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Three reasons. First, I want to justify and contextualize the work in the hopes of promoting more like it. Second, stereotype threat is ameliorated by explicit

• gajomi 13y ago
  I only skimmed the article until I saw "lein new", so I have no comment on anything before that. But I did want to say that I liked the explanation of the tree structure with the English language example. I think I might steal it. With the respect to framing the article (or others like it you might write in the future) I wonder if you might be able to find a rhetorical strategy that responds to nicolethenerds' criticisms by writing for a specific person who is also a woman rather than groups like Women Who Code. As long as it was somehow clear that it was indeed a woman that you were writing for (I hope you have a female friend who is curious about Clojure!), you might be able to satisfy your three intentions. Necessary disclaimer: I am a guy and I have no expertise. I am just thinking out loud.
• theGimp 13y ago
  "Who is this guide for" usually talks about a certain level of experience or familiarity with different components or systems. I don't see why you'd put anything about gender there. I am not a woman, but I'm sure a woman would be just as frustrated as me reading that section and going "oh come on, tell me if I should read this article based on what I know, not what sex I am."
  • calibraxis 13y ago
    I know females in tech explicitly annoyed by the usual statements which start, "I am not a woman, but I'm sure a woman..." Same goes for white folk presuming to speak for people of color, wealthy elites speaking on behalf of the poor, etc. People who are systematically worse than ignorant. (And BTW, these same people I know occasionally mention HN as a cesspool of reactionary ideologies, mythologies about how the tech/startup industry actually works, and general absurdity. So like most places online, beware the comments section. Then again, it's a great place to discuss the latest nontechnical thing DHH said.)
    • chongli 13y ago
      I know females in tech explicitly annoyed by the usual statements which start, "I am not a woman, but I'm sure a woman..." Same goes for white folk presuming to speak for people of color, wealthy elites speaking on behalf of the poor, etc. I think it's safer to say that anyone would be annoyed by being treated in a condescending manner.
      • metermaid 13y ago
        I can't tell if you're trying to broaden the statement or disagreeing, but I find it more condescending when someone outside my minority is presuming to speak for it than when someone acknowledges the systematic discrimination that we face.
    • deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    • newnewnew 13y ago
      It sounds like the most important piece of information that you need to judge a person's ideas is the list of which protected groups they belong to.
• threeseed 13y ago
  You may have good intentions but this article was condescending, destructive and self-serving. You keep reinforcing these stereotypes about IT that (a) women aren't capable, (b) men are antagonistic towards women (c) they will never be promoted or accepted amongst their peers and (d) there is rampant sexism. These stereotypes are not pervasive, not unique to just IT and simply don't exist at many types of companies in particular many enterprises. But don't worry women despite all of this you have come to save the day with a beginner's Clojure article that will gain you the respect of your peers. Give me a break.
  • mythz 13y ago
    Give yourself a break. If you don't like how others are trying to raise awareness or encourage women in IT, then get off your high-horse and do something yourself that you do agree with. Sitting there lambasting others' efforts does nothing to improve the situation.
    • andrewflnr 13y ago
      I'm getting really tired of this "go do something else" argument/excuse. Doing something constructive yourself is not always a solution for someone else doing something destructive. It's like the tu quoque fallacy, only good for getting someone to shut up, proving nothing. Heaven forbid we should try to prevent something bad from happening.
  • lbarrow 13y ago
    Mentioning that stereotypes exist isn't the same thing as reinforcing them.
    • nicolethenerd 13y ago
      Sure - except in this case the author was. By declaring women, minorities, and LGBT folks the target audience of this Clojure tutorial - it implied that they wouldn't be just as well served by a "regular" Clojure tutorial (even though, as far as I could tell - this actually was just a regular Clojure tutorial). I understand that the article was trying to be welcoming, but the attempt just fell flat on its face.
• e12e 13y ago
  That's an admirable sentiment, but I personally find the section confusing. Perhaps the loose paragraphs that talk about non-white, non-straight and female could be condensed down to something that didn't seem quite as condescending and actuallly was a little more clear -- and put after a paragraph or two that talk about what you are expected to know to benefit from the text? I don't really mind "being left out" as a straight white male that's been into hard sciences and computers since I was six (before then it was all dolls, if I am to judge by our family albums) -- but it does strike me as a little strange to read an entire page about "who's this for" and still not getting any real information other than that if I were slightly gay, I'd be more in the target audience? What does that even mean? As a side note, I've never heard the tech/science community nor higher education was discriminating on sexual preference -- race and gender (as largely a function of wealth and old bias) -- yes -- but there's a gay issue as well? If true that's sad, and I'm glad to be made aware of it -- but I still think the entire about-page could do with a rewrite.
• laureny 13y ago
  The simple fact that you have to defend this section should be reason enough for you to just remove it since it distracts from the rest of your document. You don't realize it but your words are extremely condescending toward women, you might want to ask someone to help you understand what your position about this really is, because from what I read so far, you certainly seem to believe all these stereotypes about women being less capable than men in the computer area, you just happen to be in strong denial about it.
  • girvo 13y ago
    > you certainly seem to believe all these stereotypes about women being less capable than men in the computer area, you just happen to be in strong denial about it. I certainly don't think that follows from what he has written at all. While I can certainly appreciate your objective point, and even agree with it, you're making the same mistake you're accusing the writer of: generalisation based on limited information, at least in my opinion. I think the section is misguided, and conflating two points (the gender gap in programming is unlikely to be because of the lack of "female targeted" tutorials). But I am not so sure it follows that the author is misogynistic.
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
• newnewnew 13y ago
  My math and CS classes usually had a lot of non-white students and some female students, and they seemed to do just fine. Some even appeared to be in the top of the class. It didn't seem that Math was "harder for them". I think you should check your assumptions.
• icambron 13y ago
  > I want to challenge implicit assumptions about the audience of technical writing. I think this is the problem other people are picking up on. Implicit in the idea that you need special technical explanations targeted to women is some notion that women have difficulty with "regular" tutorials. What is that notion? Is there a gender bias to most technical explanations? If so, how does it work, and how is this different? Perhaps there is something, but it needs to be stated and applied. Without making your "we need explanations specifically targeted to women" theory explicit and robust, you just come off as saying "women need tutorials, so I made you one", which is why it comes off as condescending. Worse, since the tutorial seems perfectly "normal", it's easy to think you're just name-checking a concern as intro boilerplate and then writing a totally unrelated thing about Clojure. The thing is, it's good article about Clojure. It can stand on its own, and women will read it because it's useful and because they want to know about the language. Perhaps they do need a tutorial, but not because they're women.
  • girvo 13y ago
    > Is there a gender bias to most technical explanations? If so, how does it work, and how is this different? There is a possible answer to this. I'm just thinking out loud here, but hear me out. There is a huge gender gap when it comes to programming, as we are all well aware of. A lot of tutorials (even some of the more basic ones, I struggled a lot when trying to move on from "hello world", and "Animal -> Dog" style OOP into actual programming, and this tutorial seems to address that (I've not read it yet, so I hold my judgement). If those two assumptions hold, then it could be argued that: due to the gender gap, we can assume that females who are starting from scratch may not have the base knowledge for "regular" tutorials to fit them properly. Now: This may not be true. And usually I'm the first to argue that gender, race, etc. should have no impact on technical writing and knowledge sharing. However, nearly every other tutorial in the worlds body of knowledge is written gender neutral, and the gender gap remains. That statement could be said to be conflating two issues; Somehow I don't feel like tutorial writing is the missing link to fix the gender gap in our industry. But it was interesting to think about, for me at least.
    • icambron 13y ago
• patricius 13y ago
  An honest question: Why is it so important to have more women in IT? Is it in pursuit of general gender equality?
• jcromartie 13y ago
  I can't imagine what I'd have to change in my technical writing in order for women to understand it, because I already assume that women are equally capable of understanding it.