goodmornings

I don't want to sound too pessimistic and I agree with the sentiment of the article, but I think people need to come to terms with that there isn't really a choice to be made here. Just like you suddenly isn't going to change the at least decade old path of the NSA, you aren't suddenly going to change the fundamentals of the Internet. The choices that affects us now has to a large extent already been made and we are living with the consequences.

Note that sports didn't really aspire to be a meritocracy before professionalism. The most meritocratic sports combine inclusiveness with professionalism i.e. a lot of people can enter the sport and the best are recognized as such. Programming often favors amateurism[0] like open source, side projects and being "the right kind of nerdy", while at the same being elitist in regard to things like education.

I also think a lot of the problems in regard to equality are latent effects of many who got started in the early days of the personal computer did so because of their dad [1] (and that gender roles where much stricter at the time).

[0] Which isn't necessarily about skill, while it do tend to change the meaning of skill.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7677309

I don't think that thinking other people suck is good way to develop confidence. At least not without experience. If women for the sake of confidence should learn that people suck, it's that most programmers do, not that most women do. I'd rather they develop confidence through experience with programming rather than arrogance toward other programmers. Since the problem with arrogance is that it almost always clashes with reality.

That's just another example of this cultures weird relationship with personal qualities. The good version of laziness, impatience and hubris is efficiency, passion and confidence. But if you call it efficiency those who are lazy, or at least hide their decision behind the acceptance of laziness, gets upset. So you instead have to say that you are lazy, but in a good way.

Of course there is also people who hide their decision behind the idea of efficiency.

"Many good programmers have a certain arrogance"

No, I don't think so. Or at least it's not needed to be a good programmer. It's just that if you also have other qualities people don't have to excuse your behavior by how good a programmer you are.

"simply are not as interested in working quietly with numbers as men are"

That's frankly a ridiculous statement in this context. Women are en masse working quietly in writing, music, painting, knitting etc. There's also plenty of women medical research, chemistry and economics. I also know of more women with a "profile in the community" in electronics than I do in software, which is probably less social than coding.