1000+ a week!). To the author of software, the README may be perfectly clear, but for first time users of the software, it can be totally lacking and/or just plain confusing. I always try to be explicit as possible in my instructions and documentation in hopes to battle the field's poor explanation reputation. It's definitely a skill I always try to work on and get better at.

seanmcdirmid 8y ago

Have you ever seen Guy Steele’s “growing a language” talk? If you like hand written slides, you’ll like that one. He did require an old fashioned OHP though, since it was all done on transparencies with crayons! Unfortunately that wasn’t very video friendly, so he had to use traditional ones for the recording, you only get the OHP treatment by seeing the talk in person.

Koshkin 8y ago

> zero assumptions I think this means "the assumption of zero knowledge." I love when Scientific American or articles on the web try to give the reader an idea of a recent advance in physics, say, by starting to explain that "atoms are these tiny thingies which are so small that you cannot see them with a naked eye and which were first conceived of by the ancient Greeks." In certain contexts, you cannot make an assumption like that.