[sillysaurusx]

I’d like to post a different sort of off-topic comment. As someone who’s married to a brilliant programmer and has a daughter almost a year old, thank you for showing a public example of simply being a woman in tech.

We don’t plan on shoving our daughter in front of an editor from a young age — we have no expectations of her, and she’s free to be whoever she wants to. But one reason my wife didn’t get into programming till her mid 20s was that there weren’t any examples of people like herself doing it. It didn’t occur to her that she might have a talent for it, or even enjoy it. It’s a bit like a man not realizing he might be a great dancer, simply because most dancers are women, and so he never explores the question.

I guess I’m just grateful you’re tipping the scales in the other direction. The work doesn’t need to be anything spectacular or solve all the world’s problems; solving your own problems with code is the essence of hacking. I hope that our daughter Kess grows up in a world filled with many more people like yourself.

I went back and forth about whether to even post this, for obvious reasons. But ultimately I have no way of thanking you other than this, and it meant a lot to me to see your work on the front page. I hope you have a wonderful week, and that your project achieves everything you were hoping for.

[washadjeffmad]

I spent 7 hours last night picking out and building pre-summer flower arrangements and gift bundles for our wonderfully patient and kind office managers.

If my grandmother hadn't been forced to learn ikebana as a young woman and continued that on her own in the US as a florist, and if I hadn't had to help her while I was growing up, I in all likelihood would never have been able to appreciate a good table setting or any of the floral arts, let alone thought to learn them as an independent pursuit - it had to start somewhere.

As an adult, I love it, and it used to melt the stress off my ex's face during the holidays when she was planning everything else and I said I'd take care of decorating.

Mother's Day is fast approaching, but there's never a bad time to appreciate what the women in your life have taught you and reflect on the effort it took to learn and pass it down.

[stormqueen]

Thank you for your positive comment. I really appreciate that – the topic of women in the tech industry is particularly close to my heart!

I wish you and your family all the best – you made my day :)

[sillysaurusx]

I was honestly terrified to post it. I didn’t want to cause you any problems (e.g. if the replies turned into a dumpster fire) or any weirdness (it’s really hard to strike a balance between saying everything you want to, and not being overbearing about it). It’s a relief that the message made it to you and brightened up your day a bit more.

All the best to your family as well — we hope to have two one day too.

[freedomben]

I debated saying something like this too because I've had it backfire, but in a way I didn't expect.

My daughter was excited to go to a coding camp with me, until several people (not all at the same time) each stopped to praise her for being a girl, and me for bringing my daughter. Everyone truly had the best of intentions, but the unfortunate impact was it gave her a bunch of attention that she didn't want, and only served to raise her awareness of how few girls there were. It made her feel more like a misfit and an alien. Afer she realized that it wasn't "normal for a girl to do coding," she didn't want to go anymore. That was a hard and heartbreaking lesson for me. I don't know if it's even applicable outside of my circle, but figured I'd mention it in case it's helpful to others who are trying to create a warm/welcome/inclusive environment. Since then I basically just try to "act normal." It's a hard problem.

[sillysaurusx]

That! This! Thank you for talking about it and putting it into words. Not only is it applicable, I’ve had so many discussions about it with my wife. Her central theme is "treat us normally; stop making it a big deal" but with the added context of "it sucks that there aren’t many examples of that." So it’s a balance between the two. I told my wife your story and she said yup, that checks out. I wanted to touch on this but couldn’t figure out how to fit it in.

She points out that the thing not to do is to be like "wow, you’re a girl!" and instead showcase examples of women coding. It’s the showcasing part that helps them feel like they belong. She notes that it would be cool if people would just say "this is Ada Lovelace, she was the first programmer" instead of doing the usual thing of saying "the first programmer was a woman". They might seem equivalent to us, but it feels way different to experience, and it’s something that I couldn’t appreciate until a few instances of me feeling out of place as a man. And then I realized that’s how women feel in tech.

That’s also why OP’s example meant so much to me. It was completely casual, which is the only way my daughter might feel like she belongs too.

Thanks again, and you also have a wonderful week.

[teddyh]

Another person’s explanation: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14702676>

[YeGoblynQueenne]

>> It’s a bit like a man not realizing he might be a great dancer, simply because most dancers are women, and so he never explores the question.

No offense but that stereotype is incomprehensible. Outside of gay and lesbian clubs, [roughly} half of all dancers are men and the other half women. I suspect you are specifically talking about ballet dancers, but those are a tiny minority, and don't even exist in most of the world.

Here's a really cool dude dancing a really cool dance for men (Zaouli, from Cote d' Ivoire):

https://youtu.be/jZ572yLH9sc?si=xH4tOaqlfrGYQJiw

[petsfed]

In the States "dancer" is used colloqiually to describe a profession, not simply a person engaged in the act of dancing. It's that "...most dancers are women..." bit that indicates that that's the context in which the parent is speaking. Certainly, that subtext is a little unclear, but if I talked about "dancers" at a wedding, I believe most people would expect that I was describing people dancing professionally. If I instead talked about "people dancing" at a wedding, its more likely I'm talking about people dancing for fun.

There's room for "dancer" to mean "person who is actively dancing", e.g. "Jim is a great dancer, but I am not". But I've never heard someone say "I'm a dancer" to simply mean "I dance [at all]". Its technically correct to say "I'm not a dancer", but most people say "I don't/can't dance".

In the States, you'll find that the gender ratio in the average dance class (ballet, tap, jazz, hiphop, etc) is strongly skewed toward girls and women. You see similar ratios in college dance degree programs.

If you pursue professional training to dance, odds are you're a woman.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Thanks for the analysis. I hope the next time someone writes "dancer" and means "professional dancer", they think for a second and write "professional dancer" instead.

Btw:

>> If you pursue professional training to dance, odds are you're a woman.

You mean in the US. Reference, please?

[petsfed]

Also, I disagree categorically with

>I hope the next time someone writes "dancer" and means "professional dancer", they think for a second and write "professional dancer" instead.

Maybe its a British English vs American English distinction (if that's the case, that would be helpful to point out, and is very much in the yard-vs-garden realm of language distinctions, and why I keep saying "in the states"), but it was pretty apparent to my American ear/eye. Its also important to point out that its not necessarily a professional dancer, but rather someone who has gone out of their way to train to dance for an audience. Doing the dougie in the club does not, by itself, make you a dancer, and it feels weird to describe people drunkenly dancing in the club as dancers.

[sillysaurusx]

Just wanted to say thanks for the thoughtful and thorough way you’ve handled all of this. I would’ve done a worse job. Cheers.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

>> Just wanted to say thanks for the thoughtful and thorough way you’ve handled all of this. I would’ve done a worse job.

Because you assume bad faith.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

In the UK where I live, people driving cars are described as "motorists", people riding bikes are described as "cyclists" and people strolling on the beach are described as "leisure makers". I mean they are described like that commonly, in the news.

So, yeah, in my British-English trained ears (I'm a native Greek) "dancer" sounds like "someone who dances". For any reason.

[petsfed]

You mean aside from the anecdotal evidence from 35 years of being the son of a professional dance costumer (ballet, jazz, modern, and classical), and brother of another professional ballet costumer (ballet, jazz, modern, and classical)? And both have worked with a variety of very large and notable dance companies across the western US? Or about 17 years now observing the gender imbalance in dance schools that my sisters (and now daughters) attend. Or the entire fucking genre of media that clearly shows that gender imbalance (seriously, Billy Elliot's central conflict only makes sense in light of this very real and very sustained phenomenon)?

Ok. https://datausa.io/profile/soc/dancers-choreographers#gender...

There's a subsection about educational levels of professional dancers, and the gender imbalance is persistent between high-school educated (so only private dance instruction) as well as college-educated professional dancers.

I found similar statistics in Australia.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

>> You mean aside from the anecdotal evidence from 35 years of being the son of a professional dance costumer (ballet, jazz, modern, and classical), and brother of another professional ballet costumer (ballet, jazz, modern, and classical)? And both have worked with a variety of very large and notable dance companies across the western US? Or about 17 years now observing the gender imbalance in dance schools that my sisters (and now daughters) attend. Or the entire fucking genre of media that clearly shows that gender imbalance (seriously, Billy Elliot's central conflict only makes sense in light of this very real and very sustained phenomenon)?

You don't have to be so stand-offish, I don't know who you are and who are your relatives, and I just asked if you had a reference. Like, has someone done a study on this? Is there data or just hear-say? Was my initial comment really so obnoxious, or do you think it impossible I really didn't know what I asked about?

Not everyone here is from the US, or from Anglophone cultures- I'm Greek and a lot of the gender-based nuances that are obvious to the Anglosphere are completely alien to me. To give you an example, you know the riddle about the man and his son who are in an accident and the son who survives is wheeled into the ER where the surgeon says "I can't operate on him, it's my son". Well, I had to have that one explained to me because I didn't get it. I didn't get why it was a riddle. Half of the doctors I've met in my life were women. On the other hand, every time I see Rishi Sunak visiting a car factory or something like that and he's standing next to a girl in a hard hat and overalls, well, that does strike me as weird; but not the locals (I live in the UK). These kinds of things are really not as identically distributed throughout the world as people tend to think.

So please try not to instantly presume bad faith, alright?

[petsfed]

I got standoffish after I said "in the States" twice in my initial explanation of the colloquialism. You apparently missed both, and yet you insisted that the "correct" way to express it was (as you later revealed) more adherent to your understanding of British English. And I don't even concede that point either.

It would be, at a minimum, abrasive if I, as a person who does not speak Greek, tried to insist that you must speak Greek in a way that better fits my conception of how your language works.

Your other examples don't really compare, since there is not extra connotation to "motorist" or "cyclist" or "leisure maker" (although in the states, we might say "vacationer" instead). The best examples I can think of are "arborist" or "forester" vs "someone cutting down a tree", or "trucker" (as in, person who drives a truck/lorry professionally) vs "person currently driving a truck/lorry".

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Or, you know what? Do you, and I'll just try to get used to the idea that everyone on the internet has a chip on their shoulder and is ready to pounce at the least opportunity. Because apparently that's the internet everyone wants, and they should get it good and hard.

[freedomben]

> I hope that our daughter Kess

Voyager fan by chance? :-D

[sillysaurusx]

My wife says "it’s because we liked the name, not because of the show" but for me, it was totally the show. :)

Turns out there are only like a few dozen people named Kess. It’s one of the rarest names, yet short and simple, which is neat.

I sometimes worry I’ve cursed her with the association, since she might find that question annoying someday. But in a decade I doubt there will even be many Voyager fans left, sadly. It’s easy to forget that the show was from 1995, almost three decades ago. Ten years from now Voyager will be turning 40.