Comment by hyperman1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hyperman1 | Hacker News Reader

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I'd love to be able to go to a model of: You like Rust? Welcome!

On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog. If you want to do something cool, I don't care if you're male/female/nonbinary/black/... You can be an purple with orange speckled snail, for all I care.

Now I've seen how e.g. some female gamers were treated, and it wasn't pretty. You should be able to play a game online, without being invited for sex or screamed at every few minutes. That kind of behaviour is very clearly not OK.

But neither is it OK for people to scream their sexual preferences around and demand my attention for it. Go ahead, fuck with who you want, but leave me out of it. Give me the permission to not care about your gender identity. Starting to scream at people because they think 'people who menstruate' is ridiculous, that's also not OK.

So please, do something cool, react if you notice something not OK. But also care for individuals, leave room for multiple opinions and don't start a witch hunt for any minor or even imagined faux pass. Live and let live.

There is an enormous and probably diverse online peanut gallery for Rust. I think the concern is more about the diversity of contributors - many of these people meet in person. So the dogs and purple with orange speckled snails will be found out as such. Making sure people feel safe both online and in meatspace is important.

There is also a huge amount of imposter syndrome kicking about. It's important to garden new contributors of all kinds to make sure the best people can grow. While I have no data, I'd easily believe that dogs and snails have way more and severe imposter syndrome than cis white hetero males. So if we do want to make sure that all kinds of people can break through there's little harm in keeping tabs on the issue.

There are probably other impediments to contributing that I don't even know about. They should also be found and addressed, right?

Yes, and...

In the 50s, 25% of software engineers were female; now, it's, what, 3%. Why is that?

The "meritocracy" position focuses on who can produce the best code _now_. What if we take a longer view?

I would love it if we planted the idea in 9-year-old girls' heads that Computer Programmer is a job they could do. That way, in 15 years, we'll have a broader talent pool.

I'm skeptical that is quantifiable. But would the "meritocracy" advocates accept some level of token hiring, at some level of reduction of quality now, in search of a greater meritocracy and greater quality in future?

To be honest, all jobs Ive done had plenty of woman in tech. I've had a woman in tech be my manager or my director. I've never counted stats, and maybe they tend to be more in analytical roles, but a female dev was never that abnormal for me. Maybe the 3% is more of an us thing?

Of course everyone should be able to choose the job they like. I am not going to purposely plant any ideas in anyone boy or girl. Let them sample everything and choose what they like. I am not going to push them.

And a level of token hiring to have more females? Sorry, that's nonsense. Why would someone female not be able to be the best? If you're scared of bias, put some woman in the intervieuw and ask them to review candidates. I've seen genius level woman who would program circles around most males(and most females). It is insulting if you think woman need lowering standards before they have a chance, even short term.

BTW, the biggest producer of 'female equals dumb' style jokes was a female programmer in my last job. Most of us males just ignored her when she started like that.

What country are you in?

In the UK, women aren't taking CS degrees. That's why I mention pedagogy. There's something in my country's culture that is planting the idea that girls don't code. "Planting ideas" is also the basis of teaching - it doesn't imply "pushing them" and it isn't opposed to "letting them sample".

I haven't come across any female devs at all in my company. We have diversity of skin colour and sexuality but not sex. So we haven't got any females to sit in on technical interviews.

Please, don't straw-man me as suggesting that female devs cannot be the best. My point is that there _aren't any_ female devs, and it looks like it's because girls _aren't interested_ in becoming devs, and here at least that is due to social conditioning afaics. You really missed my point there.

Keen to know what's different in your locale.

I don't understand what you're talking about. I've never come across someone in the Rust community screaming their sexual preferences, unless you think the occasional person mentioning it in their Twitter profile is a big problem.

I am not aware of anything specific in the rust community, and don't think I've ever read someone's twitter profile.

But there is a bigger movement around woke/lgbt, especially in the USA, and political parts of ict groups are very much subscribers to this view. I think it's weird for rust to even have stats about it, just like I would think rust to be weird to have stats about who is a coffee/thea/cola/nonternary drinker. It should not be relevant.

Feel free to write about your preferred drink in your Twitter profile. If you personally come over to me, I'll make sure to have that drink in my house, otherwise I'll perform the noble art of not giving a fuck.

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