"GM foods are and will continue to be a great leap forward in sustainable, scalable agriculture."
I see a lot of data that contradicts that statement, time and again. Is that a general feeling you have on the subject and/or does that get backed up by published numbers ?
So you state that from your POV his language reflected that women are not people too ??? That is really great, that you had to make a throw away account to put that out there, it reflects a lot about you trying to raise issue with something you create a strawman for on the first line of your comment. "If we asked the author..." and than you present an imaginary author giving an 'apology'. That is abysmally poor and you had to protect your regular account because of it.
In no way does he ever objectify his girlfriend and you just project to no end. Where does he exclude "the idea of female programmers completely". Maybe in the same way that he excludes the idea of "dead rhinos", because it isn't the point. The point his, he is excited about his girlfriend wanting him to teach her about programming and wrote about it. Go rain on someone elses parade.
To your other point, there is nothing polite about insulting others with sexist labels. The 'polite criticism reminds people woman are people too' tirade... ending with the "and you all know that"/"some folks", is just priceless and telling passive aggressive form after preaching against the bad male sexist programmer that should watch his language.
Well, this happened to be my first comment; not a throwaway account.
I was attempting to be fair to the author, assuming his best intentions. A strawman on my part would have been to assume the worst intentions of the author.
Nowhere did I claim the author was objectifying his girlfriend. Who is projecting here, exactly?
Sexist labels? Tirade? I wasn't upset in my comment at all, nor did I label anyone. You seem to be offended, but you have failed to describe why, or to ask for explanation on my part. You have accused and judged me without quantifying your arguments in the slightest. I hope you didn't see my comment as an attack on yourself, or an attack on men, as feminist arguments are often mistaken to be). I'm sorry if I offended you, but I think I deserve a more fair and constructive dialogue than the one you've provided.
It's out of place that you try to insinuate others are angry after using so much passive aggressive vitriol. It is laughable that you try 'appeal' to constructive dialogue after moving the goal posts so much. I will provide proof of what I state with just one instance of what you typed because I already am wasting way too much time with this.
When you said "Nowhere did I claim the author was objectifying his girlfriend." to deny my remark that you did it. Well, you should read your own posts. The one where you write "and he's doing it at the expense of his girlfriend"... there, you can backtrack all you want. I am sure you will try. Sorry if it burns but those are your own words, next time just avoid going back and forth in writing. If yours isn't a throw away account you will probably not do well around here but I am sure it is. Stay well and goodbye.
But anyways, because some other person who happens to be a man and is in a relation with a person that happens to be a woman may feel like teaching her some basic programming and a title that ports this situation to a possible reader elicits a stronger connection. That and "How a humam should teach another human partner how to program" would be very daft.
On twitter, he says that he thinks gender neutral language is boring. You seem to have the same opinion. I'm sorry that including me as part of a potential audience is boring to you, and yes I find that sexist.
You are purposely finding sexism in that. When people on HN use female pronouns as gender-neutral "... CEO ... she ..." I don't immediately assume only women are capable of that position. And when they write "he" I don't assume that women are incapable.
You are part of the potential audience, the girlfriend in the article is meant to represent every non-programmer (male and female) and he is meant to represent every programmer (male and female), and you full well know that. You are being ridiculous by asserting that everyone who doesn't write in the style you prefer is sexist.
I think it was a stupid article, but the only part remotely close to sexism was where he only described male programmer friends.
I didn't agree with anything anyone said on Twitter. Sorry, but you are mistaken on that opinion you believe I share. Don't know why you would go about imagining that I am aligned in any way to anything that I did not read.
Also, there is nothing wrong with gender neutral language, it just doesn't apply to something that is told in the first person. If you find that to be not inclusive enough for you ande a standard to judge what you read, that is your own inner workings. It will just make you loose out on a lot of great books. Either way, others don't have to externalize the same things or put up with your labeling, that would be very odd.
I didn't say you specifically agreed with what he said on Twitter. I categorised your suggestion that using gender neutral language would be 'daft' together with his idea that it would be 'boring'. If you want to, go ahead and explain why these are such different ideas that I should not have done so.
The article wasn't written in the first person, it was written as instructional and in the second person (I vs you). Writing in the second person is generally an attempt to connect with an audience. Language choices such as using gender neutral pronouns and references can be made to connect more or less with different audiences, and this author rejected them because it wasn't worth it to him. I do not like his decision not to bother including me as his targeted audience. If you don't like that I don't like that, well that is your own inner workings, why does it bother you so much when I want to be included?
Why do you feel so excluded? I feel quite capable of empathising and responding to written content whatever the distribution of genders. One of the joys of consuming human culture is letting yourself be put in the position of others, whether or not (or maybe especially if) they don't match your gender. The fact that the guy was teaching his girlfriend was an important data point to him, its part of the piece, but no need to feel excluded.
I said it was daft in the context of his recount. You seem to miss important parts and move the goal posts a lot there and the passive agressive reuse of others language and the cherry picking stuff ain't my thing at all, so I will leave you going at it alone. I do not wish to engage at that level at all.
I see where you are going with that. But he does write from his own perspective and doesn't set out to approach your specific concerns. In his case I hope his girlfriend doesn't teach him about medicine at all so he doesn't get any ideas. Except for the real basic parts, because who knows, that could be useful at some point. But not because he is a man, of course.
Having read the article, I think it would be good for you to quote something out of it that is blatantly sexist. So that your comment doesn't equal a mixed insult to the writer based on a general feeling you had at times.
Why is it "teach your girlfriend"? Why does he presume that his audience has a girlfriend who needs to be taught, rather than a boyfriend? You can't say "well he has a girlfriend so he wrote it like that" because he's not talking about him in the title, he's talking about you - he's presuming you have a girlfriend who needs to be taught, and that's sexist. I don't think it's the crime of the century, but I do think less of the guy.
Let's not let facts get in the way of political correctness, shall we? /sarcasm
Audience = programmers. Programmers = at least 90% male. I don't know what proportion have girlfriends, but we can always hope the number is pretty good.
Mostly because some other person who happens to be a man and is in a relation with a person that happens to be a woman may feel like teaching her some basic programming and a title that ports this situation to a possible reader elicits a stronger connection. That and "How a humam should teach another human partner how to program" would be very daft. I don't see anywhere in there, where it is stated that a girlfriend needs to be taught. Would it be ok if it was "teach your boyfriend" ? Where are you going with this ? You think that title is sexist because he says he has a girfriend that he will be teaching ?
Added in response to : 'It wouldn't be sexist if he wrote "how I taught my girlfriend to program". Imagine if it said "how to teach your black friend to program". Why only black friends?Why only girlfriends?'
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Sorry, trying to mix race in this just to raise issues is simply not going to fly with me.
He has a girlfriend and wants the world to know they both are geeks that want to do something together. There is no plural in that title unlike the way you distorted it, it is a common way to use the infinitive, what is your problem with that, can't you just read it for what it is. Don't you see there simply isn't traction for a sexist cavalcade on some guy that is over the moon because he found someone that will put up with his 'teaching'. How can you miss something so simple to the point you are trying to project discrimination on some couple doing something together.
There's a difference between girlfriends and black friends. (Hint: are you having a close, sexual relationship with all your black friends?) Therefore it's appropriate to distinguish between your girlfriend versus regular friends. It is not appropriate to distinguish between black friends and your regular friends. If he had written about teaching your female friends to program I would see that as full-on sexist. As it stands you are seeking to be offended and you found something offensive which is unsurprising.
I think you should pickup openGL/webGL instead of that other stuff, if you are serious and not trolling. Because I really can't tell at this point in the thread.
No trolling whatsoever. My day job is as a web developer, so I really meant it when I said I wish I could do cool things like this, but given the fact I work a 9/10 hour day, 5 days a week and have family and freelance commitments learning something as complicated as this isn't really within my capability at the moment.
I'll just remain appreciating what these developers have been able to do from a distance until I can learn the basics myself. Programming these games is only half the work, it's the art direction, storyline and mechanics that make up the other 50% of the work to make a game in any language or framework.
Ok, thanks for the follow up. It can be easier and less daunting than it looks, and I totally get your description on how you feel about it at this point. Having your background in webdev you are closer to being able to do it than you may think.
If you take a look at something like the Haxe language (hard ECMA influence so not that far away from javascript) with its OpenFL framework, there are these: https://github.com/dazKind/foo3Dhttps://github.com/wighawag/openfl-stage3d
The first produces html5 and abstracts a lot of the complexity of the low level that other approaches are based on. The second is more c++ oriented at this point. Hope it helps, or at least leads you to finding your own path to doing it. It also allows you to escape some of the js madness that happens when you interact with this stuff for browser output. It allowed me to get to a level of production that I could not imagine possible just by looking at the opengl stuff.
That was surprisingly good, 'weak' start but tied it well in the end. If you are reading the comments to check if it's worth the time, it slides well through the time it takes. And it will speak to you, because it does what a good short should do. It makes you think.
Trying to paternalize on a subject this central isn't going to work. We are far from the era of central media control supported McCarthyism. If you want to play it like it is unimportant, you end up looking compromised by coming up with no valid counter arguments. If you don't care what others express in a smart concise way and attempt a one liner like that, why would others care about your lateral failed attempt to discredit the source. Stay well.
In a way I find it rather unfortunate that gmo's lack of self termination is being given a beneficial spin of sorts, maybe because we are now balls out with this "hey, it's a conjoin real world test either you like it or not" approach from PR. Reading through it actually sobers up the title effect.
