[moccachino]

But would you ever go and look at his repo?

If it is the case that she didn't contribute the most complicated stuff, then I can assure you it is not the first time in history that the face of a project is not the one that did the hardest work. Also as has repeatedly been said, she always said it was a team effort.

This is all said with the caveat that I didn't follow this 'controversy' and never cared to look at the contribution distribution of all the project members.

[nailer]

> But would you ever go and look at his repo?

No. But if someone else checked the repo, I'd be interested. That said the media would be less likely to publish 'this young man took a photo of a black hole'.

> Also as has repeatedly been said, she always said it was a team effort.

Yep. Also mentioned in my comment you're replying to.

I think of this conflict as 'developers versus the media' - the media having pushed the narrative of 'a young woman who took a photo of a black hole'.

The media (who like to remove their own influence from discussions) have turned it into 'sexist developers vs young female scientist'. They've been very successful at doing that, yet again, because, well, they're the media. It's easy to shape a story when you control all outlets deemed noteworthy enough to cite.

[pron]

> because, well, they're the media.

And because, well, it was true ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Every person I showed this to was disgusted, as was I. So even if you disagree with the characterization, it certainly wasn't just the media, but also your fellow developers. It was a shameful moment (one of many, most of a similar kind) for HN that reflected horribly on developers, and the media called it up on that, as they should.

[read_if_gay_]

> because, well, it was true [...] Every person I showed this to was disgusted, as was I

What you’re saying here is: because the opinion of me and my friends is objectively correct and yours is not ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[pron]

Whoever is "right", it wasn't just the media, but also lots of developers, who felt it was a shameful display of misogyny. So it is certainly wrong to claim that the media spun this story a certain way out of the blue.

Also, if I didn't think my opinion was correct it wouldn't be my opinion.

[read_if_gay_]

One could say the exact same thing except for the other position. Certainly there exist a number of journalists who think the media’s reporting on the topic was biased in order to garner more clicks and/or push an agenda, so it is wrong to claim Bouman just fell victim to sexists. Total non-argument.

[pron]

One could say anything, but while it's unsurprising that women's achievements are highlighted because they are objectively a minority in a field that, like other fields, was shown to suffer from sexism in numerous studies, the response was different from when a man's achievement is highlighted, and that, too has been shown in studies. So I do think empirical observation is on my side as well.

[nailer]

The media spun the story in the first place (the reductive 'a woman who took a photo of black hole') because stories of women achieving things generates clicks.

The media spun the story in the second place (the incredibly simplistic 'developers hate women') because the media dislikes people arguing with it and because sexism generates clicks.

[pron]

From my perspective the story is: some people on HN which profess to value knowledge, scholarship and professionalism and "reducing" things for the sake of simplicity, express strong opinions on a matter of which they know little, their behavior mirrors archetypical behavior studied in the literature, and then rage when they're "reduced" based on scholarship they don't know. This is too long, so I'd summarize it as "HN commenters stuck in a bubble of ignorance rage on a topic they know nothing about."