> If you compliment Elon Musk for being good looking, he's not going to think that detracts from his abilities, and nobody is going to care. If you do the same

> If you compliment Elon Musk for being good looking, he's not going to think that detracts from his abilities, and nobody is going to care. If you do the same thing to Mayer, you'll create a firestorm; suddenly it's sexist and not being fair to her. I like that Musk will "not ... think that detracts", but Mayer is just figurehead for feminism. It's almost a textbook example of objectification. Here's the thing: as a feminist, I fully agree that it is okay to "openly drool over" sexy people. It's important to recognize that the overwhelming majority of us are sexual beings and that sexuality is a significant factor in how we look at people. The problem is when C-style languages are so pervasive that it's practically impossible to get a LISP in the door because all people see are the parentheses and not the actual value that the language adds on its own merits. That's changing these days, and people like Mayer can be acknowledged proudly on their capabilities as human beings. After all, C is just naturally closer to the operating system, and languages built on top of C are obviously faster. That will tell you all you need to know about the difference between the two language paradigms. It's true that stereotypes can fail to completely prevent someone from succeeding if they're ambitious enough and determined enough. But that doesn't mean that Gates didn't take licks for it. Maybe he really didn't care. Maybe he did. Short of him actually coming out and saying so, it's hard to know. Maybe he lost a deal because he seemed too nerdy and the other person didn't tell him and there was no social infrastructure to help put the possibility under consideration. Maybe he had subordinates who couldn't stand to take orders from a nerd and ended up walking off when he could have used their help. We can't tell, because there hasn't been enough scrutiny on the subject, and the amount of data available out of one person's career is meaningless. How many entrepreneurs make a pitch to VCs and get laughed out more because they didn't dress up than because their idea was terrible? It's hard to get that exact estimate. And of course it matters whether or not they dressed up. But why does it matter, and is the fact that it matters okay? Maybe that's a social justice fight we'll have to have in fifty years or five hundred years.