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by sanjiva 2466 days ago
Ada was named after Ada Lovelace too. Many may not know that it was a woman's name (and of course few program in Ada; we certainly hope for a better outcome than that!).

I'm sorry but I cannot accept the argument that because its a feminine word its not an appropriate name for the language. Gender balance has been a problem for this industry and making it so all names are male so people won't feel bad to say they like it is ridiculous. I worked hard in WSO2 to create an open workplace for women and 30% engineers are women - so it is possible to make it better if you try hard. Isolating tech to male-only names is not the solution.

As James noted, I updated the blog I wrote (even though the words were not meant the way you presented them) to remove that offending bit. And indeed your points about incorporating "do not sexualize the name" are great and we'll put them into our terms of conduct.

1 comments

There’s nothing wrong with a feminine name, just be aware of the issues. The name Ballet would avoid many of those issues outright, lessen the need to have such a rule, and seems like it might be a better name anyway—it’s shorter and phrases like “I love Ballet” and “we used Ballet” work. It’s your project, of course, it just seems a conversation worth having.