[striking]

A "more English" translation could read:

Based on a cursory analysis of the executable and application development, it's clear that the act of writing the Election Calculator was entrusted to a single (female) student, who was probably working for external contractors. Ms. Agnieszka, we really sympathize, we are with you!

Poland is a country in which the fate of thousands of committee members rests on the shoulders of a novice (female) programmer.

[q3k]

The fact that the programmer is female is mentioned implicitly - the female version of the “programmer” pronoun is used, the fact is not really stated anywhere.

So it should not to taken as „the shoulders of a novice, female programmer” (in which the fact that she is female is stated explicitly and could be used to further put down the person's programming abilities) but as „the shoulders of a novice programmer”.

[wwosik]

Well, that's the thing about Polish tongue (and many other too). Every single word does have a gender and you can't run away from it - in theory, masculine could represent gender-neutral meaning, but it would be very awkward to say (in Polish) "student" in one sentence and "Agnieszka" (Agnes) in the next one.

I don't find any emphasis on the sex of the person in question in the Polish text. It's only about experience and skill of the poor soul. Translations are hard because cultural context.

[klausa]

Uhm, no, it is not.

Did you miss the "Pani Agnieszko, naprawdę współczujemy, jesteśmy z panią!"("Ms. Agnes, we're really sorry too, we're here for you")(that's a terrible translation, but oh well) part? There's absolutely no ambiguity here.

[q3k]

I meant the “(female)” remarks in the grand-grandparent post.

[jpcosta]

There is no way to avoid that in the polish language, as someone else pointed out already. Nouns and sometimes even verbs or adjectives have gender, and you need to use either the male form or female form according to the situation

[nemetroid]

Right, but a translation to English should not include "(female)" unless it's essential information, which it isn't here.

[lvh]

It is probably worth nothing that "female" is really a parenthetical. Source is simply using the appropriate Polish word (which is gendered). The translation could be read as implying that the person's gender has anything to do with the issues they've had, but source's wording doesn't really imply that. (They may have in fact wanted to imply that; but we can't determine that from the wording.)

[userbinator]

To be fair it's a voting system, i.e. a program whose main function is to count, and unless the definition of "novice" these days is not what it used to be, it should be well within the ability of a "novice" programmer to write one.

[logfromblammo]

Given the potential impact of the results, and the incentives in place for the final tally to be something other than the correct sum, the problem is not quite as simple as counting your sheep.

Think of it more like counting your sheep as lean and hungry gentlemen shout random numbers in your ear, dump disguised goats into your flock, continually jog your elbow if you try to write anything down, and toss sheep over the fences in both directions.

And then, just for fun, they stab you in a kidney and take your wallet.

The hard part is not the counting. It's dealing with the potential attacks and still being able to verify precise and accurate results.