32 ms·

Neat. (Although, trying to read the code makes my head hurt.) Hey, is Julia a girl, or would it be better to refer to her as a "female hacker"? Not trying to

Neat. (Although, trying to read the code makes my head hurt.) Hey, is Julia a girl, or would it be better to refer to her as a "female hacker"? Not trying to be a troll, just thinking we should be careful about using "girl" to refer to women, if that's the case.

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
iamdave 18y ago
Not to discredit her, but think the title is best left gender neutral.
- aasarava 18y ago
  Good point. She's a hacker who just happens to be female. ;)
- nickb 18y ago
  I think there should be more women hackers celebrated for doing something cool. We are in a domain that's heavily dominated by males so when a woman does something this cool, I think she might inspire other girls to do the same. Some girl hackers today are more famous for their looks than for their skills. Julia, the author of this, is clearly very talented.
  - petercooper 18y ago
    Is it celebratory to tokenize someone in a headline with an irrelevant physical attribute? Example: We're also in a domain heavily dominated by white people. Would "Tetris written (by a black hacker) in sed" seem as celebratory to you as the female variant? Personally, to me neither are true celebrations, just tokenism. People, whether women, men, black, white, whatever, don't like to be tokenized and patronized.
    - ia 18y ago
      i agree with your point, but i look at it differently. while this tetris script is impressive, we see feats like this a lot around the web. however, the fact that it was written by a female makes it more interesting (note that i did not say "more impressive"--that, to me, would be germane to the point you're making). it is more interesting because it was accomplished by someone not normally associated with this type of endeavor (a female). if i saw a headline that read, "zebra wins kentucky derby!", i would think the same thing--interesting because zebras don't usually run that race ;). zoologic inaccuracies aside, one may argue, "a horse won the derby--the fact that it is colored like a barcode is an irrelevant physical attribute." i would agree in some sense, but i'd still prefer to see that the winning horse was a zebra because hey man, a frickin zebra won the derby! that's crazy! i don't see including that detail as being a tokenization of zebras. (tried my best not to strawman this, but i may have gotten a bit carried away...)
      - ideamonk 18y ago
        it makes me wonder why we dont see more n great contributions of women in scientific advancements, hacking... etc. They have access to almost all that males can access. but why is female behavior so different in this regard?
        cstejerean 18y ago
        Probably because society has different expectations when it comes to men and women which in turn can cause different behaviors. For example I had a teacher that would only read "gender neutral" stories to her daughter since she didn't like the message sent by the typical "princess waiting to be saved by the prince on a white horse" story.
        LogicHoleFlaw 18y ago
        One of the favorites in my home as a child was "The Paper-bag Princess." It's a turnabout on that old prince charming tale. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paper_Bag_Princess http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paper_Bag_Princess
  - tsetse-fly 18y ago
    Your post reminds me of Black History Month. It's intended to celebrate great accomplishments by black people, but it feels more like pity. It seems as if their race were some sort of handicap so we need to make their work seem grand and donate an entire month to it. I don't believe that anyone has ever truly been inspired by this feel-good crap.
    - ambition 18y ago
      Many people find it easier to take inspiration from people they view as similar to themselves.
- rms 18y ago
  Let's call it affirmative action.
river_styx 18y ago
I think I'm in love...
- omouse 18y ago
  Typical UNIX user. A girl writes a bit of sed and they're in love. Disgusting...now a girl that writes Emacs-Lisp? That's a different story...
  - river_styx 18y ago
    http://sachachua.com/ http://sachachua.com/ ...swoon

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

iamdave 18y ago

Not to discredit her, but think the title is best left gender neutral.

aasarava 18y ago
Good point. She's a hacker who just happens to be female. ;)
nickb 18y ago
I think there should be more women hackers celebrated for doing something cool. We are in a domain that's heavily dominated by males so when a woman does something this cool, I think she might inspire other girls to do the same. Some girl hackers today are more famous for their looks than for their skills. Julia, the author of this, is clearly very talented.
- petercooper 18y ago
  Is it celebratory to tokenize someone in a headline with an irrelevant physical attribute? Example: We're also in a domain heavily dominated by white people. Would "Tetris written (by a black hacker) in sed" seem as celebratory to you as the female variant? Personally, to me neither are true celebrations, just tokenism. People, whether women, men, black, white, whatever, don't like to be tokenized and patronized.
  - ia 18y ago
    i agree with your point, but i look at it differently. while this tetris script is impressive, we see feats like this a lot around the web. however, the fact that it was written by a female makes it more interesting (note that i did not say "more impressive"--that, to me, would be germane to the point you're making). it is more interesting because it was accomplished by someone not normally associated with this type of endeavor (a female). if i saw a headline that read, "zebra wins kentucky derby!", i would think the same thing--interesting because zebras don't usually run that race ;). zoologic inaccuracies aside, one may argue, "a horse won the derby--the fact that it is colored like a barcode is an irrelevant physical attribute." i would agree in some sense, but i'd still prefer to see that the winning horse was a zebra because hey man, a frickin zebra won the derby! that's crazy! i don't see including that detail as being a tokenization of zebras. (tried my best not to strawman this, but i may have gotten a bit carried away...)
    - ideamonk 18y ago
      it makes me wonder why we dont see more n great contributions of women in scientific advancements, hacking... etc. They have access to almost all that males can access. but why is female behavior so different in this regard?
      - cstejerean 18y ago
        Probably because society has different expectations when it comes to men and women which in turn can cause different behaviors. For example I had a teacher that would only read "gender neutral" stories to her daughter since she didn't like the message sent by the typical "princess waiting to be saved by the prince on a white horse" story.
        LogicHoleFlaw 18y ago
        One of the favorites in my home as a child was "The Paper-bag Princess." It's a turnabout on that old prince charming tale. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paper_Bag_Princess http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paper_Bag_Princess
- tsetse-fly 18y ago
  Your post reminds me of Black History Month. It's intended to celebrate great accomplishments by black people, but it feels more like pity. It seems as if their race were some sort of handicap so we need to make their work seem grand and donate an entire month to it. I don't believe that anyone has ever truly been inspired by this feel-good crap.
  - ambition 18y ago
    Many people find it easier to take inspiration from people they view as similar to themselves.
rms 18y ago
Let's call it affirmative action.

river_styx 18y ago

I think I'm in love...

omouse 18y ago
Typical UNIX user. A girl writes a bit of sed and they're in love. Disgusting...now a girl that writes Emacs-Lisp? That's a different story...
- river_styx 18y ago
  http://sachachua.com/ http://sachachua.com/ ...swoon