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> It pisses me off to no end these developers have to out-think SQL and re-invent the whole damn new wheel for "efficiency's" sake. Worked with someone who did

> It pisses me off to no end these developers have to out-think SQL and re-invent the whole damn new wheel for "efficiency's" sake. Worked with someone who did this a couple years ago. I keep trying to get him to explain why he was reinventing sql, and never did get a clear answer to that. > just waggles their dick around saying Sorry to be the one to say it, but I don't think that part was necessary or appropriate to this community. Also, using the collective gender-neutral "their" in conjunction with dick waggling is just funny, now that I think about it.

icelancer 12y ago
It's more of a mental one than a physical one, but point taken.
peterwwillis 12y ago
How about 'flails their variously-gendered techno-boner' ? (Honestly, I don't get why foul language would be off-limits here, as long as you're not being rude)
criley2 12y ago
> in conjunction with dick waggling is just funny, now that I think about it. You understand that 'dick waggling' in this sense does not refer to the mechanical motions of a penis, right? That it's what we call in English a "euphemism"? The gender-neutrality of the subject makes perfect sense when you understand that this euphemism, unlike human genitalia, is not gender specific. In this case, "dick waggling" is a euphemism to mean "unwarranted bravado" or "unnecessary behavior performed only to prove that it can be accomplished".
- mmcwilliams 12y ago
  You understand that it isn't a "euphemism" as euphemisms are substitutions for vulgarity, not substitutions of vulgarity. Notice how the replacement you suggest, "unwarranted bravado," isn't blunt or vulgar? The term, as it was used, is a metaphor. As a metaphor, its imagery is fair game for criticism. As for the criticism itself, I think it stands as the phrase is unnecessarily gendered.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 12y ago
    I think the term you're both looking for is 'dysphemism'. (Edit: typographical error).
    - mmcwilliams 12y ago
      Actually yes, that's much more fitting.
throwaway981 12y ago
There seems to be a culture clash on HN. On one side there is California, where "dick wagging" is an unnecessary instance of gendered language, certain to drive women out of the tech industry. On the other side there's the rest of the world, where being offended by "dick wagging" seems dazzlingly childish. It's just a penis, most grown men and women know what they are and observe their motions on a daily basis. In Bhutan they draw penises on things for good luck. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phallus_paintings_in_Bhutan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phallus_paintings_in_Bhutan
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- ajuc 12y ago
  Avoiding gendered words as a recept for more women in IT seems very funny to me. My language forces you to add gender-dependent postfixes to every verb and noun. Nobody have a problem with that, and I think there's more women in IT here than in US. It's obviously not the source of problem. The source is people being jerks. You don't fix that by changing the non-jerks language (jerks won't care). In fact nonjerks weren't jerks because they treated women the same as everybody. When you embarass them into treating women differently (more carefully) it becomes more awkward and reminds women more often they are different here. Counterproductive IMHO. Regarding unnessesary vulgarity - it seems weird for me, no matter if it's gendered or not. But people use different styles of communication, that's the diversity people are so proud of. Regarding SQL - yes please. It's a perfectly good wheel, don't reinvent it without a really good reason.
  - aninhumer 12y ago
    >My language forces you to add gender-dependent postfixes to every verb and noun. If there's truly no gender neutral way of saying something, then I'd imagine that people always use one gender for generic cases, and as such it's not exclusionary. Which is different from having the option and not using it. >The source is people being jerks. Non-jerks being exclusionary is arguably far more of a problem than isolated jerks. If one person says "lol women suck at computers", they're obviously a moron, and can be dismissed. Whereas if everyone around you subtly assumes that all programmers are male, it's far more hurtful, because they're people that you respect. >When you embarass them into treating women differently Asking for gender neutral language isn't asking people to treat women differently.
jerf 12y ago
"I keep trying to get him to explain why he was reinventing sql, and never did get a clear answer to that." SQL embeds in itself certain fundamental assumptions about operating so deep that you can't even see them. For instance, despite frequently being referred to as a "relational" query language, it requires some violations of the original relational logic. One example: The original relational logic looks a lot more like a tuple store where rows can freely contain arbitrary columns than the rigid row schema format that SQL so throughly assumes. For another, it has no concept of sharding, or indeed any other particular data-oriented structure of the database, which is simultaneously one of its strengths (it has survived precisely by not baking in such assumptions) but is also one of its weaknesses. If your database is sharded, for instance, there's nothing particularly in SQL itself that will guide you towards understanding whether you're writing a query that will or will not cross shards. You just have to "know". In fact there's a great deal of things about SQL performance that aren't reflected in the language and you just have to "know". In theory, a new query language could potentially address these issues. In practice, what I've seen from "new" query languages has more to do with being "easy to implement" for the new store, and if that does or does not happen to meet any of these criteria, well wasn't that a happy coincidence. Someday I hope to see a well-considered sequel to SQL (no pun intended), but the way of thought that SQL affords has so thoroughly taken over the world that it is hard to see past it, much as it is hard to see past the von Neumann computer architecture into anything else. (I am not one of those people who think either von Neumann architecture or SQL are terrible and it all went wrong because we got stuck on them, but that's not to say they are the only way of doing business, either.)
- tedunangst 12y ago
  A variant of SQL that can adapt to variable column rows should certainly be possible, much as SQLite implements a sql variant with variably typed columns.
  - tupshin 12y ago
    Cassandra's CQL is an SQL variant/subset (albeit without joins, which don't scale out horizontally anyway) that is adapted to variable partitions with rows grouped into partitions. It addresses the problem of locality by embedding partition awareness into the query language.

icelancer 12y ago

It's more of a mental one than a physical one, but point taken.

peterwwillis 12y ago

How about 'flails their variously-gendered techno-boner' ? (Honestly, I don't get why foul language would be off-limits here, as long as you're not being rude)

criley2 12y ago

> in conjunction with dick waggling is just funny, now that I think about it. You understand that 'dick waggling' in this sense does not refer to the mechanical motions of a penis, right? That it's what we call in English a "euphemism"? The gender-neutrality of the subject makes perfect sense when you understand that this euphemism, unlike human genitalia, is not gender specific. In this case, "dick waggling" is a euphemism to mean "unwarranted bravado" or "unnecessary behavior performed only to prove that it can be accomplished".

mmcwilliams 12y ago
You understand that it isn't a "euphemism" as euphemisms are substitutions for vulgarity, not substitutions of vulgarity. Notice how the replacement you suggest, "unwarranted bravado," isn't blunt or vulgar? The term, as it was used, is a metaphor. As a metaphor, its imagery is fair game for criticism. As for the criticism itself, I think it stands as the phrase is unnecessarily gendered.
- TheSpiceIsLife 12y ago
  I think the term you're both looking for is 'dysphemism'. (Edit: typographical error).
  - mmcwilliams 12y ago
    Actually yes, that's much more fitting.

throwaway981 12y ago

There seems to be a culture clash on HN. On one side there is California, where "dick wagging" is an unnecessary instance of gendered language, certain to drive women out of the tech industry. On the other side there's the rest of the world, where being offended by "dick wagging" seems dazzlingly childish. It's just a penis, most grown men and women know what they are and observe their motions on a daily basis. In Bhutan they draw penises on things for good luck. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phallus_paintings_in_Bhutan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phallus_paintings_in_Bhutan

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
ajuc 12y ago
Avoiding gendered words as a recept for more women in IT seems very funny to me. My language forces you to add gender-dependent postfixes to every verb and noun. Nobody have a problem with that, and I think there's more women in IT here than in US. It's obviously not the source of problem. The source is people being jerks. You don't fix that by changing the non-jerks language (jerks won't care). In fact nonjerks weren't jerks because they treated women the same as everybody. When you embarass them into treating women differently (more carefully) it becomes more awkward and reminds women more often they are different here. Counterproductive IMHO. Regarding unnessesary vulgarity - it seems weird for me, no matter if it's gendered or not. But people use different styles of communication, that's the diversity people are so proud of. Regarding SQL - yes please. It's a perfectly good wheel, don't reinvent it without a really good reason.
- aninhumer 12y ago
  >My language forces you to add gender-dependent postfixes to every verb and noun. If there's truly no gender neutral way of saying something, then I'd imagine that people always use one gender for generic cases, and as such it's not exclusionary. Which is different from having the option and not using it. >The source is people being jerks. Non-jerks being exclusionary is arguably far more of a problem than isolated jerks. If one person says "lol women suck at computers", they're obviously a moron, and can be dismissed. Whereas if everyone around you subtly assumes that all programmers are male, it's far more hurtful, because they're people that you respect. >When you embarass them into treating women differently Asking for gender neutral language isn't asking people to treat women differently.

jerf 12y ago

"I keep trying to get him to explain why he was reinventing sql, and never did get a clear answer to that." SQL embeds in itself certain fundamental assumptions about operating so deep that you can't even see them. For instance, despite frequently being referred to as a "relational" query language, it requires some violations of the original relational logic. One example: The original relational logic looks a lot more like a tuple store where rows can freely contain arbitrary columns than the rigid row schema format that SQL so throughly assumes. For another, it has no concept of sharding, or indeed any other particular data-oriented structure of the database, which is simultaneously one of its strengths (it has survived precisely by not baking in such assumptions) but is also one of its weaknesses. If your database is sharded, for instance, there's nothing particularly in SQL itself that will guide you towards understanding whether you're writing a query that will or will not cross shards. You just have to "know". In fact there's a great deal of things about SQL performance that aren't reflected in the language and you just have to "know". In theory, a new query language could potentially address these issues. In practice, what I've seen from "new" query languages has more to do with being "easy to implement" for the new store, and if that does or does not happen to meet any of these criteria, well wasn't that a happy coincidence. Someday I hope to see a well-considered sequel to SQL (no pun intended), but the way of thought that SQL affords has so thoroughly taken over the world that it is hard to see past it, much as it is hard to see past the von Neumann computer architecture into anything else. (I am not one of those people who think either von Neumann architecture or SQL are terrible and it all went wrong because we got stuck on them, but that's not to say they are the only way of doing business, either.)

tedunangst 12y ago
A variant of SQL that can adapt to variable column rows should certainly be possible, much as SQLite implements a sql variant with variably typed columns.
- tupshin 12y ago
  Cassandra's CQL is an SQL variant/subset (albeit without joins, which don't scale out horizontally anyway) that is adapted to variable partitions with rows grouped into partitions. It addresses the problem of locality by embedding partition awareness into the query language.