25 ms·

I presume the author is female, according to her use of the feminine pronoun in referring to programmers generally. Nice to get a female perspective. I apprecia

by _feda_ 14y ago

I presume the author is female, according to her use of the feminine pronoun in referring to programmers generally. Nice to get a female perspective. I appreciate her emphasis on all the qualities beyond coding itself that contribute to a good programmer.

kat 14y ago
Original Author's Bio Robert L. Read lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and two children.
scarmig 14y ago
I've actually noticed only a weak correlation at best between gender of the writer/speaker and the generic pronoun e uses. It's pretty common for people of the progressive set to use the feminine personal pronoun for programmers generically, which is a Good Thing (tm).
- FuzzyDunlop 14y ago
  As opposed to the gender-neutral 'they', which is the Best Thing (that few people seem to realise).
  - joshAg 14y ago
    Many people still like to claim that 'they' can only be used as a plural.
    - masterzora 14y ago
      I personally think it just sounds awkward. Spivak pronouns can pick up all of the benefits of a singular "they" without the drawbacks, though.
      - akavi 14y ago
        I would say the opposite, actually. "They" as a gender neutral singular pronoun is, to me, perfectly natural. I use it dozens of times a day as such without noticing. Spivak pronouns, on the other hand, are blatantly marked, and were I to come across them in writing or speech, I'd find them very distracting.
        Tloewald 14y ago
        Thanks for alerting me, indirectly, to the Spival pronouns. I think they're a good, minimalist approach to a fix, but agree they will look distracting until or unless they become commonplace. I guessed - correctly - it would be the same Spivak who wrote the excellent Calculus textbook.
      - eieio 14y ago
        Spivak pronouns have all the benefits of a singular "they" with all the drawbacks of introducing a new set of pronouns into an established language. My experiences with programmers tell me that getting a large group of people to change syntax is not easy.
        masterzora 14y ago
        Spivak pronouns do indeed come with drawbacks (as do all proposed solutions for gender-neutral language) but I put forth that said drawbacks are minimal. The pronoun set is intuitive to English-speakers and I've found that brief explanation, if any, has been required no more than once per person before they can easily grok my usages. I agree that from a perspective of getting more people to use them the drawbacks are greater but from the perspective of understanding the drawbacks are essentially non-existent.
        eieio 14y ago
        I agree with you: Spivak pronouns are definitely easy to understand. I just see getting more people to use them as key to having a standard third person gender neutral pronoun in English.
      - frobozz 14y ago
        One benefit that _they_ has over _e_ is that it is distinguishable from _he_ in those variants that tend to drop word-initial _h_. Another benefit that these novel pronouns can't pick up is that _they_ is the normal gender-neutral pronoun in use by native speakers, and has been so for centuries. The Spivak pronouns are not. If you have to explicitly teach pronouns to adult native speakers, or if using a pronoun requires deliberate thought, then there is something wrong. I can think of two drawbacks of the normal gender-neutral pronoun, but I can't see how they are solved by Spivak pronouns, in fact, one of them is much worse. 1) Some people think that singular _they_ sounds awkard. However, considering the Spivak pronouns are a novel coinage in a closed class of words, it's almost certain that more people would find them more awkward than the normal gender-neutral pronouns. 2) There is a possibility for ambiguity with the plural pronoun. However, I can't think of a situation in which it wouldn't also be ambiguous with an distinct singular gender neutral pronoun.
    - gte910h 14y ago
      Many people claim UFOs exist, but that's not backed up by historical English usage.
    - dsrguru 14y ago
      Those are the people that don't understand that "can" and "can't" in this context is just a matter of definition. If you want to try to slow the process of language change in order to make it easier for more people to communicate with each other in English for a longer length of time before English dialects diverge into mutually unintelligible languages, it makes sense to create one official dialect of English with prescribed rules and try to get authors to follow it, a la Strunk & White or almost all dictionaries besides the OED (the OED takes a descriptivist approach to definitions based on how people actually use English). However, the existence of standardization efforts should't mean that people are somehow speaking their native dialects "incorrectly." The fact that some prescriptivist decided not to include the singular "they" in his or her artificial dialect of standardized English doesn't make the singular "they" any more "wrong" in my idiolect of English than the existence of the RnRS standard would make other dialects of Scheme like Racket "wrong," regardless of how one defines "wrong" as long as its definition is held constant. In the same way, every English speaker alive today could be said to be speaking "grammatically incorrect" Old English or Proto-Germanic (an even older language that refers to whatever language existed way back in the day that all modern Germanic languages descend from), but there's no point in making a statement like this. That's why virtually all linguists take a descriptive approach to language and describe anything grammatical (as opposed to the phrase "grammatically correct" which would endorse the existence of a "right" and "wrong") if it sounds natural to native speakers. Unlike some linguists who love to see language change, I'm fine with people prescribing a standard and sticking to it for most written works, as long as they realize that it's just a standard and not some divine definition of "right" and "wrong." So feel free to use the singular "they" rather than artificial alternatives! Note: Some far left scholars of gender studies demand the adoption of artificial gender-neutral pronouns (as opposed to using the singular "they") for a very different purpose--to make transgendered and intersexed people no longer "oppressed" by the English language. That is, if you already know the person you're talking about, all natural dialects of English involve saying "he" or "she" did blablabla. However, if someone identifies their gender (haha doesn't that sound so much more natural than "his or her gender"?) as something other than male or female, current English runs into a problem. Such scholars often propose "zhe" and "zher" for subject and object/possessive. But here we are just discussing situations when you are referring to an individual (i.e. a programmer or "someone" in the case above where I used the natural sounding "their") whose gender is unknown. This usage of the singular "they" happens to cover transgendered people as well.
    - jholman 14y ago
      If epicene "they" (that is, "they" used for the purpose of gender-ambiguity) is good enough for Shakespeare, it should be good enough for any high school English teacher, or other small-minded prescriptivist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they#Generic_they http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they#Generic_they
      - masterzora 14y ago
        Not that your conclusion is wrong by any means but given that Shakespeare is well known for skillfully breaking and rewriting rules he's not really a good example to persuade prescriptivists.
  - Tloewald 14y ago
    For many years I insisted on using the grammatically correct he/she. While I sympathize with they, I cannot bring myself to use it.
    - FuzzyDunlop 14y ago
      Question: "Did you hear about that person on the radio before?" Potential answer A: "What about them?" Potential answer B: "What about him or her?" They, them, and their as singular pronouns aren't grammatically incorrect. What I find confusing about the issue that prompted this (using 'him' or 'her' specifically, and celebrating the choice of the latter over the former) is that it will inevitably come full circle, and be no less weird for it. Technology is too female-dominated, best invert the pronouns again to make it seem fairer.
      - Tloewald 14y ago
        "Them" is just as incorrect in your example. "I saw a patient today. Sad case." "Really, what was wrong with them?"
- kapilkaisare 14y ago
  Why do you consider using the feminine personal pronoun for programmers a Good Thing?
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
meej 14y ago
Other posters have already pointed out that the author is male; I wanted to add that it is quite common for academic computer science texts to use feminine pronouns. For example, the first slide from the following link has such an an excerpt from the classic _Operating System Concepts_ by Silberschatz and Galvin (aka the "dinosaur book"): http://main.metaprl.org/jyh/classes/cs134/cs134a/2000/slides/lec6/slides.pdf http://main.metaprl.org/jyh/classes/cs134/cs134a/2000/slides...

by _feda_ 14y ago

kat 14y ago

Original Author's Bio Robert L. Read lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and two children.

scarmig 14y ago

I've actually noticed only a weak correlation at best between gender of the writer/speaker and the generic pronoun e uses. It's pretty common for people of the progressive set to use the feminine personal pronoun for programmers generically, which is a Good Thing (tm).

FuzzyDunlop 14y ago
As opposed to the gender-neutral 'they', which is the Best Thing (that few people seem to realise).
- joshAg 14y ago
  Many people still like to claim that 'they' can only be used as a plural.
  - masterzora 14y ago
    I personally think it just sounds awkward. Spivak pronouns can pick up all of the benefits of a singular "they" without the drawbacks, though.
    - akavi 14y ago
      I would say the opposite, actually. "They" as a gender neutral singular pronoun is, to me, perfectly natural. I use it dozens of times a day as such without noticing. Spivak pronouns, on the other hand, are blatantly marked, and were I to come across them in writing or speech, I'd find them very distracting.
      - Tloewald 14y ago
        Thanks for alerting me, indirectly, to the Spival pronouns. I think they're a good, minimalist approach to a fix, but agree they will look distracting until or unless they become commonplace. I guessed - correctly - it would be the same Spivak who wrote the excellent Calculus textbook.
    - eieio 14y ago
      Spivak pronouns have all the benefits of a singular "they" with all the drawbacks of introducing a new set of pronouns into an established language. My experiences with programmers tell me that getting a large group of people to change syntax is not easy.
      - masterzora 14y ago
        Spivak pronouns do indeed come with drawbacks (as do all proposed solutions for gender-neutral language) but I put forth that said drawbacks are minimal. The pronoun set is intuitive to English-speakers and I've found that brief explanation, if any, has been required no more than once per person before they can easily grok my usages. I agree that from a perspective of getting more people to use them the drawbacks are greater but from the perspective of understanding the drawbacks are essentially non-existent.
        eieio 14y ago
        I agree with you: Spivak pronouns are definitely easy to understand. I just see getting more people to use them as key to having a standard third person gender neutral pronoun in English.
    - frobozz 14y ago
      One benefit that _they_ has over _e_ is that it is distinguishable from _he_ in those variants that tend to drop word-initial _h_. Another benefit that these novel pronouns can't pick up is that _they_ is the normal gender-neutral pronoun in use by native speakers, and has been so for centuries. The Spivak pronouns are not. If you have to explicitly teach pronouns to adult native speakers, or if using a pronoun requires deliberate thought, then there is something wrong. I can think of two drawbacks of the normal gender-neutral pronoun, but I can't see how they are solved by Spivak pronouns, in fact, one of them is much worse. 1) Some people think that singular _they_ sounds awkard. However, considering the Spivak pronouns are a novel coinage in a closed class of words, it's almost certain that more people would find them more awkward than the normal gender-neutral pronouns. 2) There is a possibility for ambiguity with the plural pronoun. However, I can't think of a situation in which it wouldn't also be ambiguous with an distinct singular gender neutral pronoun.
  - gte910h 14y ago
    Many people claim UFOs exist, but that's not backed up by historical English usage.
  - dsrguru 14y ago
    Those are the people that don't understand that "can" and "can't" in this context is just a matter of definition. If you want to try to slow the process of language change in order to make it easier for more people to communicate with each other in English for a longer length of time before English dialects diverge into mutually unintelligible languages, it makes sense to create one official dialect of English with prescribed rules and try to get authors to follow it, a la Strunk & White or almost all dictionaries besides the OED (the OED takes a descriptivist approach to definitions based on how people actually use English). However, the existence of standardization efforts should't mean that people are somehow speaking their native dialects "incorrectly." The fact that some prescriptivist decided not to include the singular "they" in his or her artificial dialect of standardized English doesn't make the singular "they" any more "wrong" in my idiolect of English than the existence of the RnRS standard would make other dialects of Scheme like Racket "wrong," regardless of how one defines "wrong" as long as its definition is held constant. In the same way, every English speaker alive today could be said to be speaking "grammatically incorrect" Old English or Proto-Germanic (an even older language that refers to whatever language existed way back in the day that all modern Germanic languages descend from), but there's no point in making a statement like this. That's why virtually all linguists take a descriptive approach to language and describe anything grammatical (as opposed to the phrase "grammatically correct" which would endorse the existence of a "right" and "wrong") if it sounds natural to native speakers. Unlike some linguists who love to see language change, I'm fine with people prescribing a standard and sticking to it for most written works, as long as they realize that it's just a standard and not some divine definition of "right" and "wrong." So feel free to use the singular "they" rather than artificial alternatives! Note: Some far left scholars of gender studies demand the adoption of artificial gender-neutral pronouns (as opposed to using the singular "they") for a very different purpose--to make transgendered and intersexed people no longer "oppressed" by the English language. That is, if you already know the person you're talking about, all natural dialects of English involve saying "he" or "she" did blablabla. However, if someone identifies their gender (haha doesn't that sound so much more natural than "his or her gender"?) as something other than male or female, current English runs into a problem. Such scholars often propose "zhe" and "zher" for subject and object/possessive. But here we are just discussing situations when you are referring to an individual (i.e. a programmer or "someone" in the case above where I used the natural sounding "their") whose gender is unknown. This usage of the singular "they" happens to cover transgendered people as well.
  - jholman 14y ago
    If epicene "they" (that is, "they" used for the purpose of gender-ambiguity) is good enough for Shakespeare, it should be good enough for any high school English teacher, or other small-minded prescriptivist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they#Generic_they http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they#Generic_they
    - masterzora 14y ago
      Not that your conclusion is wrong by any means but given that Shakespeare is well known for skillfully breaking and rewriting rules he's not really a good example to persuade prescriptivists.
- Tloewald 14y ago
  For many years I insisted on using the grammatically correct he/she. While I sympathize with they, I cannot bring myself to use it.
  - FuzzyDunlop 14y ago
    Question: "Did you hear about that person on the radio before?" Potential answer A: "What about them?" Potential answer B: "What about him or her?" They, them, and their as singular pronouns aren't grammatically incorrect. What I find confusing about the issue that prompted this (using 'him' or 'her' specifically, and celebrating the choice of the latter over the former) is that it will inevitably come full circle, and be no less weird for it. Technology is too female-dominated, best invert the pronouns again to make it seem fairer.
    - Tloewald 14y ago
      "Them" is just as incorrect in your example. "I saw a patient today. Sad case." "Really, what was wrong with them?"
kapilkaisare 14y ago
Why do you consider using the feminine personal pronoun for programmers a Good Thing?

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

meej 14y ago

Other posters have already pointed out that the author is male; I wanted to add that it is quite common for academic computer science texts to use feminine pronouns. For example, the first slide from the following link has such an an excerpt from the classic _Operating System Concepts_ by Silberschatz and Galvin (aka the "dinosaur book"): http://main.metaprl.org/jyh/classes/cs134/cs134a/2000/slides/lec6/slides.pdf http://main.metaprl.org/jyh/classes/cs134/cs134a/2000/slides...