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I'm torn. I think she makes some really good points -- particularly about discouraging young girls and the futility of shoving adult humans into foreign social

• sillysaurus2 13y ago
  Maybe it's possible that there are plenty of people out there who care about "ephemera", and yet are also capable of programming a computer or soldering things together? I think it's possible. Sure, Jobs did. On the other hand, Woz was the tech genius, not Jobs. I've never heard of a tech genius who also cared much about the qualities you mention. This seems more than a coincidence. If it were, then there'd probably be at least one counterexample. Is there someone who is at the level of Woz or Blackwell who also cares about popularity, beauty, and fitting in?
  • timr 13y ago
    "Woz was the tech genius, not Jobs....I've never heard of a tech genius who also cared much about the qualities you mention." I hope you've considered that your worldly experience may not be comprehensive. I've known plenty of good programmers who care about all the things I mentioned. They just don't self-select with the Linux user groups of the world, so you're unlikely to come upon them if that's where you hang out.
    • sillysaurus2 13y ago
      To clarify, I asked for an example, not touted myself as the arbiter of worldly experiences. I also asked for an example of a programmer on the level of Woz. This is an important distinguishing quality, because otherwise there's no way to know how good a hacker actually is. Every story would be anecdotal instead of resembling factual.
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  • llimllib 13y ago
    > I've never heard of a tech genius who also cared much about the qualities you mention. How about von Neumann, famous for always being in an impeccably tailored suit? I hope he's genius enough for you. You don't even have to go past the very first hackers to find ones that care about those qualities. There are many, many other examples. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Personal_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Personal_life > Von Neumann took great care over his clothing, and would always wear formal suits, once riding down the Grand Canyon astride a mule in a three-piece pin-stripe. Mathematician David Hilbert is reported to have asked at von Neumann's 1926 doctoral exam: "Pray, who is the candidate's tailor?" as he had never seen such beautiful evening clothes.
    • sillysaurus2 13y ago
      Indeed! This is a great example, thanks.
      • timr 13y ago
        You should also stop and consider, for just a moment, that if the only stories that can convince you need to be famous, you're working in a very narrow space of human experience. It's a big world out there, and there are a lot of smart people who will defy your expectations.
        • sillysaurus2 13y ago
          Actually, it's not inherently about fame. It has to do with whether the hackers are skilled. Pg goes into why it's difficult to compare hacker skill in one of his essays, though I forget which. But the summary is that nobody knows who the most talented hackers are, because you have to work with them to know how talented they are. Therefore fame is the only metric that makes sense in this case to derive hard evidence. Fame is a proxy for many people having recognized their talent, and the original question was about talent.
          • timr 13y ago
  • woah 13y ago
    So it's a binary choice between being Richard Stallman and not programming at all? Your worldview is narrow.
    • herokusaki 13y ago
      By the same token your comment would suggest a binary choice between having a narrow worldview and not acknowledging very real trends (that hackers care less about dress and appearance than other professionals). That's an uncharitable interpretation.
• superuser2 13y ago
  >you also have an interest in social media and graphic design You added an "also." The criticism was of "women-in-tech" advocates who are solely "women-in-tech" advocates/PR people/designers and who are not programmers.
  • timr 13y ago
    Yes, that's fair. She does say "women who can't code", so perhaps I'm interpreting that particular sentence too broadly. That said, she does make more than one disparaging remark about "ephemera"...I think it's safe to read between the lines here and have a conversation about culture, given that a lot of capable people (men and women) are turned off by the traditional societal definition of "hackers".
  • krstck 13y ago
    I hate to include designers in that maligned category, because their work is actually extremely valuable. The existence of "women-in-tech" advocates who want other people to program (but not themselves) is baffling to me. Why do we need such people?
• Crake 13y ago
  >Maybe it's possible that there are plenty of people out there who care about "ephemera", and yet are also capable of programming a computer or soldering things together? Did you even read the article? The point she made is that feminists are trying to "fix" the gender ratio in tech by expanding the definition of hacker to people who have no idea what solder even is and have never printed a hello world in their life. >dismissing behaviors that she doesn't find valuable (in her words: "ephemera -- popularity, beauty and fitting in"). These things are in no way relevant to producing good code. They're completely orthogonal. >Are we defining "hacker" to include only people with bad social skills and no interest outside of technology? The only person putting forth that argument here is you.
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• bitwize 13y ago
  For the longest time I harbored the biggest crush on a girl from my high school. The thing that made me fall in love with her (and it was love -- as much love as a 14-year-old could feel) wasn't that she was pretty or cute or popular -- though she was all these things. (Head cheerleader. Literally. Dated a football player and everything.) It was that I had the good fortune to peek over her shoulder at some BASIC code she'd written in our completely noddy, intro-to-computers class. She wasn't going to put Grace Hopper to shame, but it was surprisingly well-structured and showed she knew how to reason about causes and effects within the machine. Which is, like, the first skill that you need to be a decent programmer. But the thing about pretty girls is that they often find it is more immediately profitable to be pretty than to be bright. And staying pretty and popular -- keeping that limelight on you -- is a lot of work. It's a full-time job with potentially ruinous consequences without some sort of balance (look at Miley Cyrus). So she eventually forgot about coding and went on to become a television personality. My point here is that you become what you invest time in becoming. If you want to ascend to elite-level hackerdom, then you almost have to put things like attractiveness and popularity on the back burner. You don't have to have poor social skills to be a hacker. But the people who are best at being popular and fitting in are the people who invested time and effort into doing just that, just like the best programmers are the ones who invested time and effort into programming. And we only have so much time to give, so yes, you kinda gotta pick and choose.
  • timr 13y ago
    "My point here is that you become what you invest time in becoming. If you want to ascend to elite-level hackerdom, then you almost have to put things like attractiveness and popularity on the back burner." No, you really don't. You believe this because it's what you've seen around you, but that's a selection bias. Someone else on this thread pointed out that Von Neumann was an exceptionally stylish guy, but he's far from the only example. Only in the peculiar little world of computer programming do we seem to equate slovenly behavior with competence. One of the great qualities of smart, capable people is that smart, capable people tend to have a lot of different interests. There's no reason that you can't be attractive and smart. "Specialization is for insects." -- Heinlein
• cheald 13y ago
  > I also think she might be rather narrowly defining the personality type of a "hacker", and dismissing behaviors that she doesn't find valuable (in her words: "ephemera -- popularity, beauty and fitting in"). I read that more as "where do your passions lie?" People have many interests, but few passions, and passions demand sacrifices. When push comes to shove, hackers will give up popularity and fitting in for the sake of hacking - not because they don't care about those things, but because they'd rather be hacking. Girls who are told that the most important thing for them is to be beautiful and popular are deprived of the opportunity to develop a passion for hacking, because their passion for popularity chokes out other competitors. I don't think it's harder to be a hacker if you're interested in social media or graphic design, but if you'd rather be tweeting about your latest logo design than figuring out how to fix a bug, you might not be a hacker.
• HedgeMage 13y ago
  > it makes me think: this might be a problem. Is it harder to be a hacker if you > also have an interest in social media and graphic design and popularity and > friendships? Are we defining "hacker" to include only people with bad social > skills and no interest outside of technology? I hope not. I never said any such thing. I didn't say "you are pretty, what are you doing here?". I said: >> you're not a programmer, what are you doing here?! I am a highly social hacker, and a polymath to boot. I have a vibrant love life, good friends from all walks of life, and plenty of non-coding interests: writing, reading, psychology, music, crafts (I do leatherwork, weave rugs, sew, do native american loomed seed beadwork, etc), backpacking, martial arts, and more. What I don't do is walk into a room and tell a woman who's good at something I'm not -- a dancer, for example -- that she's being graded not on her ability to dance, but on whether she looks like my idea of what a dancer should be. I don't demand that her math skills (something just as orthogonal to dance as fashion is to coding) be evaluated instead of her dancing. In my not-so-humble opinion, if you can't code, you don't get a vote on how it is or isn't okay to be a female (or any other) coder, period. Wave that "feminist" flag all you want, I'm not buying it. Women in generations before me didn't burn their bras so I could be judged on my fashion sense instead of my work.
  • arrrg 13y ago
    Which feminist told you to dress or look a certain way? No doubt, there are feminists in the margins who think that way, but the vast majority of feminists I’ve ever met or talked to would be absolutely abhorred and disgusted by someone telling you how to dress or look. That’s certainly what I think. Gender policing is disgusting. I’ve real trouble integrating what you are saying with what I’ve heard feminists say about the issues you are talking about.
    • Crake 13y ago
      >Which feminist told you to dress or look a certain way? In my experience, feminists are more obsessed with making sure other women are dressed "correctly" than just about any other demographic outside of conservative christian republicans. Have you never read an article by a feminist about X or Y movie character is demeaning to women because she dressed too sexy, or wore something that the feminist herself would never wear?
• einhverfr 13y ago
  > I think she makes some really good points -- particularly about discouraging young girls and the futility of shoving adult humans into foreign social situations -- but I also think she might be rather narrowly defining the personality type of a "hacker", and dismissing behaviors that she doesn't find valuable (in her words: "ephemera -- popularity, beauty and fitting in"). Also the ephemera are gateways to something less ephemeral: social contacts and human capital. I don't think this can be understated. Most women are social to a degree that most men will never be, and this is ok because being social is being powerful in every way that matters in day to day life. The thing is, I am not sure one can really be technical and social in the same moment. These are very different thought processes. Social context is fluid and changing, and it can't be directly measured. So these are different. It's funny. I suspect that my grandmother (who introduced me to computers and punchcards(!) would agree with everything in this article. Of course she mostly programmed in Fortran relating to her work in astrophysics (a field she entered in 1964). > it makes me think: this might be a problem. Is it harder to be a hacker if you also have an interest in social media and graphic design and popularity and friendships? I do think that brain cycles are finite, and while I am male I tend to find that if the very things that make me good at solving certain sets of technical problems can make me socially out of touch at times.