4 ms·

Hi, I don't know your gender either, but I know lots of F/OSS developers whose names and legally represented genders have changed, even in projects I've committ

by peri 12y ago

Hi, I don't know your gender either, but I know lots of F/OSS developers whose names and legally represented genders have changed, even in projects I've committed to. There's a fairly big mix of attribution errors available, and ignoring the presence of silent women, non-binary folks, and transgender developers hasn't made my communities more welcoming to those folks. Community building is very, very hard work and it involves a lot more than linking to classics like ESR's smart questions. In fact, in my experience, those responses tend to put off newcomers with backgrounds that are different than programmers like me (and presumably you) who have been tinkering in this community since the early 90s. YMMV, of course, but I think personalities are incredibly important and the most valuable thing you can do in building big communities is making sure that as projects grow they gain stewards, shepherds, or whatever metaphor you prefer that can welcome as well as gatekeep.

malandrew 12y ago
In fact, in my experience, those responses tend to put off newcomers with backgrounds that are different than programmers like me (and presumably you) who have been tinkering in this community since the early 90s. TBH, I have absolutely no problem if linking to an article like esr's smart questions it off-putting to some people. Meredith Patterson's "When Nerds Collide" best describes how I'd like to see our community grow: https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-collide-31895b01e68c https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-collide-31895b01e68c If esr's smart questions is off-putting, then you're probably bringing values into the community that I don't want to see become common, especially the value that you've made a solid attempt to help yourself before you asked others to help you. If you can't or won't do that, then you'll never ever succeed in this community and this profession/hobby, because constantly asking questions and answer them yourself is a fundamental skill. Linking to an essay like esr's might be off-putting to women, no-binary and transgender developers, but it's also off-putting to cisgender developers. It's off-putting to any one who has grown accustomed to letting others do the work for them and who haven't developed a thick enough skin to accept a FAQ as an indirect response to their request for help. Lots of things about our community are off-putting to people regardless of gender identity or orientation. I myself am pansexual, identify as agender, but come across as cisgender (mainly because I choose my clothing based on comfort, fit and simplicity (I pretty much have all the same clothes and only need to make a determination on the color, since varying color is sufficient to eliminate the judgement that I wear the same clothes everyday)). If the aspects of our community that Meredith describes in her essay is off-putting to some, that's a good thing in my opinion because I don't want a culture in tech that is so accommodating that it evolves into including so much of the rest of society that it develops into having a notion of intersectionality that no longer accommodates weirdos. I have on more than one occasion seen very capable engineers rejected as a candidate because one or more people interpreted their aspie behaviors and mannerisms as "creepy". For example, being aware and accommodating of the mind-blindness off others is as important as being aware and accommodating of the gender and gender identities of others. My personal experience has been that identity politics drives people apart. It used to be that when I came across someone of a different gender or gender identity as my own, I paid it no attention. What mattered was that we all had engineering and programming things to nerd out over. Now I don't like going to engineering conferences anymore because the environment of gender politics is palpable. Instead I've directed more energy and time to IRC and Github where people are focused on more interesting things like the qualities of someone's contributions (code and ideas) and not their identity. If there is no culture of constructivism and proofs, it's probably not a forum I have interest in. Most conferences no longer represent a culture of constructivism and proofs. Only conferences like StrangeLoop, RacketCon, ErlangFactory, etc. interest me these days. Since they don't represent language communities that are also an active job market (ruby, python, javascript, go, php, java), they don't suffer nearly as much from identity politics overshadowing the computer science.
- peri 12y ago
  Thanks for this comment. I think that we'd find each other in strident agreement, which is why I typically only go to smaller or more academically inclined conferences these days. That said: a lot of us have constructed our identities through exploration online, so the notion that IRC and GitHub are not expressive of personal identity sounds a little weird to me. It's very, very hard to actually separate identity from the developer, especially when it comes to activities like bug triage. I don't have a good answer, but I think there's an assumption that what we can measure necessarily is what is important, when what we measure in terms of programmers is often what's easy to measure.

by peri 12y ago

malandrew 12y ago

In fact, in my experience, those responses tend to put off newcomers with backgrounds that are different than programmers like me (and presumably you) who have been tinkering in this community since the early 90s. TBH, I have absolutely no problem if linking to an article like esr's smart questions it off-putting to some people. Meredith Patterson's "When Nerds Collide" best describes how I'd like to see our community grow: https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-collide-31895b01e68c https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-collide-31895b01e68c If esr's smart questions is off-putting, then you're probably bringing values into the community that I don't want to see become common, especially the value that you've made a solid attempt to help yourself before you asked others to help you. If you can't or won't do that, then you'll never ever succeed in this community and this profession/hobby, because constantly asking questions and answer them yourself is a fundamental skill. Linking to an essay like esr's might be off-putting to women, no-binary and transgender developers, but it's also off-putting to cisgender developers. It's off-putting to any one who has grown accustomed to letting others do the work for them and who haven't developed a thick enough skin to accept a FAQ as an indirect response to their request for help. Lots of things about our community are off-putting to people regardless of gender identity or orientation. I myself am pansexual, identify as agender, but come across as cisgender (mainly because I choose my clothing based on comfort, fit and simplicity (I pretty much have all the same clothes and only need to make a determination on the color, since varying color is sufficient to eliminate the judgement that I wear the same clothes everyday)). If the aspects of our community that Meredith describes in her essay is off-putting to some, that's a good thing in my opinion because I don't want a culture in tech that is so accommodating that it evolves into including so much of the rest of society that it develops into having a notion of intersectionality that no longer accommodates weirdos. I have on more than one occasion seen very capable engineers rejected as a candidate because one or more people interpreted their aspie behaviors and mannerisms as "creepy". For example, being aware and accommodating of the mind-blindness off others is as important as being aware and accommodating of the gender and gender identities of others. My personal experience has been that identity politics drives people apart. It used to be that when I came across someone of a different gender or gender identity as my own, I paid it no attention. What mattered was that we all had engineering and programming things to nerd out over. Now I don't like going to engineering conferences anymore because the environment of gender politics is palpable. Instead I've directed more energy and time to IRC and Github where people are focused on more interesting things like the qualities of someone's contributions (code and ideas) and not their identity. If there is no culture of constructivism and proofs, it's probably not a forum I have interest in. Most conferences no longer represent a culture of constructivism and proofs. Only conferences like StrangeLoop, RacketCon, ErlangFactory, etc. interest me these days. Since they don't represent language communities that are also an active job market (ruby, python, javascript, go, php, java), they don't suffer nearly as much from identity politics overshadowing the computer science.

peri 12y ago
Thanks for this comment. I think that we'd find each other in strident agreement, which is why I typically only go to smaller or more academically inclined conferences these days. That said: a lot of us have constructed our identities through exploration online, so the notion that IRC and GitHub are not expressive of personal identity sounds a little weird to me. It's very, very hard to actually separate identity from the developer, especially when it comes to activities like bug triage. I don't have a good answer, but I think there's an assumption that what we can measure necessarily is what is important, when what we measure in terms of programmers is often what's easy to measure.