[actsasbuffoon]

"Guy", "dude", "him", "he"...

There are many kinds of programmer, but apparently they're all men.

Edit: upon re-reading the post I see a smattering of "he or she" references at the beginning. They quickly give way to nothing but male nouns and pronouns. I wrote my comment after finishing the article, at which point I'd forgotten about the brief nod to the existence of female software developers at the beginning of the post.

[gfodor]

Another one for the taxonomy:

"Social Justice-Driven Developer" - Spends most of his/her/their/xis/xer day trolling through the documentation, commit logs, code comments, and e-mails trying to find latent gender bias (when not doing so on discussion boards like HN.) Occasionally makes passive aggressive one-line commits to correct gender pronouns, spurring long internal e-mail chains that ultimately call more attention to the gender of the female/trans/nongendered developers on the team than otherwise. Sometimes causes people to get fired or become the target of widespread Internet outrage.

[actsasbuffoon]

I don't think you were specifically accusing me of it, but I didn't set out looking for anything. I read the text, and I found their wording to be jarring. I don't think anyone is trying to push an agenda with their wording — they probably didn't even notice it. I slip up sometimes too, and I appreciate a helpful reminder when it happens.

[elohesra]

You know what I find far, far more offensive than someone using gendered pronouns? The kind of smug, pandering post that deliberately strives for gender neutrality through tortuous 'he/she' verbosity.

I happen to think that most women are probably clever enough to work out that just because a writer has used a particular gendered pronoun, it doesn't mean that the writer's point applies specifically to that gender. Furthermore, literally none of the women I've known have ever complained about gender pronouns; such nitpicking seems to be the exclusive domain of gender-political activists and HN commenters.

[thenmar]

I don't think it's an unreasonable thing to point out. Let's not pretend that there are no problems with sexism in tech. While this may or may not be a good example, literature normalizing that programming is a "boy's club" contributes to the problem that programming is perceived as exactly that - a boy's club.

[jeorgun]

I agree--- if any author were to use `he/she' consistently, I'd probably find their writing quite annoying. Still, that hardly means they'd have no other ways of being gender-neutral ;)

[cma]

You mean like 50% of the time using "she/he"?

[gaius]

If one of these negative stereotypes had been female, "agile girl", say, can you imagine the ensuing shitstorm? When people set out actively looking for "OMG sexism!!" they will find it no matter what.

[angersock]

The author forgot to mention The White Knight and The Militant Feminist. They also omitted the Brogrammer and the Family Man.

[chanux]

And they are all more or less bad.

[almosnow]

On a totally unrelated comment, the article is missing the White Knight: Someone that's more worried about the overall problems of justice and fairness than from the job he's suppossed to do.

E.g.: I'm sorry, I refuse to name variables after animals that are on the verge of extinction.

[actsasbuffoon]

White knight? Why are you assuming I'm not a woman?

I think people can simultaneously have two goals. You might as well argue that school bus drivers are more worried about getting into an accident than the job they were hired to do; transporting children to and from school. Any competent driver should be able to manage both, just as any competent developer should be able to write good code while also not alienating people without reason.

[gfodor]

Ok, if you really think the term "White Knight" has some undertone about gender, you have to be trolling at this point.

[icebraining]

I'm sorry, but now I'm confused. White Knight does have a gender undertone, at least in gender discussions. It wouldn't make sense to apply it to women, since the goal is painting the person as the stereotypical knight in shiny armor that comes to save the damsel in distress.

[almosnow]

I'm sorry but in my world a White Knight is an amorphous (and obviously genderless) entity that bears any kind of armor (not just the shiny ones!) and saves other amorphous entities in distress.

Please consider revising your definition so that you stop excluding people with your close-minded 'cis' stereotypes.

[mortyseinfeld]

White knight? Why are you assuming I'm not a woman?

There you go again.