My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)
My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)
Posted Sep 26, 2007 3:47 UTC (Wed) by proski (subscriber, #104)In reply to: My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet) by JoeBuck
Parent article: My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)
It's good that you touched this topic. In my opinion, part of the problem in both cases is fear of "losing face" in public. If you are in a mailing list, it is expected that somebody tells you that you are wrong. It is expected, it happened to me many times, but not everybody can tolerate it.
I have noticed that many persons tend to take the discussion private as soon as they get an answer to a question they posted in the mailing list. I have noticed a strong correlation of this phenomenon with the use of rich formatting in e-mail. It became so bad that I had to filter out all my mailing list traffic containing HTML parts, except replies and some important low traffic lists, just to avoid the frustration of having the discussion turn private with me as a single recipient.
For some reason, those people expect me to take care of their question single-handedly, and not give me the opportunity to publicize the discussion for benefit of others. What they don't realize it that their demand for personal attention would backfire.
It's really not a gender issue, although I can imagine that women are involved in many cases and can be frustrated.
Perhaps it's not an issue that the software developers can solve alone. It would be nice to have a psychologist around next time this topic is touched.
Posted Sep 26, 2007 7:05 UTC (Wed)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (15 responses)
Women have natural tendency to avoid open conflicts, Japanese taught this way, but in all cases the end problem is the same: fear of loss of the face is great. So they tend to use personal e-mail to avoid public humiliation. What they tend not to understand is that geeks absolutely hate private conversations: they are unaccessible to Google, they can not be pointed out later, etc. Actually it was explained quite succulently in well-known How To Ask Questions The Smart Way article. And as you can this style is not just creation of misfits "because they fell this way" - it actually makes sense if you'll think about it! Yes, sometimes responses are too rude, but mostly they are justified if you value time more then politeness...
Posted Sep 26, 2007 9:40 UTC (Wed)
by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047)
[Link] (6 responses)
Posted Sep 26, 2007 13:48 UTC (Wed)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (5 responses)
It's biology. Species where females did a lot of noise (and thus were killed) are extinct, species where males did a lot of noise (and thus were killed) survived (males are not essential for childraising). And yes, this basic fact of life is true even today: man can pull all-nighter debugging something, woman must go home on time for the children's sake. So yes, males in general are more aggressive and rude. And they can "afford" risky situations. Thus while free software fights for survival - we'll see many more males there then females, when it'll become mainstream - we'll see more and more women there. You'll find significantly more males in startups, then in big companies, too. Actually the number of women among free software enthusiasts shows how far we are from "world domination": we can only then claim that we achieved this status when we'll have the same proportion of women among developers as in proprietary world. I'm just very unsure that the best way there is to change community to make it more "women-friendly"...
Posted Sep 26, 2007 13:58 UTC (Wed)
by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047)
[Link] (4 responses)
Posted Sep 26, 2007 14:11 UTC (Wed)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (3 responses)
1. You asked about "natural tendency". To me "natural tendency" == "tendency determined by biology". What is your definition ? 2. Name one survived culture where women are more aggressive then man. There are myths related to amazons and may be some small tribes, but all major players of such type are either extinct or never existed at all. This can hardly be explained by "what they learn as young children".
Posted Sep 26, 2007 14:21 UTC (Wed)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (2 responses)
Small children are usually taught by women and so taught politeness first. Only later in life guys are starting to become "arrogant jerks". Take the situation in Japan: while Japanese look (from viewpoint of westerner) always uber-polite yet actually they are using different speech patterns and women are not supposed to talk in public at all!
Posted Sep 26, 2007 15:16 UTC (Wed)
by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047)
[Link]
Posted Sep 26, 2007 18:30 UTC (Wed)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link]
Posted Sep 26, 2007 12:44 UTC (Wed)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
[Link] (7 responses)
Posted Sep 26, 2007 13:54 UTC (Wed)
by peace (guest, #10016)
[Link]
"Show me the code".
If being polite leads to more and better code than it will naturally win out. If being a stubborn abusive jackass leads to more code, than thats what we will see. FLOSS is a universe of personalities. It is not supposed to be a personality contest.
The call for "Politeness" can be just as much a power grab as being rude. And just as pointless.
Kind Regards
Posted Sep 26, 2007 13:59 UTC (Wed)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (5 responses)
I've read the article and decided to ignore this stupid passage. Linus is brash and rude - yes, he's honest, always ready to admit his mistakes and he rarely scold someone without reason, but as he himself said "I'm a scheming, conniving bastard who doesn't care for any hurt feelings or lost hours of work, if it just results in what I consider to be a better system". Ulrich Drepper (the guy who maintains GLibC) ? Polite and pleasant ? Don't make me laugh. Take almost any big project - and you'll find quite a few abrasive yet honest people at the top. yes, there are guys who can be "polite and pleasant". Linus is among them. Yet this guise is rarely used among developers - that's more for tech talks, press and interaction with "outsiders"...
Posted Sep 26, 2007 15:55 UTC (Wed)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
[Link] (4 responses)
To me it is related to professionalism. Good professionals in any field tend to be polite while bad ones are often rude, to customers and among themselves. There is no reason why software development should be different, or attract Asperger types any more often. And yet Free software development has a displeasing share of these antisocial behaviors and even people that defend them.
LWN is an excellent example of how developers (and users) can be polite with each other. Discussions here can also be curt and to the point but they are seldom rude. Maybe it is because the comment editor says, "Please try to be polite, respectful, and informative, and to provide a useful subject line", and the editorial style helps set this tone. So it can be done.
Posted Sep 26, 2007 17:54 UTC (Wed)
by peace (guest, #10016)
[Link] (2 responses)
LWN tends to stay away from the sensational unlike some other geek news site that plays to breathless hyperbole and emotion. I bet thats what keeps the discourse at least slightly elevated.
Kind Regards
Posted Sep 26, 2007 21:23 UTC (Wed)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
[Link] (1 responses)
In Free software it is different. Many amateurs keep a very high level of professionalism, enough to embarrass many a paid developer. And (perhaps most importantly) many professionals love their work as much as any amateur.
And Free software is, without a doubt, the domain of the professional. And of the amateur. And of anyone who cares to contribute. LWN publishes summaries for every kernel release, the one for 2.6.23 will be freely available quite soon, if you care to look.
Posted Sep 27, 2007 1:46 UTC (Thu)
by peace (guest, #10016)
[Link]
-peace
Posted Sep 26, 2007 20:43 UTC (Wed)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link]
A major characteristic of most, perhaps all Aspergics is fear of change.
But it is perfectly possible to be pleasant to people while being
It's different basic expectations
Women have a natural tendency to avoid conflicts? Are you certain that they, like the Japanese, It's different basic expectations
were not just socialized that way? Careful about ascribing to innate nature that which is more
easily explained by culture.
Yup. It's pretty simple...
I'm not going to get into an evolutionary pyschology debate here on LWN, but given that human Yup. It's pretty simple...
behavior is so mouldable by what they learn as young children, and given that we know that
different cultures can and do create wildly different levels of "noisiness", as you described it,
Occam's Razor suggests that reaching for biological explanations of the disparity is unnecessary,
when purely cultural explanations are both simpler and more easily tested.
Different cultures ?
Actually it's even worse.
Y'know, it IS even worse; I realized that I forgot to question how you got the idea that women are less assertive or aggressive, in the first place.Actually it's even worse.
"Only later in life" do guys suddenly get tons of testosterone coursing through their system. Given how much it affects them physically, one would imagine it would have an effect on their psyche as well.Actually it's even worse.
Nonsense
Yes, sometimes responses are too rude, but mostly they are justified if you value time more then politeness...
Nonsense. As the linked article says: "The best FOSS people are polite and pleasant. I do not believe that anyone is so invaluable and indispensable that they can be excused from common courtesy".
So "polite and pleasant" is where the bar is set? How the hell is anyone supposed to police that? It is completely subjective. I might be able to understand "not deliberately abusive" but really, I just don't care about this issue of politeness. There is only one thing that matters in FLOSS:Nonsense
Article lies - plain and simple.
The "best FOSS people" mentioned in the article are not necessarily the project leaders. And the Linux kernel is probably not a good example of Free software project, it is too peculiar in many respects.
The best people
FLOSS is an amature's ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amature ) domain and may it never become the domain of the professional because it would be the end of it.The best people
No doubt you mean "amateur". Please do not confuse "amateur" as the opposite of "professional", it is not. In French it literally means "lover", as someone who performs an activity out of love (as opposed to "for profit"). During some time in the late 19th century it became a derogatory term, probably when well-intentioned members of the unoccupied classes out of boredom started performing activities formerly in the realm of the professional. E.g. Sherlock Holmes, the original "amateur sleuth", as a prototypical example.
The best people
Curious that you would choose to lecturer me on the very information I presented you with in my post.The best people
Being maximally picky and even more off topic (as a strong Aspergic whose The best people
sister is a psychologist specializing in aspies gives me a bit of clue in
this area), there certainly *is* a reason why software development
attracts Aspergic types more often.
In many of us one of the ways this manifests is a sort of
control-freakery: that is, we avoid all change but that which we know will
happen well in advance, and that which we initiate ourselves and thus know
about, because being scared as hell is unpleasant. Computers are
incredibly controllable devices which you can interact with almost like
people except you control them and can model them sensibly (social
modelling of humans in realtime is hopeless, but computers are different).
So we *are* strongly attracted to computing, and within that we *are*
strongly attracted to software development.
Aspergic: it takes a lot of effort and a lot of lurking time, but it's
doable. Even if you've got Asperger's, there's no real excuse to be
actively nasty. (Social faux pas are another matter and probably
unavoidable, but apologising generally works to fix things then.)