[stcredzero]

That's one small way brogrammer culture is actually useful. It's a red flag for women...

The problem with the brogrammer caricature, is that it exaggerates a few overt features of regular geek culture in a way that overshadows underlying pathologies in programming shops.

There are forms of intolerance and aggression that have nothing to do with homophobia or sexism (or any other readily vilifying -ism) but which are still capable of interfering with vital flows of information. Brogrammers are nothing more than guys who program and are still operating with much of the same belief structure they had in high school. They've failed to "make their beliefs pay rent" with ideas like "hot chicks in bikinis make the world a better place," "boys will be boys," and the idea that offensive language "keeps it real."

However there's plenty of that sort of failure to go around in the mainstream of programmer culture at large, in groups that look nothing like brogrammers -- in ways that even affect technical decisions.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/i3/making_beliefs_pay_rent_in_antici...

[tomjen3]

So are you saying that hot girls don't make the world a better place? As in you either wouldn't care or that you would prefer having less hot women?

As for the entire objectifying thing -- when I see something beautiful, being a statue, a painting or, yes, a girl -- it makes my day better. And what is wrong with enjoying the beautiful things in life? It would be awfully dull if we were to go through life as if it was a Catholic sunday school.

Anyway there is nothing wrong with beautiful girls, there is nothing wrong with smart girls and there is nothing that prevent a girl from being both.

[stcredzero]

So are you saying that hot girls don't make the world a better place?

They do indeed make the world a better place in some way. That doesn't mean that they make the workplace a better place.

[AaronLasseigne]

>> However there's plenty of that sort of failure to go around in the mainstream of programmer culture at large, in groups that look nothing like brogrammers -- in ways that even affect technical decisions.

All of these articles that discuss brogramming are helping to shed light on the issues of sexism in the programming community. However, too often they read as though this is a new problem. The programmer stereotype used to be that we didn't know how to interact with women. Now we have a programmers objectifying women. I agree with you, the issue is larger than brogramming.

I suspect that the issue could be helped by having more female programmers. It's much more difficult to be bigoted (be it gender, sexuality, culture, etc) toward a group when you work with and respect a member of that group. Of course, it'll be difficult to get more women involved in programming given the current culture.