Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by cat_plus_plus 2456 days ago
What kind of women and does anyone else find it sexist to assume that men will always be the offenders and women the offendees? Programming involves deconstructing complex problems into basic steps while ignoring full real world nuances in order to derive a reasonable abstraction. Like... deconstructing allegations against Minsky into basic aspect (instructed to have sex vs actually had sex, aware of lack of consent or not, aware of age or not, 16 can consent in jurisdiction X year Y or not). Successful programmers trend not super socially aware and often on autism spectrum. So maybe women genuinely interesting in programming would be like Ada Lovelace, a compulsive gambler with messy love life who dreamed of building a computer to beat poker? How long would she last in 2019 MIT?

And if you get alienated from a career path because of one bad professor, go and find something else that you want so badly that you are willing to tough it out. Otherwise you will always blame your professional success limits on people not supporting you enough, or cracking an off-color joke or two or microaggressions. Do you honestly expect to never have to deal with a problem boss/coworkers/customer in a super-competitive private sector job? Don't tell me nurses and schoolteachers never have to deal with someone like RMS or worse. And sure, some degree of bad behavior should have proportional consequences, but do we hear about how women get alienated from these professions en masse?