[supreme_sublime]

I honestly wondered if you were a poe. I was laughing until I realized you are being serious.

Since 1996 programming has been about 50% frat bros? Really? The quintessential "nerd" job? I couldn't disagree with you more. While I haven't been in the industry that long, how I got into programming was through online forums, where I found incredibly helpful and nice people who didn't know anything about me. Even when they did find out I was pretty young (13ish), they didn't treat me much differently. While I didn't usually get explicit encouragement, I did get help, for no other reason than I wanted to learn and showed that by asking as little as possible to be able to get by.

That's a beautiful thing about the internet, the anonymity allows anyone to be anything and to cut through other people's (potential) biases.

I'll be honest, I have had a good life. I have good parents and friends. I'm immensely grateful for them giving me as good of a start as one could ask for. However, as I said in another post, I was swimming against the stream. My parents thought I was wasting my time, my friends would (and still do) poke fun at me for being a "nerd". So yes, I was lucky that I was born into a stable home with parents who cared about me. It wasn't "all me", I had strangers help me learn, I happened to stumble across the right communities. We all stand on the shoulders of giants.

What do you do with the hand you were given? Do you think "Oh well, all is lost, I was born black and gay. I can only do something with my life if people encourage me"? Utterly ridiculous, a toxic and disgusting worldview. The soft bigotry of low expectations. You cannot control anyone other than yourself. There are plenty of genuinely unfortunate/discriminated against people, the question becomes, how do you respond? Do you give up? Or do you persevere?

[jjeaff]

So, your argument is that you are also a white male, like most other brogrammers, but you understand discrimination because you were treated nice while being anonymous online?

[supreme_sublime]

My argument is that programmers have never cared who you are. Only that you wanted to learn. That you are encouraging people to doubt the limits of their own potential and their reception into programming by making it out to be some horrible occupation that only bigots and homophobes go into.

Why would women want to join such a horrible and sexist place if that's their impression? Especially since it isn't the reality. I've come across a few assholes, but they were assholes to everyone. If you have a chip on your shoulder constantly to think "Someone may not like me because I'm x" you're handicapping yourself. Instead seek out the good people, who are the vast majority. Stop with the identity politics and who is the most discriminated or offended and get to coding.

[jjeaff]

>My argument is that programmers have never cared who you are.

I think the chorus of opinions from female regular programmers all the way to the highest echelons of the tech hierarchy (a la Marissa Mayer) expressing their concern that tech is a 'boy's club' and that the environment is not accepting of diversity is a pretty clear sign that something is up.

Telling people to stop their whining and get to work is easy to say when you have not been on the receiving end of discrimination.

[supreme_sublime]

Ah yes, Marissa Mayer, a woman who became the CEO of a company. So oppressed by the "boys club".

https://medium.com/@marlene.jaeckel/the-empress-has-no-cloth...

She definitely agrees with you.

Women who actually code and are revered in their community like Sandi Metz definitely are outspoken about it.

Women I work with definitely seem to feel disrespected and let down by me.

To act as if people who are activists and speak about these things don't have an agenda, is ridiculous. It is a well paying, cushy job that is becoming more prestigious. Of course it burns activists that other women won't do what they want them to do. Why isn't there a movement to get more women working on oil rigs? That's a pretty male dominated field as well that has a pretty similar salary to programming.

I'm perfectly fine with more women being in programming, I think that's an opinion most men in the industry share. I just don't feel I have an obligation to treat them any differently to anyone else. If someone wants to learn, I'm happy to teach.