[Zikes]

Joyent called Ben an asshole and said they wanted to fire him over a minor grammatical preference. [1]

But let's "please respect [their] wishes to let this issue rest", because it's not like we need an apology or any sort of reassurance from the company that owns a rising star of technology that we're supposed to invest our time and money in.

Good luck finding a replacement.

[1] http://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun

[goldenkey]

Holy crap, what a read. You have to wonder... What feminist muff is he puffing? I can't stand white knighting especially when it befalls other men in armor. Ben, you've got my sympathies and support, sorry you have to hear this immature politico-feminist-fascluckery from Joyent

[Myrmornis]

Agreed. Perhaps injudicious to fan the flames with a word like "muff" but I also 100% support this guy Ben Nordhuuis's response. Gender inequality is a real and important issue, but that does not mean that people writing code have to accept pull requests from busybodies piddling around with pronouns in comments.

[rosser]

What feminist muff is he puffing?

Seriously, what does this contribute to the discussion?

[jacalata]

I can't stand white knighting especially when it befalls other men in armor what does that even mean?

[djur]

Personally, I'm wondering about "fascluckery".

I think Ben is being poorly served by his defenders, who are gleefully bringing in their MRA hobbyhorses.

[ceol]

HN has been invaded by MRAs from a certain subreddit ever since the "dongle" issue a few months ago. They very quickly latched on to this community because they realized all they had to do was make their comment verbose and it would appeal to the affluent, college-aged men here.

Apparently they stuck around.

[goldenkey]

ceol, if you disagree with me, fine. But calling me a "massively wrong asshole" and claiming I came from a sewer-pipe on reddit, is just downright dirty.

My point about the white knighting, was that Cantrill from Joyent is pretty much taking an apologetic stance as if Ben committed a chauvinistic crime against women in programming. He's taking a steaming dump on Ben, in order to look 'politically correct', and defender of woman's rights, for him and his company. That's when white knighting is sick..when it stomps on the ideal of being a decent person in order to appeal to the hounds thirsty for banter and apologies and discourse about an issue that doesn't even exist.

First of all, Ben didn't have any intent, second of all, this whole fuss is just..politics..and purely distressing circumspection for those with too much time on their hands. Go back to coding...at least there's output...

Oh and have you seen this? http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/18/can-this-startup-steal-nod...

Could be why Cantrill has it out for Ben.