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> First, I infer the gender of users from their usernames and the information provided on their profiles, labeling users as feminine, masculine, ambiguous, and

• TMWNN 2y ago
  many
  • cjbgkagh 2y ago
    While transgenderism is by no means common, it is unusually frequent in programmers, and by my observation even more so in more productive programmers who are more likely to be selected if selecting people from code written. The ‘programmer socks’ meme does appear to have some merit.
    • ambicapter 2y ago
      This sounds like complete anecdata. Just because jart is skilled at coding doesn't mean there is a statistically high proportion of trans people in the "skilled coders" demographic.
      • rileymat2 2y ago
        There are statistical studies that find Autism Spectrum Disorder is over represented in both trans and computer programmers. It is likely that this is more than anecdata. And trans are also over represented because of this connection.
        • jancsika 2y ago
          Have a link to the studies?
          • rileymat2 2y ago
            https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11127512/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11127512/ >There is an elevated co-occurrence of autism in trans individuals, with recent meta-analyses suggesting that 11% of trans individuals are autistic. The presence of autism in trans young people can create clinical challenges by adding complexity to the presentation, assessment and management of those presenting to gender clinics. Although many trans young people display traits of autism, how these traits relate to the nature of their gender diversity is unclear. https://sites.asee.org/se/wp-content/uploads/sites/56/2021/04/2018ASEESE30.pdf https://sites.asee.org/se/wp-content/uploads/sites/56/2021/0... >Despite the study’s limitations, the initial pilot data gives reason for additional research to be conducted. Similar to Wei, Christiano, Yu, Blackorby, Shattuck, and Newman’s 9 findings, this study also supports the commonly accepted assumption that individuals with ASD are very likely to major in Computer Science. --- And to clarify, I did not vet these, it was a very lazy google search.
        • aaabaaava 2y ago
          That fits with the common observation that men who identify as women typically understand women even less than other men, and often have some oddly inflexible and sexist ideals of womanhood - because their ASD traits make it difficult to understand people generally and can lead to underinformed mental models of the world around them, including human behavior.
      • noman-land 2y ago
        Definitely anecdata but I can +1 that all sorts of people outside the mainstream enjoy safety in online communities because of the anonymity. This has always been a draw since the early internet up through now. You can rise through the ranks of open source using only your words and your code.
      • Jensson 2y ago
        If you just look at women and not men then it could be possible. Among the competitive female gamers the top spots with most overall money winnings are all trans, you have to go down a few spots to find a born female. Of course there are hundreds of men with similar winnings as those trans women, but point is that among extreme successes there can actually be way more trans women than other women.
    • wakawaka28 2y ago
      That sounds like some kind of bias. First of all transgenderism does not seem to me to be more frequent in programmers. I've seen a handful out of like hundreds in the past few years. There might be more of a tendency to seek attention among trans people, or perhaps people like that stand out in your mind as memorable. If you see lots of trans people where you work, they may very well be hiring or at least referring each other. I've seen that phenomenon with gay people too. Once in a while you'll run across a business with a lot of one kind of person.
      • cjbgkagh 2y ago
        I am to take your handful as 5 and hundreds as say 200, that is 2.5%. Which is far more than 0.5% for the general population so it appears on that point we agree. My cohort is the category theorists / functional programming crowd which indeed has a higher percentage of trans people in it than even other programming cohorts. But this is not due to a hiring ring, they lack the numbers.
        • wakawaka28 2y ago
          No more like 3 out of 500. I think you might be kinda right in most cases that they lack numbers for extensive hiring rings but anyone gay-adjacent is likely to relate to them. They are also more likely to have a leg up when it comes to getting hired at big companies because of their obsession with DEI. As far as work quality, I think assuming trans people are better in some way is the same kind of fallacy as assuming autistic people are geniuses like Rain Man. Most of them probably aren't.
          • cjbgkagh 2y ago
            Geniuses are more rare than autistic people so while it is safe to assume that most autistic people are not geniuses it’s still very possible that a genius is much more likely to be autistic than the general population. You’re using a conditional probability incorrectly to straw-man your fallacy. By my observations geniuses are very likely to be on the spectrum. At least 50%. I really don’t know what the normal programmer experience is like, I exited the labor market before the DEI stuff really got traction. My rule of thumb is, of all the code that I’ve seen that I’ve been impressed by, it’s far more likely to be written by a transwoman than a non-trans woman by a significant margin. A disappointing observation for a straight male who had aspirations of dating a hacker-girl. Additionally the more impressive the code the higher percentage likelihood of transgenderism, I do think high IQ, autism spectrum / ADHD, and transgenderism are rather correlated.
• shiroiushi 2y ago
  >Similiarly, there are many males who present with a feminine username and profile for various reasons, such as a desire to be female. If you could actually get accurate data identifying which programmers are actually male or female, and which male programmers desire to be female, I wonder if you'd see a quantifiable difference in their code compared to regular males.
  • defrost 2y ago
    The premise is that "Women code differently, but no worse .." ie. Stylistic differences likely arising from in-group dynamics, cross reading, pair programming, etc. As such there's likely no implicity { transgender, male, female } style, more various styles that are more pronounced in groups that cluster, be that male programmers, female coders, transgender hackers, google devs, etc.
  • Supermancho 2y ago
    > such as a desire to be female. ...or more often to capitalize on the short term, early benefits (attention, leniency, opportunity, etc) often offered to women. This (males using a female name + character) is a common practice in multiplayer games.