4 ms·

It is not a parody. If you follow the link to the original article, you can see that she is just claiming that women are better at documenting code, which is a

by olavk 18y ago

It is not a parody. If you follow the link to the original article, you can see that she is just claiming that women are better at documenting code, which is a reasonable hypothesis. The Inquirer on their own account added the slant about womens code being more "sensitive" and so on, probably to make here look like an idiot. (Also fun to see how "user-friendly and gender-neutral" coding standards in WSJ becomes "womanish" coding standards in the Inquirer :-) Sine there are far fewer women programmers, I would expect the average female programmer to be better than the average male - including being better at documenting code. However the article sounds like she is only basing it on anecdotal evidence. It would be quite interesting to see a more scientific study.

tptacek 18y ago
Explain the statistical reasoning behind "since there are fewer, you expect them to be better".
- olavk 18y ago
  My reasoning is: because of male dominance and stereotypes in IT, women will think twice about entering the field. Therefore the ones who choose it, will be more passionate and determined than the average male colleague. It is just my theory, I have never seen any statistical evidence one way or the other.
  - helveticaman 18y ago
    Fair enough.
Tichy 18y ago
In any case, I absolutely loathe the kind of coding standards she is trying to enforce. It sounds like micromanagement bullshit, forcing developers to do stuff they resent. The extreme endresult are those comments on getters and setters in Java: / * gets the variable */ int getVariable() {...} I could scream and climb up walls when I see that or worse, have to write that. If you don't write the comment, though, some fascist "quality control" algorithm will show a read flag and make the managers unhappy. I thought the consent by now was that understandable code is to be preferred over comments, especially since comments have a tendency to become stale.
- timr 18y ago
  I think the comments here do a better job of reflecting the problems women are up against as coders, than they do of reflecting the constraints this particular woman has imposed upon her team. Despite the fact that absolutely no details were provided in the article about her standards, or what she's trying to achieve (other than a few "pithy" interpretations by the author), you've jumped to the conclusion that it's "micromanagement bullshit". You've also taken the most absurd interpretation of her remarks. Why? I'm quite confident that any experienced developer knows the difference between your example, and good documentation practices. Since this particular woman has managed to rise to a position of high authority, perhaps we should give her the benefit of the doubt, hmm? Anyway...if they weren't so sad, the anguished geek cries of "sexism" in this thread would be hilarious. It's hard to be oppressed by discrimination when you're in the clear and obvious majority.
  - Tichy 18y ago
    What makes you think my comment would have been different if she had not been a woman, but a man? I have experienced enforced comments, and that was in all men environments. I have complained about it against men, too. I feel confident enough from my experience to say that her commenting rules are bullshit. I gave the reasons, too: comments are bad because they go stale. Enforced comments lead to ridiculous comments and tedious typing work that is resented by developers. If she really has found a way around that, it would be sensational, I would love to read an article about it. If she has several mandatory comment fields in the code, it is essentially just a TPS report translated to coding. Before you can write any code, you have to fill in a form - that can't be fun, not matter if the boss is male or female. Maybe she is still a super-coder, it is not as if she is the only one coming up with awful rules in face of the unsolved problem of managing IT projects. Most managers probably resort to such means eventually (that's why the TPS report joke exists), and then forget to switch back when it doesn't work out. That is why big companies become horrible work places in the long run. Now she works for a big company, so maybe she does a good job for that environment - I don't mean that as demeaning, I guess somebody had to do the corporate stuff (I actually envy corporate folks for their endurance and staying power). I merely pointed out that I loathe that kind of thing. If you like it, more power to you. Sorry to burst your bubble, but this really has nothing to do with sexism. On the other hand, you display exactly the kind of "political correctness" that makes people resent issues like sexism, because it is just used as a manipulative tool (you can always brush off criticism by crying "sexism").

by olavk 18y ago

tptacek 18y ago

Explain the statistical reasoning behind "since there are fewer, you expect them to be better".

olavk 18y ago
My reasoning is: because of male dominance and stereotypes in IT, women will think twice about entering the field. Therefore the ones who choose it, will be more passionate and determined than the average male colleague. It is just my theory, I have never seen any statistical evidence one way or the other.
- helveticaman 18y ago
  Fair enough.

Tichy 18y ago

In any case, I absolutely loathe the kind of coding standards she is trying to enforce. It sounds like micromanagement bullshit, forcing developers to do stuff they resent. The extreme endresult are those comments on getters and setters in Java: / * gets the variable */ int getVariable() {...} I could scream and climb up walls when I see that or worse, have to write that. If you don't write the comment, though, some fascist "quality control" algorithm will show a read flag and make the managers unhappy. I thought the consent by now was that understandable code is to be preferred over comments, especially since comments have a tendency to become stale.

timr 18y ago
I think the comments here do a better job of reflecting the problems women are up against as coders, than they do of reflecting the constraints this particular woman has imposed upon her team. Despite the fact that absolutely no details were provided in the article about her standards, or what she's trying to achieve (other than a few "pithy" interpretations by the author), you've jumped to the conclusion that it's "micromanagement bullshit". You've also taken the most absurd interpretation of her remarks. Why? I'm quite confident that any experienced developer knows the difference between your example, and good documentation practices. Since this particular woman has managed to rise to a position of high authority, perhaps we should give her the benefit of the doubt, hmm? Anyway...if they weren't so sad, the anguished geek cries of "sexism" in this thread would be hilarious. It's hard to be oppressed by discrimination when you're in the clear and obvious majority.
- Tichy 18y ago
  What makes you think my comment would have been different if she had not been a woman, but a man? I have experienced enforced comments, and that was in all men environments. I have complained about it against men, too. I feel confident enough from my experience to say that her commenting rules are bullshit. I gave the reasons, too: comments are bad because they go stale. Enforced comments lead to ridiculous comments and tedious typing work that is resented by developers. If she really has found a way around that, it would be sensational, I would love to read an article about it. If she has several mandatory comment fields in the code, it is essentially just a TPS report translated to coding. Before you can write any code, you have to fill in a form - that can't be fun, not matter if the boss is male or female. Maybe she is still a super-coder, it is not as if she is the only one coming up with awful rules in face of the unsolved problem of managing IT projects. Most managers probably resort to such means eventually (that's why the TPS report joke exists), and then forget to switch back when it doesn't work out. That is why big companies become horrible work places in the long run. Now she works for a big company, so maybe she does a good job for that environment - I don't mean that as demeaning, I guess somebody had to do the corporate stuff (I actually envy corporate folks for their endurance and staying power). I merely pointed out that I loathe that kind of thing. If you like it, more power to you. Sorry to burst your bubble, but this really has nothing to do with sexism. On the other hand, you display exactly the kind of "political correctness" that makes people resent issues like sexism, because it is just used as a manipulative tool (you can always brush off criticism by crying "sexism").