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Comment by aiiane | Hacker News Reader

Am I the only one who is seriously tired of programming languages being compared to women?

I know you're probably well intentioned, but that and a number of other things in your post are pretty heavy on the stereotype side of things ("women = user friendly" and "put on a leash" are two other examples) and it's the kind of stuff that adds little bits of stress to my work day, which add up over time since there are plenty of guys who do stuff like that without really thinking or actively meaning harm.

You have some good points/language comparisons - could you phrase them in a way that doesn't create unnecessary implications?

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The most attention grabbing part of your comment was when you quoted him as saying "women = user friendly" and "put on a leash". His actual comment contains "I'm old enough to marry and put on my leash", referring to himself.

I understand why you didn't like his comment, but that doesn't justify the misquote. That being said, if you couldn't read his comment well, I understand. His comment's hex color is almost matching the background.

I think he should have gone with "a leash" instead of "my leash". The latter sounds like one is looking for an animal to put on their leash.

The common trope when it comes to associating leashes and marriage is wives having their husbands on leashes (and googling bears this out). If you think that the statement in that post was actually meant to refer to something other than the common trope, I'd be curious why.

If you do think it refers to the common trope, I'm curious why you think "my" versus "a" makes a difference.

Regardless, the point of the quote marks in that parenthetical was to denote common tropes that appear in his comment, not to use his exact language. I'm sorry that their usage was confusing.

> If you think that the statement in that post was actually meant to refer to something other than the common trope, I'd be curious why

Nope, we're in agreement there.

> the point of the quote marks in that parenthetical was to denote common tropes that appear in his comment, not to use his exact language.

Exact language can be important, especially when quotes are being directly sequenced. In this case, sequencing two quotes with different subjects, while modifying the second quote to be more subject agnostic, is problematic.

> I'm sorry that their usage was confusing.

No worries, sounds like you didn't intentionally modify the quote to redefine the meaning at all.

"Note: This is just an humoristic comment, don't take it too seriously.."

I don't have to take something seriously to find it tiresome.

I don't think you meant it in a mean way or serious way. The problem is that you are far from the first person to use these tired tropes, and it only takes so many "not too serious" comments before the pattern itself becomes the problem, not the individual comments.

Think of it like a speed bump - a single speed bump on your street isn't that big a thing, and isn't really a problem on its own. But if there was a speed bump every 5 feet along your street, that would get tiring fast - even though the basic concept of a speed bump isn't itself the problem, it's just the repetition that's the issue.

Despite the massive downvoting I will not delete the comment.

I have nothing to be shame of. I am not offending anyone. I am expressing an opinion (in a specific style) that I consider to add value and possibly help someone out there. It would certainly have helped me sometime ago when "adjusting" my career path and choosing a computer language to learn.

Don't take life so seriously that the world offends you.

> I am not offending anyone

I think that you are though. It might be a small bit of offence, but it all adds up: http://juliepagano.tumblr.com/post/46206589124/my-experience...

The analogy of "death by 1000 paper cuts" is really nice. The only problem is that "paper cuts" make part of everybody's life, you cannot avoid them. Anyway if you don't focus on them they will heal fast and make you stronger.

This isn't about offense. It's about stress.

You're basically telling people to not be stressed out when they're biking and cars pass them too closely, because the car had a reason to be on the road. "The car needed to get to the hospital. You shouldn't get upset about being passed." The thing is, it doesn't matter if the car had a good reason to be going fast and passing in narrow sections of the road - it's still going to stress a bicyclist out to get passed closely, regardless of whether it was malicious, and regardless of whether there was a good reason for it.

> (in a specific style)

Note that the style is what's irksome about the original comment, not the opinion. When you talk about the value of the opinion, and gloss over the style like this, I feel like you're failing to understand why people disliked your post.

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