Dear Fellow Rubyists

http://dyepot-teapot.com/2009/04/25/dear-fellow-rubyists/

by mkn • 17 years ago

41 53 17 years ago

jrockway• 17 years ago

I learned a lot from this article, namely that if you want people to talk about your talks after you give them, add porn. It seems to be more effective than technical content, which just puts the audience to sleep.

Here's another example: http://use.perl.org/~Alias/journal/31986

knowtheory13• 17 years ago

I think you'll note that everyone involved in this discussion would much rather be discussing the content of the presentation, which, so far as i have seen, has not been discussed.

So, sure, people are talking about the presentation. They're just not talking about the technical content of the presentation.

I don't think that's a winning proposition.

jamesbritt5• 17 years ago

"So, sure, people are talking about the presentation. They're just not talking about the technical content of the presentation."

A few times recently I've heard people remark on one or another presentation, but they were captivated by the jokes or visual gimmickry.

When I was watching some of those talks, my thought was, you've only got 30 minutes, and you're wasting it with jokes?

It's nice to have a talk that's remembered, but it should be for the essential content, not for the fluff (or, in some cases, the fluffer.)

petercooper4• 17 years ago

Dear god, not again. Not a month can go by without another gender debate that goes nowhere and has no resolution at all. I've seen these crop up in every programming community I've monitored over the last ten years.

Instead of whining about other people's behavior, perhaps people should do things to tackle the inequalities they perceive (such as the fine Girl Geek Dinners or "do a Amy Hoy" and put out some damn good blog posts and apps and become well known and respected in the community).

I see the irony in that I'm whining about someone else's behavior, but I don't want anything to be "fixed" as such.. I just wish these smart, decent people would get on with doing great work instead of losing time on a crazy argument that always goes nowhere.

thesethings3• 17 years ago

How do you know that she's not also "doing something?" Actually, she is. She is an active developer, and the co-chair of a back-breakingly large, totally volunteer run conference, Open Source Bridge, taking place in Portland in late June. (OSCON-like in content, I won't too deep about the event here, but I do in other HN posts, feel free to crawl my comments.)

I do not know her personally, but we have enough peers in common, that I know she also does "Amy Hoy's" (I like that phrase, btw :D ) and regularly puts out pretty cool tools (I'm pretty sure she's a key contributor to Calagator (Ruby events calendar)) and blog posts.

But even if she didn't...

I think if you witness something you're not comfortable with, and everybody else is quiet about it, it's actually brave AND valuable to speak up. I know it gets old reading about it on Hacker News, heck, I agree with these gender-posts most of the time, and I never vote them up, just because I wince in fear at the threads that happen.

I'm sick of the debate, but even sicker of the reality.

Still, I identify with whatever that sensation it is you feel (petercooper) when you see a gender topic on HN. My heart sinks, too. But I still admire the bloggers who take the time write a post, knowing full well they'll get tons of cruel, off-topic comments from strangers (so far she's been called a whore, ideally removed by now), and bite the bullet and write anyway ...

[apologies, i lightly edited my last line right before somebody quoted it]

petercooper4• 17 years ago

But I still admire the bloggers who take the time write a post, knowing full well they'll get tons of cruel, off-topic comments on their blog from Digg users, and bite the bullet and write anyway ...

I see it more along the lines of unnecessary repetition, like the incessant blog posts about how "Rails sucks" or how "slow" Ruby is. We get the message. If one can't bring something new to the table or at least let a year pass to see how things progress, does it need to be said yet again?

knowtheory13• 17 years ago

Peter you and i are going to have to sit down and catch a meal at railsconf, so i can figure out why you've become so curmudgeonly over the past couple months :p

Rubyists are -not- all that liberal, just like most programming communities are not all that liberal. There are a lot of very outspoken liberals, however, there are just as many conservatives (and i use this in the American liberal/conservative distinction) out there to argue with.

=====================================

Frankly i find your sentiment dispiriting and unhelpful. Discussions like these are indicative of a problem. I vociferously agree that we need action more than words, but simply disregarding the discussion, and there by the problem, sounds like willful denial to me.

Fundamentally it comes down to this. If ruby is supposedly more egalitarian and accessible than other programming languages (which is something we tell ourselves as Rubyists), why are there -fewer- women than in many other technical fields? Why are we doing such an awful job of recruiting and retaining people so that our gender ratio is at freaking least >5% women?

Pragmatically, the question that needs to be answered is what can you or i (or any individual rubyist) do to alleviate this problem? What are the pitfalls and impediments to attempting to help?

If nobody talks about the issue it's hard to see how we can make any progress. If you don't like the tone the conversation has taken, try and spin it off into something that is more constructive.

petercooper4• 17 years ago

Curmudgeonly: An ill-tempered person full of resentment and stubborn notions.

These traits are more common in people who keep perpetuating the gender debate. People who show resentment for how communities naturally behave and who stubbornly think a demographic quota has to be met for the world to be a friendly and fair place. I'm of the live-and-let-live mentality. I resent no-one and I'm only stubborn about people doing what the heck they want as long as it harms no-one else.

If people want to continue complaining about gender equality, whether Ruby is "slow" or not, whether Rails sucks or not, whether Kevin Federline's album is really the worst ever, or any such thing, I have no personal issue with that, but I felt, at least, it was finally worth noting that these discussions have all taken place 101 times before and that they're not making a scrap of difference.

I'm impartial, apathetic, and weary of seeing good people get mired in these arguments. Being curmudgeonly would demand I actually care about the essence of those same arguments.

jamesbritt5• 17 years ago

"I vociferously agree that we need action more than words, but simply disregarding the discussion, and there by the problem, sounds like willful denial to me."

I think Peter's point was that the action needed has to come from those who want to play a larger role in their respective Ruby community. What's needed are more code and talk proposals, not blog posts.

One poster referred to women being excluded, which is an interesting claim. I've never heard another Rubyist make a comment to suggest that anyone should be excluded from any Ruby activity. If anything, the people I know are on active lookout for anyone interested in Ruby.

One way to have more women at Ruby events is for more women to write more notable code and step up to give notable presentations.

If anyone thinks this is already going on, and women are being deliberately put aside in favor of men, I would love to see some evidence for this.

I was part of the advisory group for the recent Mt. West RubyConf, and out of the 50 or so talks proposed, I don't think a single one was from a woman. So, who needs to step up to make things change?

mpk• 17 years ago

Putting gratuitous pornography into a presentation that targets members outside your direct social circle is unprofessional and bad form.

I don't see what's wrong with people pointing that out.

petercooper4• 17 years ago

Sure it is; I agree. This blog post, however, does not make the lucid point that you do. Instead it goes on about gender and I thought we were meant to be blind to other people's race and gender by now; we're all just characters flying over a wire..

axod7• 17 years ago

>> "Putting gratuitous pornography"

If you consider that gratuitous pornography, boy are you in for a shock some day.

hugothefrog3• 17 years ago

Wow.. what an incredibly offensive presentation that Matt Aimonetti gave. That he needed to resort to such crass tactics speaks volumes about both him, the audience, and what he thought about the audience.

I'm a little disappointed that there isn't a strong tone being taken against this guy; perhaps I'm just missing it? Even the woman bloggers seem to be apologizing for the offense they've taken.

Those slides were hugely sexist and misogynistic; the imagery was stereotypical and gratuitous. I wasn't there, so didn't hear any accompanying commentary, but he would have to be an amazing speaker to make those slides appear not objectionable.

knowtheory13• 17 years ago

I feel it necessary to speak to defend Matt's character. Having met him, and spoken with him, and conversed w/ him, i genuinely believe that he intended no offense.

scott_s• 17 years ago

"Intending" no offense really doesn't make it much better. All it means is that instead of being a jerk, you just don't have a concept of what's appropriate, and more importantly, why that might not be appropriate.

earl2• 17 years ago

Wow -- go read the presentation (available http://www.ultrasaurus.com/sarahblog/2009/04/gender-and-sex-... ). The kindest thing that can be said about Matt Aimonetti is he simply has no class. Or, apparently, a grownup relationship with women.

I was going to criticize the blog hugothefrog linked to for indicting the whole Ruby community because of one asshole, but then I thought about it a little more and really? Nobody organizing the conference looked at his title and said hold on a minute? Or asked to vet the slides beforehand? Or in the audience stood up and said, "Matt, you're an asshole."

This might have been funny in 6th grade. Now it's incredibly tasteless and probably actionable.

gojomo• 17 years ago

'Actionable'? How so? You're still allowed to be offensive in the US.

knowtheory13• 17 years ago

Guys, here's the thing. Matt isn't an asshole. He's just not, by any definition (except maybe some right-wing nutjobs, given that he's French and all, but then they'd probably call him a morally loose, cheese eating surrender monkey, more than an asshole).

He promotes tech, he contributes to the community, i've never seen him be mean or rude to anyone. If his wife and the others he keeps company with are any indication, people like him and thinks he does well by others.

I saw the title and thought it was tasteless (i wasn't actually at GoGaRuCo), and maybe i should have said that it would have been upsetting, but i genuinely just thought it was going to be tasteless, not something that would offend (There's a book called "How to make love like a porn star" with the subtitle "A Cautionary Tale").

It's possible that Matt's presentation could have been executed in a manner that didn't offend. Nor was his intent juvenile, as you have asserted. From what he's said, he seems to have thought that people would be liberal (i don't mean that politically speaking) enough to handle the subject matter, which i think is a mistake he is not likely to make again.

So, there's the disconnect. Matt had one impression of how his presentation would be received, and that assumption did not go challenged until after he delivered the pesentation. The audience, not knowing Matt, have different assumptions and boundaries on what is and isn't appropriate in a presentation. I'm willing to go so far as to say Matt was wrong on this. He made the wrong decision. But he didn't do it because he's callous, or mean, or misogynistic.

axod7• 17 years ago

Anyone offended by that needs to get out more. Seriously? It's hardly hardcore. There's more porn in the average copy of cosmo.

If there were minors in the audience, then sure. If it was a conference for nuns or something, then yup... the slides would be inappropriate. But it wasn't afaik

I can understand an argument that it's distracting, but offensive? nope.

hugothefrog3• 17 years ago

Not to be dismissive, but arguments about what is and what isn't offensive never get very far on the internet.

It's a topic that requires empathy, and most people come around to someone else's point of view only through seeing their body language when talking about an offensive topic.

SwellJoe2• 17 years ago

So, this is why Asimov never really included sex or adult language in his novels. Not because he was a prude (he wasn't) or had any moral qualms about such things (he didn't), or because he expected any significant portion of his audience to be prudes or have such qualms (scifi, as a fanbase, is exceedingly forgiving of sex, violence, and language). But, because some percentage of people would use it as an excuse not to think about what he had to say.

It's easier to write someone off as not worth listening to, if they say or do something "offensive". So, if you have something you consider important to say, it might behoove you to think about the ways people can write you off as not worth listening to. Since the fellow with the naked ladies in his presentation included the naked ladies in order to get attention, I'm going to assume he felt like he had something important to say. And, since nobody is talking about what he said, and only how he said it, I'm thinking he failed.

kingsley_202• 17 years ago

I definitely remember sex in both, the foundation as well as the robot series. However, I agree with the point of your second paragraph. You may be illustrating your point better than you had planned to- your example of Asimov doesn't quite hold up, but your general point does.

SwellJoe2• 17 years ago

I definitely remember sex in both

You have a vivid imagination. The sex scenes are perhaps the mildest of any modern scifi I can think of...and they came in later novels, perhaps after he was thoroughly confident no one took his writing lightly. He also practically murdered the one actually sexually explicit story he wrote in his early career (The Portable Star), by insuring it wasn't published again in any collection during his life.

Compare Asimov to any of his contemporaries...Heinlein, Farmer, Dick, etc. Clarke was also a bit more "polite", and I guess, also more inclined toward people taking his work more seriously and thinking more about the serious issues he was addressing.

Of course, he also felt that he just wasn't very good at writing female characters or romantic subjects, so he avoided it for the sake of his readers. So, if we're being entirely strict about using Asimov as an example, it also falls apart because he had several reasons for not doing sex very often...not just wanting to be taken seriously.

nailer• 17 years ago

I've been meaning to learn about CouchDB for a while after a few people mentioned it positively at PyCon (I'd held off since I've had negative experiences with ASF app quality).

After finding another useless gender debate, I wanted to find out what the 'offensive' presentation was. Instead I found something no ruder than a Sunday newspaper, got distracted by the CouchDB content, and learnt.

knowtheory13• 17 years ago

I keep hearing people talk about how "useless" discussing gender equality is.

I don't think it's useless at all, and I've yet to hear a cogent argument to the contrary. If you think the discussions are ineffective, then explain why. What should be done differently? What can we do to have less ineffective discussions?

If you think discussing the subject is pointless because discussing equality is useless, then... fuck knows, there's not much point in discussion is there :P

Additionally, it's worth pointing out that Matt, having heard and taken the criticism he was given, responded by removing a number of risque images from the presentation that is now posted on the ultrasaurus thread linked up here.

marcusbooster• 17 years ago

I saw this presentation when a friend (who's not a programmer) posted a link on Facebook to it.

I wouldn't be surprised if non-tech people thought this was a porn site thing.

davidmathers• 17 years ago

Giles Bowkett wins: http://www.ultrasaurus.com/sarahblog/2009/04/gender-and-sex-...

hugothefrog3• 17 years ago

Thanks for pointing out that specific comment. It wasn't there when I first read that post.

The only correction I'd make to his post would be to state that people in nearly all communities (perhaps not the members of the Professional Association of Honest Apologists) are unable to apologize gracefully.

mattetti• 17 years ago

For those who still care, here is my statement: http://merbist.com/2009/04/28/on-engendering-strong-reaction...

Dear Fellow Rubyists

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