Coding Horror: Sex, Lies, and Software Development

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001253.html

by Anon84 • 17 years ago

17 29 17 years ago

jballanc• 17 years ago

I wonder if Jeff worked somewhere across the pond if he'd be writing the same article. I think people underestimate just how puritanical America is compared to most of the rest of the (non-theocratic) world.

SamAtt• 17 years ago

The point of the article is just to say that some people will consider working on a porn project to be a negative and that could have an impact on your programming career.

So while I understand that U.S. citizens in general are more puritanical than places overseas I also believe there are people overseas who are just as puritanical as the majority in the U.S. And those people might be responsible for doing the hiring in overseas companies.

Which, to me, means the article's point is universal.

yason• 17 years ago

What's universal is that you can never please everybody at once, and you should never try to. You can't be yourself much less do anything of slightest importance without considered negative by at least some people.

Also, what other people find negative and positive is certainly out of your control.

jrbedard• 17 years ago

True, I've spent a few months in Europe for the first time last fall after a life-time in US&Canada. It's quite interesting how people and organizations are more open-minded regarding "adult" discussions and demonstrations. It shows right away with the advertising billboards you see coming out of CDG airport. And if you walk around Nice, Canne or Monaco. When you talk to the people there, even they know about the puritan aspect of the US that shows in mainstream Hollywood movies or american TV censoring where the mature content is far outweighted by gratuitous violence.

teej• 17 years ago

> I think people underestimate just how puritanical America is.

I would guess that the average US public opinion and the special-interest groups that "guide" the media greatly differ. American Family Association I'm looking at you.

biohacker423• 17 years ago

Bingo. If I see resumes like the ones he describes, I wouldn't blink if it was ultimately to serve porn or gambling.

I do agree with Jeff that you should care what the ultimate value of your work is.

But I don't think standard business apps are more purposeful then porn, they are both commercial enterprises and don't have any great spiritually transcending qualities.

I care about biotech and robotics. And if you want to change the world though business apps or social websites that's great!

But don't pretend that porn-IT work is somehow intrinsically less admirable then any other run of the mill coding job that pays the bills.

gaius3• 17 years ago

But I don't think standard business apps are more purposeful then porn, they are both commercial enterprises and don't have any great spiritually transcending qualities.

Well exactly. I work in online gambling, have done for 3 years now. At my interview they asked me, do you have any problem with working here? I just laughed and told them I'd been working in foreign exchange for 5 years.

Should I ever want to go back to the City, I would have no problem at all listing my present employer on my CV, indeed, I would fully expect any potential employers to be impressed (particularly since our transactions/sec dwarf most stock exchanges!)

kingkongrevenge4• 17 years ago

> how puritanical America is

Heard this lots; never seen much evidence or experienced it in my travels. I think it's unchallenged BS.

I mean, the sale of rated music CDs to 16 year olds is controlled and enforced in the UK. There are a bunch of American movies that are close to banned in Europe, but none of the reverse.

As for "sexual liberation", major US cities and major European cities are no different.

MaysonL• 17 years ago

Just talking about this with a friend last night who went to Paris a few years ago.

On the road in from the airport she was somewhat surprised by the billboard (advertising orange juice) showing a family - mom, dad, young teen daughter, and about 9 year old boy: full frontally nude.

The next day, at about noon, she was surprised by the appearance on the boob tube of Linda Lovelace in Deep Throat.

biohacker423• 17 years ago

I can tell you my personal and entirely unscientific experience.

When I first got of the plane years ago, to go to college in the US, the US culture struck me as deeply puritanical. I can't put it into exact words, but there was clearly a big difference compared to Europe.

I spoke with other immigrants and they felt the same thing. The best a Brazilian friend and I could come up with was that it was like everyone got stuck in that very awkward phase when you're 12-13 and just switching from hating the other sex to being uncomfortably attracted to it.

It seemed to us that somehow Americans just never outgrew that uncomfortable phase, which Europeans and Brazilians outgrow by the time we're 16 at the latest.

Again, this is just personal and subjective evidence.

And I just remebered something much less subjective. Here's some empircal evidence.

I remember watching The Abyss on basic cable, this again shortly after I came to the US. And at one point Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio's character is out and needs a defibrillator and her boob falls out.

I distinctly remember being genuinely surprised that it was blurred, it was such a nothing! Not a sexual scene, just one boob and someone went through the trouble of blurring it, a profoundly silly thing. I did not expect the US to be that puritanical.

dkarl2• 17 years ago

Most American women I've slept with are writhing bundles of sexual issues and neuroses. I don't have much experience with non-American women, but they've all (might as well say both, not exactly a statistically significant sample, but what the hell) been completely different. It's hard to describe how different it is to be with a woman who doesn't see sex as a tragic minefield that we're dropped into by fate and biology, who instead thinks that the worst-case scenario of sleeping with you is that she might not enjoy it and will be a little tired at work tomorrow.

RiderOfGiraffes• 17 years ago

Consider the half-time Super Bowl incident with Janet Jackson's "costume malfunction". Those Europeans I've spoken with who know about it are somewhere between bewildered and amused by the fuss that caused. There's a real sense of non-understanding as to why it was such a big issue.

For reference, I'm neither American (North or South) nor European.

Raphael_Amiard• 17 years ago

As an european guy, this article sounded very weird, even if very interresting.

I understand the shortcomings about working in an industry wich is not easily talked about , even if everyone knows it exists, and a large share of people in the world are using it's products.

But when Jeff says :

"And I don't expect every programmer to be doing noble, selfless work for the good of humanity. All the same, it's difficult for me to respect software engineering in the service of such least common denominator interests."

I just wonder how 95% of the work available in CS and internet is more "good for humanity" than working for porn sites. It really really doesn't seem clear to me.

darkhorse• 17 years ago

"I'm no prude"

I'd argue that you are, and you have some extremely revealing hang-ups about sex and sexuality, as evidenced by your reaction to a freaking cartoon avatar ("make me, personally, uncomfortable about working there, or talking to anyone who worked there") and the "what will we tell our parents?" line.

how about you tell them "hey parents, i'm a grown-ass man capable of making my own decisions without being afraid of what my PARENTS will think!!"

nanexcool• 17 years ago

Yes, my thoughts exactly.

dkarl2• 17 years ago

I'd argue that you are [a prude], and you have some extremely revealing hang-ups about sex and sexuality, as evidenced by your reaction to a freaking cartoon avatar

Would you say somebody hated finance if they refused to work for a loan shark who kneecapped people for paying late? The porn industry sells a pretty disgusting version of sex and a really sad vision of what women are good for. You can excuse anything by saying they're just roles that some people like to play, that none of the apparent symbolism in porn actually means anything, that the only sides that can be taken are for prudery and against it, that criticism of any portrayal of sex reflects a desire to suppress and control women's sexuality, that nobody's desires should be stigmatized, but....

But the fact remains that 95% of porn presents a pathological and misogynistic caricature of sex, and the other 5% is iffy at best. I've watched more than my share of porn, always with the idea that I was looking for good, sex-positive porn. Eventually I realized that I would never find it at any mainstream outlet, like the local adult stores and commercial web sites. (Now I have a better idea of where I would look for that stuff, but I haven't bothered.)

Porn doesn't have to be bad, not for any reason I know if. It just is (which suggests that there is some reason I don't know about.) The porn we actually have -- as distinct from the ideal porn we could have -- is just the flip side of prudery, a fulfillment of the ignorance, frustration, and sexual neuroses that prudery creates.

Those cartoon avatars are an excellent example. They can be excused as exceptions -- just one way some women enjoy sexualizing themselves, just one-dimensional fantasies that no man would connect with the real world, just a few characters whose existence leaves plenty of room for other forms of female sexuality -- but that ignores the fact that they are entirely typical of the adult industry and freakishly different from the way most women want to dress, act, and be perceived.

I don't have any problems with individual women whose sexual identity is such that they enjoy playing the roles depicted in the porn I loath -- no matter how their sexuality came about -- they are worthy of respect. However, attempting to celebrate and normalize sexual identities that most women find degrading, for a variety of selfish reasons but not least because most women find them degrading, is reprehensible. The adult industry IS scummy, and anyone working in it should be ashamed, unless they are careful to work only with the small, practically invisible minority of products that aren't degrading.

gaius3• 17 years ago

Does Atwood have some sort of vendetta running against IMVU? This isn't the first time he's laid into them.

dinkumthinkum3• 17 years ago

Jeff is just an anti-intellectual. He has a vendetta against people who know things like C and actually program. He is just trying to justify his rude previous comments. It would be nice if Jeff would stop blogging until Stackoverflow "cured cancer" as he said.

lacker2• 17 years ago

I've noticed recently a lot of the IMVU folks seem to have made a concerted push into blogging about the technical stuff they do there. Maybe this is a bit of pushback.

dinkumthinkum3• 17 years ago

I don't really understand this comment.A push back for blogging abnout technical work? I'm not sure this passes the "simplest answer is probably the correct one" test.

lacker2• 17 years ago

I just don't think it's coincidence that this post comes shortly after several IMVU employees started talking about how great the company is.

gaius3• 17 years ago

It's more likely Atwood applied for a job there and they turned him down.

Coding Horror: Sex, Lies, and Software Development

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