[Tharkun]

Ever since people started yapping about this "brogrammer"-crap I've been paying more attention to my fellow programmer's behaviour. Most of them are male, some of them are female, and one of them is a bit of both. One of them is black. One of them is in a wheelchair. And another one is deaf. The one thing they all have in common, is that they're geeks. I haven't noticed any of this alleged sexism, racism or frat boy nonsense.

Sure, some of us like to drink. Some of us even drink what some might consider "a lot", but then we live in a part of the world where beer is a socially accepted lubricant legal for purchase at age 16.

I don't particularly like the tone of the these articles, associating beer consumption with immature fratty/bratty behaviour. Nor do I like it when people interpret the relative scarcity of programming females to sexism. Or -- in my area -- the scarcity of black programmers to racism.

I would really love to see some hard backed evidence/statistics about this, instead of some contextless anecdotal bullshit.

Until someone can prove otherwise, programmers are no more sexist/racist/bratty than anyone else from a similar social/educational background.

To all you bored reporters, you might want to investigate cooks, bakers & chocolatiers next, I hear they're an over-sexed bunch who engage on orgies on a frequent basis.

Sigh.

[wpietri]

I don't care if my industry is more or less sexist or racist than average. I care if it's sexist or racist at all.

Also, whether or not you notice mistreatment of others is not the best metric. Try asking people in those groups.

If you'd like to see an interesting analysis of the relative scarcity of female computer scientists, this is a classic: http://people.mills.edu/spertus/Gender/why.html