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The comments on this thread make me want to quit HN for good. I don't know Linda but I volunteered at RailsGirls in SF this past weekend. It was a wonderful ex

The comments on this thread make me want to quit HN for good. I don't know Linda but I volunteered at RailsGirls in SF this past weekend. It was a wonderful experience and I'm hoping to organize one here in my area. I've got 4 kids (3 girls, 1 boy) and we do everything from LEGOs to making movies to programming to SnapCircuits to building robots. I'm excited about this book. Even if I wasn't, I honestly can't imagine anything bad/wrong coming out of its existence. It's good to know many of you can. A woman who already speaks and organizes events is writing and illustrating a children's book about programming–and some of you sit and criticize her motives, pedagogy, and presentation skills from your desks. Bravo. I generally don't swear, but some of you are jackasses.

run4_too 13y ago
Thanks for this comment. I thought I was the only one feeling this. I'd say this is a perfect example of why there aren't more women in computers. From what I've seen, a lot of women have a low tolerance for this level of overt critique, regardless of whether the critique is correct or not. There is nothing horrible about this project that warrants a negative view, particularly one that doesn't present any alternative.
- hendzen 13y ago
  > From what I've seen, a lot of women have a low tolerance for this level of overt critique, regardless of whether the critique is correct or not. Please stop talking.
  - run4_too 13y ago
    Why? Do you find that uncomfortable? A lot of women do. So do a lot of men. Computer science is filled with people on the poor side of "social skill set", and that rubs a lot of people the wrong way. That's why there are less women in the field - they simply aren't going to tolerate a default reaction that is insulting first and helpful only if you ignore the attitude. Don't get me wrong, we turn off a lot of people - men and women - because of this, but we lose a lot more women, percentage wise. And just a note: The irony of you telling me to "please stop talking" is, well, perfectly suited to the topic of our conversation.
    - rimantas 13y ago
      You know, I think that socials skills are lacking those who are easily offended by anything.
      - run4_too 13y ago
        Agreed and disagreed. It's not healthy to be permanently offended, but presenting an idea and being told that it isn't good (by someone presenting no alternative) or that you have ulterior motives (by readers of a website directed to startups of all things) isn't something someone should need to deal with.
        derefr 13y ago
        > presenting an idea and being told that it isn't good (by someone presenting no alternative) ... isn't something someone should need to deal with. I might be visualizing a different conversational domain than you are, but I'm not sure about this. For example, when you build a bridge, there's a clear, objective line of quality somewhere above "the bridge stays standing." If I know enough about physics to see that your bridge won't stand, that doesn't mean that I also know enough about architecture to propose my own bridge -- but it doesn't have to; the knowledge that design X is fatally flawed is useful in its own right.
        run4_too 13y ago
        >For example, when you build a bridge, there's a clear, objective line of quality somewhere above She isn't building a bridge, she's writing a story for children. The failure point is that nobody likes her story and therefore it doesn't sell. That's the absolute worst thing that can happen. Not a single child will be so critically scarred from her story that they never learn programming. Yet it may resonate for some. There is no point to critique when the downside is so unbelievably inconsequential and the plus side is beneficial to a person, other than simply being an ass.
        derefr 13y ago
  - ahuth 13y ago
    Thanks for contributing, hendzen. Downvote.
    - GFK_of_xmaspast 13y ago
      What, you can't take a little bit of someone else getting a little bit of overt critique?
Confusion 13y ago
So downvote and move on. You're not adding anything on topic with this meta comment and you could have foreseen it would hijack the top spot. To add insult to injury, you're being drama-royalty: just because a few nobodies level unfounded criticism at her is not reason to "quit HN for good". Or you would've quit long ago. And instead of rubbing their face in their dumbness by explaining to them how wrong their criticism is, you're just going to stand on a soapbox and complain in general about how annoying the world is. Do something about it! And no, what you have posted is not doing something about it.
- MartinCron 13y ago
  There's nothing wrong with voicing concern about the state of a community that you care about.
  - shangxiao 13y ago
    No there isn't, but the tactic was questionable (imho)
  - Confusion 13y ago
    There is definitely something wrong with doing that with a top-level comment. It distracts from the actual topic. You should only do that if you have a very good reason, such as noting the same behavior multiple times on multiple topics. You should certainly not do it within two hours after the article was posted, to allow time for selfcorrection. That is the point of the voting system. There is also something wrong with doing it in an appeal-to-emotion fashion, threatening how this is 'almost making you leave'. You should clearly address the problem at hand, citing examples and explaining the problem, instead of hiding the actual problem that the fuss is about in the third paragraph. Too little content, too much drama.
    - MartinCron 13y ago
      You should only do that if you have a very good reason, such as noting the same behavior multiple times on multiple topics A top level comment seems to be the only appropriate place to discuss the overall tone or tenor of a conversation. Responding to each dismissive/negative/unconstructive comment seems redundant and annoying.
shangxiao 13y ago
I felt that the criticism was actually kind of light with the majority in support of the book.
- tinkerdol 13y ago
  Agreed. And since when is criticism a bad thing, esp. on HN? Especially since most of it here seemed meant to start a discussion, as in "I'm not sure this is the best way to teach programming, wouldn't X be better." I thought this would be a worthwhile discussion to have as opposed to only useless "OMG this is the BEST thing ever" comments.
- callmeed 13y ago
  The initial comments appeared to me to be skewed toward criticism that was negative and/or tangential to the book's goals. It appears to have improved somewhat.
GuiA 13y ago
On the contrary, I'm very glad that HN is as critical as it is. Is it the Only Correct Worldview? Absolutely not, and if you rely primarily on HN to forge your opinion of tech and startups and programming, you're going to be very cynical and blasé. I'm sure that if Donald Knuth posted a "Show HN: I've been writing a book called The Art of Computer Programming", half of the comments would be negative (a fair lot of them would likely be about programming isn't an "art" and how it's preposterous to call it one). And so what? Again, I don't see this as a problem unless you hold HN to be some sort of ultimate source of information and discussion, which it is absolutely not. But given how insufferably pompous SV culture can be at times ("Yeah we're changing the world with our totally rad app, and building the most amazing engineering team in the world"), I actually find it refreshing how comments on HN will try to pick anything apart and find whatever flaws it may have. It can be borderline ridiculous at times, but honestly so is everything else. tl;dr if you're sick of HN, you're probably spending too much time on it
- callmeed 13y ago
  I'm all for criticism that involves actual analysis and attempts to be constructive. That's not what I saw/see here. "Show HN" posts are specifically for criticism because (a) the OP asks for it and (b) we can actually put our eyes/ears/fingers on the product in question. This is a Kickstarter page for a product that hasn't even shipped yet. Instead of "I hope they cover loops", we get "she is odd in front of a camera" and "too many alarm bells". And BTW, I'm all for picking apart "insufferably pompous SV culture"–in fact, I'd love to make some spoof startup videos doing exactly that. That's just not what I'm seeing here.
  - manish_gill 13y ago
    No. The truth is that you're being overly defensive. > I'm excited about this book. Even if I wasn't, I honestly can't imagine anything bad/wrong coming out of its existence. So we should all make smiley faces and exclamation marks and ZOMG children will learn coding because "nothing bad can come out of its existence"? > (a) the OP asks for it Oh I'm sorry, I'll never criticise anything ever again if OP doesn't ask for it! > (b) we can actually put our eyes/ears/fingers on the product in question. Dude/Dudette, that is literally the Kickstarter model. Are you saying a page explaining things about the book, with a video is just there for fun? Maybe I should give every kickstarter some money because hey, nothing bad/wrong can come out of their existence and I'm not allowed to criticise it since I can't put my ears/fingers on the product in question. > Instead of "I hope they cover loops", we get "she is odd in front of a camera" and "too many alarm bells". It'll be a pretty boring Maths book if all they cover are integers, strings and variables. And yes, she did look odd in front of the camera. And I'm allowed to say that in this comment. Because she created it and put it up on Kickstarter. You want universal acceptance and love? I got some bad news for you... And btw, the video was actually bad. Sorry. > And BTW, I'm all for picking apart "insufferably pompous SV culture"–in fact, I'd love to make some spoof startup videos doing exactly that. That's just not what I'm seeing here. I see a lot of pompousness in this post too. Lets be reasonable. It's a freaking children's book. The author is a well established member of the development community and works for one of the most well known programming tutorial website. One can presume that they would have the time and money to start working on a book which has lots of drawings. People were writing books before Kickstarter existed you know. But of course, how dare I criticise anything about those cute drawings. Think of the Children!
Karunamon 13y ago
WTF is this crap? Have we gotten so deep into the PC weeds that any criticism of something a woman does is de-facto sexist/incorrect?! If the (rather mild) contents of this thread are what you're hemming and hawing about, please make good on your threat, leave and take the horse you rode in on with you.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- mkdir 13y ago
  Whenever a woman is criticized in a remotely harsh tone, you will find men who instinctively rush to her aid. Men who will pat her on the head, compliment her, and apologize on behalf of everyone. Don't blame women for this phenomenon (and I'm not saying you are); blame those men who view women as fragile children in need of protection.
clark-kent 13y ago
I believe the critiques are just a more vocal minority, most of us that think this is awesome, will simply upvote the topic without leaving a comment. This is even more common on HN where one-line comments like +1, awesome, great is frowned on.
- oe 13y ago
  To be fair the comments were pretty grim for the first hour. Positive comments seem to take more time? I'd hate to be the author and see that kind of response.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
davidw 13y ago
As the father of a nearly 6 year old girl, my first reaction when seeing the nice drawings and "programming for kids" was "COOOL! How much? Let me get my wallet out!". But then I saw "32 pages", and... yeah, that flipped my skeptic bit too. 32 pages is fine, but what am I getting there? An extremely broad but shallow overview? A few concepts explained... how? A neat story about how cool computers are? I don't really get a good sense of what all is covered in the book. Any of those things might make a fine book that I would buy - I really like the art shown - but "computer programming for kids" in such a short book just doesn't sound realistic.
- leoc 13y ago
  The old Usborne computer programming books got a lot done in about 50 pages. But then they were quite textually dense, and by no means perfect as teaching tools either https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7110676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7110676 .
  - davidw 13y ago
    Yeah, 50 pages of text might get you something. 32 pages of mostly drawings gets you... The Gruffalo ( http://www.amazon.com/Gruffalo-Julia-Donaldson/dp/0142403873?tag=dedasys-20 http://www.amazon.com/Gruffalo-Julia-Donaldson/dp/0142403873... ), a popular book for kids that we also own. So there's nothing wrong with the format, but just don't over promise in terms of what it is.
    - e12e 13y ago
      It's 32+16 pages, which totals 48... so if you're happy with 50, it's a bit strange to be upset about 32 pages of story and 16 pages of activities? edit: It's much shorter than 50 pages full of text -- but I think this project looks great, especially for the target audience. IMNHO there's a pretty thin line between children's books like this, and when those actually interested (and a little older, maybe) can get started with any old programming book (many of the Ruby and Python books should work fine -- if we could learn 68000 asm in a foreign language from a magazine at 12, surely most of the "proper" books should be within reach of a motivated 10 year old?). What's needed is some books and materials to make the field interesting and fun to get into.
SaneMethod 13y ago
Must we really always find something to be critical of? Upvote the comments you think are worthy, ignore the rest (or indeed, just read the articles and ignore the comments altogether). Comments about comments are an all too common contribution to noise in the SNR of the internet (and my apologies for contributing thereto! An effort at future signal clarity). To all: Please avoid posting comments critical of critical comments, which in turn attract critical comments - down that road lies madness (and stack overflows).
SPSteinbeck 13y ago
eat shit

run4_too 13y ago

Thanks for this comment. I thought I was the only one feeling this. I'd say this is a perfect example of why there aren't more women in computers. From what I've seen, a lot of women have a low tolerance for this level of overt critique, regardless of whether the critique is correct or not. There is nothing horrible about this project that warrants a negative view, particularly one that doesn't present any alternative.

hendzen 13y ago
> From what I've seen, a lot of women have a low tolerance for this level of overt critique, regardless of whether the critique is correct or not. Please stop talking.
- run4_too 13y ago
  Why? Do you find that uncomfortable? A lot of women do. So do a lot of men. Computer science is filled with people on the poor side of "social skill set", and that rubs a lot of people the wrong way. That's why there are less women in the field - they simply aren't going to tolerate a default reaction that is insulting first and helpful only if you ignore the attitude. Don't get me wrong, we turn off a lot of people - men and women - because of this, but we lose a lot more women, percentage wise. And just a note: The irony of you telling me to "please stop talking" is, well, perfectly suited to the topic of our conversation.
  - rimantas 13y ago
    You know, I think that socials skills are lacking those who are easily offended by anything.
    - run4_too 13y ago
      Agreed and disagreed. It's not healthy to be permanently offended, but presenting an idea and being told that it isn't good (by someone presenting no alternative) or that you have ulterior motives (by readers of a website directed to startups of all things) isn't something someone should need to deal with.
      - derefr 13y ago
        > presenting an idea and being told that it isn't good (by someone presenting no alternative) ... isn't something someone should need to deal with. I might be visualizing a different conversational domain than you are, but I'm not sure about this. For example, when you build a bridge, there's a clear, objective line of quality somewhere above "the bridge stays standing." If I know enough about physics to see that your bridge won't stand, that doesn't mean that I also know enough about architecture to propose my own bridge -- but it doesn't have to; the knowledge that design X is fatally flawed is useful in its own right.
        run4_too 13y ago
        >For example, when you build a bridge, there's a clear, objective line of quality somewhere above She isn't building a bridge, she's writing a story for children. The failure point is that nobody likes her story and therefore it doesn't sell. That's the absolute worst thing that can happen. Not a single child will be so critically scarred from her story that they never learn programming. Yet it may resonate for some. There is no point to critique when the downside is so unbelievably inconsequential and the plus side is beneficial to a person, other than simply being an ass.
        derefr 13y ago
- ahuth 13y ago
  Thanks for contributing, hendzen. Downvote.
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 13y ago
    What, you can't take a little bit of someone else getting a little bit of overt critique?

Confusion 13y ago

So downvote and move on. You're not adding anything on topic with this meta comment and you could have foreseen it would hijack the top spot. To add insult to injury, you're being drama-royalty: just because a few nobodies level unfounded criticism at her is not reason to "quit HN for good". Or you would've quit long ago. And instead of rubbing their face in their dumbness by explaining to them how wrong their criticism is, you're just going to stand on a soapbox and complain in general about how annoying the world is. Do something about it! And no, what you have posted is not doing something about it.

MartinCron 13y ago
There's nothing wrong with voicing concern about the state of a community that you care about.
- shangxiao 13y ago
  No there isn't, but the tactic was questionable (imho)
- Confusion 13y ago
  There is definitely something wrong with doing that with a top-level comment. It distracts from the actual topic. You should only do that if you have a very good reason, such as noting the same behavior multiple times on multiple topics. You should certainly not do it within two hours after the article was posted, to allow time for selfcorrection. That is the point of the voting system. There is also something wrong with doing it in an appeal-to-emotion fashion, threatening how this is 'almost making you leave'. You should clearly address the problem at hand, citing examples and explaining the problem, instead of hiding the actual problem that the fuss is about in the third paragraph. Too little content, too much drama.
  - MartinCron 13y ago
    You should only do that if you have a very good reason, such as noting the same behavior multiple times on multiple topics A top level comment seems to be the only appropriate place to discuss the overall tone or tenor of a conversation. Responding to each dismissive/negative/unconstructive comment seems redundant and annoying.

shangxiao 13y ago

I felt that the criticism was actually kind of light with the majority in support of the book.

tinkerdol 13y ago
Agreed. And since when is criticism a bad thing, esp. on HN? Especially since most of it here seemed meant to start a discussion, as in "I'm not sure this is the best way to teach programming, wouldn't X be better." I thought this would be a worthwhile discussion to have as opposed to only useless "OMG this is the BEST thing ever" comments.
callmeed 13y ago
The initial comments appeared to me to be skewed toward criticism that was negative and/or tangential to the book's goals. It appears to have improved somewhat.

GuiA 13y ago

On the contrary, I'm very glad that HN is as critical as it is. Is it the Only Correct Worldview? Absolutely not, and if you rely primarily on HN to forge your opinion of tech and startups and programming, you're going to be very cynical and blasé. I'm sure that if Donald Knuth posted a "Show HN: I've been writing a book called The Art of Computer Programming", half of the comments would be negative (a fair lot of them would likely be about programming isn't an "art" and how it's preposterous to call it one). And so what? Again, I don't see this as a problem unless you hold HN to be some sort of ultimate source of information and discussion, which it is absolutely not. But given how insufferably pompous SV culture can be at times ("Yeah we're changing the world with our totally rad app, and building the most amazing engineering team in the world"), I actually find it refreshing how comments on HN will try to pick anything apart and find whatever flaws it may have. It can be borderline ridiculous at times, but honestly so is everything else. tl;dr if you're sick of HN, you're probably spending too much time on it

callmeed 13y ago
I'm all for criticism that involves actual analysis and attempts to be constructive. That's not what I saw/see here. "Show HN" posts are specifically for criticism because (a) the OP asks for it and (b) we can actually put our eyes/ears/fingers on the product in question. This is a Kickstarter page for a product that hasn't even shipped yet. Instead of "I hope they cover loops", we get "she is odd in front of a camera" and "too many alarm bells". And BTW, I'm all for picking apart "insufferably pompous SV culture"–in fact, I'd love to make some spoof startup videos doing exactly that. That's just not what I'm seeing here.
- manish_gill 13y ago
  No. The truth is that you're being overly defensive. > I'm excited about this book. Even if I wasn't, I honestly can't imagine anything bad/wrong coming out of its existence. So we should all make smiley faces and exclamation marks and ZOMG children will learn coding because "nothing bad can come out of its existence"? > (a) the OP asks for it Oh I'm sorry, I'll never criticise anything ever again if OP doesn't ask for it! > (b) we can actually put our eyes/ears/fingers on the product in question. Dude/Dudette, that is literally the Kickstarter model. Are you saying a page explaining things about the book, with a video is just there for fun? Maybe I should give every kickstarter some money because hey, nothing bad/wrong can come out of their existence and I'm not allowed to criticise it since I can't put my ears/fingers on the product in question. > Instead of "I hope they cover loops", we get "she is odd in front of a camera" and "too many alarm bells". It'll be a pretty boring Maths book if all they cover are integers, strings and variables. And yes, she did look odd in front of the camera. And I'm allowed to say that in this comment. Because she created it and put it up on Kickstarter. You want universal acceptance and love? I got some bad news for you... And btw, the video was actually bad. Sorry. > And BTW, I'm all for picking apart "insufferably pompous SV culture"–in fact, I'd love to make some spoof startup videos doing exactly that. That's just not what I'm seeing here. I see a lot of pompousness in this post too. Lets be reasonable. It's a freaking children's book. The author is a well established member of the development community and works for one of the most well known programming tutorial website. One can presume that they would have the time and money to start working on a book which has lots of drawings. People were writing books before Kickstarter existed you know. But of course, how dare I criticise anything about those cute drawings. Think of the Children!

Karunamon 13y ago

WTF is this crap? Have we gotten so deep into the PC weeds that any criticism of something a woman does is de-facto sexist/incorrect?! If the (rather mild) contents of this thread are what you're hemming and hawing about, please make good on your threat, leave and take the horse you rode in on with you.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
mkdir 13y ago
Whenever a woman is criticized in a remotely harsh tone, you will find men who instinctively rush to her aid. Men who will pat her on the head, compliment her, and apologize on behalf of everyone. Don't blame women for this phenomenon (and I'm not saying you are); blame those men who view women as fragile children in need of protection.

clark-kent 13y ago

I believe the critiques are just a more vocal minority, most of us that think this is awesome, will simply upvote the topic without leaving a comment. This is even more common on HN where one-line comments like +1, awesome, great is frowned on.

oe 13y ago
To be fair the comments were pretty grim for the first hour. Positive comments seem to take more time? I'd hate to be the author and see that kind of response.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

davidw 13y ago

As the father of a nearly 6 year old girl, my first reaction when seeing the nice drawings and "programming for kids" was "COOOL! How much? Let me get my wallet out!". But then I saw "32 pages", and... yeah, that flipped my skeptic bit too. 32 pages is fine, but what am I getting there? An extremely broad but shallow overview? A few concepts explained... how? A neat story about how cool computers are? I don't really get a good sense of what all is covered in the book. Any of those things might make a fine book that I would buy - I really like the art shown - but "computer programming for kids" in such a short book just doesn't sound realistic.

leoc 13y ago
The old Usborne computer programming books got a lot done in about 50 pages. But then they were quite textually dense, and by no means perfect as teaching tools either https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7110676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7110676 .
- davidw 13y ago
  Yeah, 50 pages of text might get you something. 32 pages of mostly drawings gets you... The Gruffalo ( http://www.amazon.com/Gruffalo-Julia-Donaldson/dp/0142403873?tag=dedasys-20 http://www.amazon.com/Gruffalo-Julia-Donaldson/dp/0142403873... ), a popular book for kids that we also own. So there's nothing wrong with the format, but just don't over promise in terms of what it is.
  - e12e 13y ago
    It's 32+16 pages, which totals 48... so if you're happy with 50, it's a bit strange to be upset about 32 pages of story and 16 pages of activities? edit: It's much shorter than 50 pages full of text -- but I think this project looks great, especially for the target audience. IMNHO there's a pretty thin line between children's books like this, and when those actually interested (and a little older, maybe) can get started with any old programming book (many of the Ruby and Python books should work fine -- if we could learn 68000 asm in a foreign language from a magazine at 12, surely most of the "proper" books should be within reach of a motivated 10 year old?). What's needed is some books and materials to make the field interesting and fun to get into.

SaneMethod 13y ago

Must we really always find something to be critical of? Upvote the comments you think are worthy, ignore the rest (or indeed, just read the articles and ignore the comments altogether). Comments about comments are an all too common contribution to noise in the SNR of the internet (and my apologies for contributing thereto! An effort at future signal clarity). To all: Please avoid posting comments critical of critical comments, which in turn attract critical comments - down that road lies madness (and stack overflows).

SPSteinbeck 13y ago

eat shit