I interpreted what he and I both said as a statement of the pointlessness of this ongoing debate that everyone knows has no end. That seems like an on-topic statement to make on HN, especially if it deters others from jumping on that perpetual bandwagon.
It's not really a debate, the FSF, which was founded by Richard Stallman considers BSD (and a lot of other permissive licenses) to be Free Software. Only people who are even more of a zealot than Richard Stallman disagree.
My feeling is that they're not more zealous (to be honest, I don't think there's anything wrong with being zealous when you're fighting for a good cause) but rather dilettantes who don't actually understand what FSF is about, or what the various licenses precisely mean. They just find the general aesthetics and rhetoric of FSF and RMS appealing and try to emulate cargo-cult style.
The problem with RMS is that he always assumes people to agree with his way of thinking. His uncompromising tone is also a big problem.
I know, programmers are supposed to be emotionless meritocratic robots, but this Old Boys Know Best attitude is precisely why RMS and GCC is losing user share so quickly these days: the extremist meritocracy of programming culture is actually highly male-centric, and it simply scares off all women and any men who are not sexists.
This is why LLVM is gaining so much support these days: it's technically superior, and its development community isn't sexist.
This isn't a problem with RMS. It's a fact of RMS, and such a well known fact that it practically defines him. People working on FSF projects tend to understand that.
If you actually read what RMS just wrote, or, for that matter, anything RMS has written in the last decade on similar subjects, it's clear that "losing user share" isn't a meaningful metric to the FSF. If you lose user share by strengthening non-free software, then there was no point to the FSF to begin with.
By starting your comment with "the problem with RMS", you might as well be pointing out "the problem with free software". Which, fair enough, but it's not like people didn't realize that non-free software could edge out free software on functionality or user-friendliness.
Why does have anything to do with sex? It's just confirming that people get discouraged too quickly by imperfect profiles and that men want to meet women.
What we need now is more focus towards females. Men are already sufficiently saturated in the maths/CS fields. What we need is to market the idea of maths as fun to more females.
As a woman, I would definitely use Project Euler more often if they came out with a pink version that was smaller and more ergonomic to suit my soft, feminine hands.
As a female math grad and CS postgrad, I would like to say firstly that you have successfully trolled me. I do hereby take your bait.
Now for the points I would like to make, primarily for the benefit of the few who actually think as you claim to think:
Women are actually similar to men in a number of novel ways.
We have eyes, and those eyes are intricately connected to very powerful and compact organic computers—capable of independent thought—called brains.
That's right, men and women can both have brains.
And those of us women fortunate enough to be blessed with brains are quite capable not only of independent thoughts, but even decision-making. And yet another way in which we women are similar to men is that each of us, as individuals, comes to have certain aptitudes, preferences and values.
Some of us, like myself, discover to their amazement that they can understand mathematics and even think mathematically about pretty much anything, and develop an interest in technology and computation because of the possibilities it opens up for mathematics and because of the ways mathematics can reflexively provide insights into computer science and programming.
Other women have an aptitude/preference for: polishing nails; answering telephones; designing cute little things that men can give to women at Christmas; and so on. Are women like myself a minority? Perhaps, but it isn't because we have to be shown things like maths and programming with striking adverts, responsive websites and pretty flyers.
I'm not going to pretend that society has been engineered into a patriarchy, over thousands of years, as part of a sinister plot by the Illuminati to preclude the success and independence of the children of the mother-goddess.
I'm likewise not going to pretend to think that there are men with power who purposefully keep women from rising up, or give preferential treatment to male candidates for scholarships/whatever without even realising it. Because ultimately I have no proof of such things and neither do I care about some male-dominant society, because in my experience, what matters is the talent; if you have it, if you have an original idea, a way how to implement it, or if you're simply the best at what you do, you will succeed if you want to, male or female. I do not care why my boss, my clients or my investors choose me, I just want the opportunity to do what I do best, what I like doing.
If you think women simply haven't been exposed to the magical and fun possibilities of mathematics and computers, think again. If women were ignorant to these fields and what they involve, they wouldn't laugh at you for being a "nerd" or date muscular/rich guys instead of you.
They know what maths is, and they know what programming is, and they'll never want to visit a forum and tell everyone how awesome it was when they elegantly solved some mathematical problems or came up with a new proof for some random theorem. They will on the contrary yearn to talk about shoes, interior design, literature, art, perfume, TV shows, movies, diets and so on.
The select few women who prefer mathematics/compsci and find it genuinely fun and inspiring were already posting on newsgroups, were already on IRC, were already subscribed to ars technica and slashdot on google reader, were already here; and they are already here; or they will be here in the future, or wherever else that such subjects can be discussed in the future.
It is not a case of marketing the idea to a mass of women who have no idea what makes their iPhone so useful, or how their cars' brakes are engineered. Women do not go to fashion forums and tell everyone about how much I wish I could expose men to the glories of haute couture. Women do not tell their nutritionists how much they wish they could entice their male friends with raw food diets and veganism.
There are the lost, unwashed masses who will never amount to anything, who will become a carbon copy of their parents and aspire to nothing beyond some repetition-of-basic-tasks job in an office or in retail, and the members of these masses are of both genders. You will fail to "market" math/compsci to these people, regardless of gender, because they cannot do it. Women who aspire to something and want to succeed do not generally want to do it with math and programming.
So, to all of you who think women need to have math/compsci marketed to them: kindly stop talking crap and just ignore the gender issue. It doesn't do you any credit. Women are here. We don't typically scream that we're women because why should we? We're just professionals or students trying to succeed and learn, no different to you gents.
If you want to encourage women to get into math/compsci, have a daughter and buy her a cheap laptop and "The C Programming Language" when she's young. If she takes to it, bang, she had an aptitude that would have gone unnoticed and you saved her from a life of instagram and film studies.
If she deletes some system folders she doesn't think she needs, watches make-up tutorials on youtube and checks facebook every 2 hours, you know you've got yourself a typical woman.
Protip: I don't think the statistics of how many women study math/compsci will be much different in the aforementioned compsci-introduced generation of daughters.
Kids don't magically decide that math or science or computer programming is fun. They're heavily influenced by what they're exposed to and what they see other people they respect doing. Yes, that's "marketing" or perhaps better call it education.
And no, giving a kid the "C programming language" isn't going to cut it unless they've previously had enough exposure to math or engineering to understand why it's interesting. (Based on what I've heard, Minecraft seems to be working a lot better.)
Okay, perhaps I am being subjective. I got into this stuff on my own, maybe exposure makes a difference for some. But let's face it, there's no objective reason why math/compsci/engineering should be interesting even after you understand it. It's not like you can just explain it x many times and suddenly a girl will be like "wow it's so amazing and deep and clever." You and I may appreciate it, but can you say why? Can you give me the fundamental reason why it should be interesting as a matter of fact? Besides, we're in the 21st century. Girls can expose themselves to whatever they want. I don't think programming and calculus are terribly obscure.
I'm not sure calculus is a great example for your argument. How many kids do you think would actually learn calculus on their own? It's something that most kids think is way beyond them and they don't even know what it is (other than a kind of math) until they actually study it in school.
And that's a standard subject taught in high school. I think if instead you look at why kids learn music or art or dance or drama or sports or a foreign language or religion, you'll find that the parents and relatives and friends often (not always) have a lot to do with it. And even with parental support, often the kids decide it's not for them. And that's fine; at least they got the chance.
I don't see computer programming as being all that different; not every kid is going to be into any given activity, but if they're not exposed to it in a way that makes it seem interesting, that's going to drastically reduce the number of kids who even try it. And that exposure is going to vary pretty dramatically depending on where you grew up.
Hey, wanda, you got quenlinlom's remark totally wrong.
He doesn't really want to saturate female's lives with more math and CS. He wants his math/CS life saturated with more females.
He's hanging out with the wrong mathematicians. Or the ladies have, um, made a judgment, and don't want to intimidate him by their superior STEM achievements.
CS is a sausage fest as we all know here on HN. What most HN readers don't know is around 46% to 48% of all math undergrad degrees in the USA have gone to women since the early 80s.
You can read some hilarious articles online about the "crisis" that women have declined to a mere 45% in some years. I make fun of it because my EE classes had zero female grads, everyone knows CS is a sausagefest, why I remember a decade ago in an advanced C++ class I got to work with "the" girl in the class, all true stories, but if there's one thing not to fret about, its that an office staffed by recent math grads (McDonalds? Applebees?) would have either 10 of each or at worst 11 men to 9 women, hardly a staggering imbalance like you see in CS/IT.
The disconnect may be a result of what schools people are familiar with. At (Carnegie Classification) Research I universities men make up 64% of math and stats majors, whereas at Masters I there is almost parity. These university types are #1 (~8000) and #2 (~6000).
Still even 64% is hardly EE at Research I (85% male), so your overall point stands.
Given that you've got some emotional disposition against "feminists" and "liberals" [1], I don't think I'm going to buy your implicit effort to try to represent women. There are plenty of women who believe gender is an issue worth thinking about, whereas you seem to have no problem telling people to just "ignore" it because you're personally comfortable ignoring it.
I don't think marketing tech to women or girls is "the solution" either, but I don't make every effort to steer other men away from thinking about it and slur people for trying. That's intellectually malicious.
A part of me doesn't actually believe you're a woman, given how many men put effort into anonymously impersonating women in political debates, but I lean toward believing you
there are plenty of women who think gender is an issue
Women being paid less for the same job is an issue. Sexual harassment is an issue. Women treated as secondary when it comes to promotions/scholarships is an issue. Gender is not an issue and I just dislike the implication that women cannot find their way into tech if they want to. Are we concerned that the infantry isn't 50:50 men:women? Not bloody likely.
If you think me bitter, you're wrong. I am just tired of the trend to think of women as people with "special needs". I am perhaps concerned with gender more, after all.
That's a pretty commonly used phrase, "The popular X opinion". However, I guess it would be more accurate to say "The opinion most commonly held by X". I still think you are being pedantic though.
It also says a lot about the current state of "feminism" (whatever no-true-scotsman definition of the word might take) is with regards to the coding community.
I mean, people can no longer discern if it's a troll or a sincere "feminist" any more without resorting to picking up obvious troll e-mail addresses. (And evern then, the dev of Light Table just accepted the troll pull request.)
I foresee both sincere and satirical efforts of such extremist "gender neutral" feminist edits to increase in the coming months after the libuv incident.
>Slashdot "OMG Ponies" April Fool's Day joke
REALLY?!