The USSR sent people to gulags for having the wrong opinion. He's not saying Google is a gulag. He's saying Google is like the USSR; no wrongthink allowed. Obviously its hyperbole (and the wordplay isn't a snug fit), but hyperbole is what gets peoples attention.

Again, I'm not saying I 100% agree with him. I just think the Verge's bias is pretty apparent here.

Oh yeah I just remembered I hate google and The Internship was the most annoying movie of all time. Double damn googlebro for making me take google's side.

Very points: https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/201...biology-sexism

this is probably spot on

That's a pretty great article by the way. Still digesting it, it does take some logical liberties, but I'm drunk and don't feel like arguing on the internet all night.

I got to thinking about some of this history stuff.

We've all seen this picture of Margaret Hamilton:



It's stood up as some proud flag of women can code and hooray to what happens when we are more inclusive, encouraging, etc.

Well, there are two minor issues with all of this, and I always feel conflicted:

1- Programming was seen as a menial data-entry around that time, and thus, women's work.

2- Margaret Hamilton did not work alone. In fact, her manager and the entire coding team she was on was female. The manager refused to allow men to work under her.

I guess #2 bothers me because it's always presented like she worked alone and built up that code alone (no), or that she was some love lioness in a den of lions (no), and everyone fails to acknowledge who all of her coworkers are. It's kind of ironic when one considers that the very people who are bringing up her womaness eschews the many other women who worked along side her.

So it sounds like your taking one of the few accomplishments of women in IT and ****ting on it.

Why would you say that?

Ok, I'm still drunk, but this seems like a pretty even-handed take on the whole subject:

https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/08...r-differences/

tldr:
1. Gender differences in math/science ability, achievement, and performance are small or nil.
2. Gender differences in interest and enjoyment of math, coding, and highly “systemizing” activities are large.
3. Culture and context matter, in complicated ways. [...] progress toward gender equality in rights and opportunities sometimes leads to larger gender differences in some traits and career choices. Nonetheless, [progressive actions] may increase the likelihood that girls will grow up to pursue careers in tech, and this is true whether or not biology plays a role in producing any particular population difference.

I'm not saying you are, I'm saying 1 sounds like programming today is somehow much tougher than back when mere women did it. And 2 sounds like a pretty typical of undercutting someone's achievement as if CLOC was ever a good metric.

It would be interesting to see a documentary on the transition of data processing from Female to Male dominated.

You know, I would interested in seeing that documentary as well.

I wasn't meaning that to disparage women at all. I was meaning that, culturally, it was considered a job like secretary or something that was geared towards women. Programming simply wasn't seen like it is today.

Programming is not the only currently male-dominated field that was strongly promoted to women. Film directing was advertised as a career perfect for women, and generally discouraged men. Can't find this sort of stuff online, but the local library on early film history would have some wonderful information on it.

...but that gets to my point about how he isn't any different than those who call Donald Trump and his supporters Nazis, which is something I bet Mr. Damore and all his new friends have very strong feelings about!

I'm sure plenty of those that support Mr. Damore's firing have positive feelings about the USSR and its gulag policies. Extrimists gonna extrimist.

But yes, using "gulag" is pretty outrageous and not unsimilar to the "nazi" connotation for Trump. Lets call it a draw

This is the terrible thing about discussions about politics. Extremists and outrageous claims get noticed while the sensible moderates get lost in the shuffle. The truth is often somewhere in the middle.

I really doubt that; unlike neo-Nazism and white supremacy today, there is ~no voice today for the idea that the Soviets (or N. Korea as a similar example) had the right response to political dissent (I won't deny such a thing exists cause like you said, extremists gonna extremist, but I will say that as someone who follows politics closely and has seen all kinds of stupid **** on the internet as a result, I have never seen someone drop that take, ever).

Agreed.

it may have been seen that way back then. but, according to her wiki, such opinions were far from the truth. her wiki asserts that she developed and implemented novel designs with very reliable error handling that were integral to the success of NASA missions, most notably the moon landing.

anyway, I realize that you did not promote or imply such a viewpoint but you also did not explicitly deny it, so it was not entirely clear how misguided such ideas were.

I'm pretty sure that early days programming was a lot harder than current day programming. The tools they had were abysmal.

And they were under much tighter constraints with regards to memory, when was the last time you cared about memory?

Chrome developer located

Yeah for a few years the knock on Java vs. C++ was poor performance. We know how that turned out.

Here's from wiki regarding her:


Margaret Hamilton's Wiki Page

Quote:

NASA[edit]

Hamilton in 1969, standing next to the navigation software that she and her MIT team produced for the Apollo project.

Hamilton during her time as lead Apollo flight software designer.
Hamilton then joined the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory at MIT, which at the time was working on the Apollo space mission. She eventually led a team credited with developing the software for Apollo and Skylab.[14] Hamilton's team was responsible for developing in-flight software,[15] which included algorithms designed by various senior scientists for the Apollo command module, lunar lander, and the subsequent Skylab.[4][16] Another part of her team designed and developed the systems software [17] which included the error detection and recovery software such as restarts and the Display Interface Routines (AKA the Priority Displays) which Hamilton designed and developed.[18] She worked to gain hands-on experience during a time when computer science courses were uncommon and software engineering courses did not exist.[4]

Her areas of expertise include systems design and software development, enterprise and process modelling, development paradigm, formal systems modeling languages, system-oriented objects for systems modelling and development, automated life-cycle environments, methods for maximizing software reliability and reuse, domain analysis, correctness by built-in language properties, open-architecture techniques for robust systems, full life-cycle automation, quality assurance, seamless integration, error detection and recovery techniques, man-machine interface systems, operating systems, end-to-end testing techniques, and life-cycle management techniques.[4][19]

This was all done in assembly language. One of the reasons C was invented, the chief reason actually, was that managing the intellectual complexities of software development of mission critical type systems was a monumental challenge in assembly language.

DaveT statement:

Quote:

1- Programming was seen as a menial data-entry around that time, and thus, women's work.

Tempted to state that this is bull****. I'll be kind though and state citation needed.

ya if you read her wiki, that was a big deal and she is credited with unique and ingenious ways to overcome it.

pretty crazy and impressive. and yes, lol at accounting for that stuff today.

My guess is as data processing moved from boring back office stuff that only the largest corporations did to something critical to most every business is when it started getting more attention from men. Although it could be as simple as the male dominated PC culture created a generation of men who owned computers and the standard male preference in business took over.

HuffPo Column - Yes, Women's Brains Are Different. And Google Needs More Of Them

Quote:

The bulk of engineering jobs at Google do not involve sitting in a cave alone writing code, and in fact require “coordinating and cooperating” with groups of people, Zunger wrote:

If someone told you that engineering was a field where you could get away with not dealing with people or feelings, then I’m very sorry to tell you that you have been lied to ... All of these traits which the manifesto described as “female” are the core traits which make someone successful at engineering. Anyone can learn how to write code; hell, by the time someone reaches level seven or so, it’s expected that they have an essentially complete mastery of technique.

This was my reaction after reading the Damore memo pretty much. If you work long in this field you are bound to run into guys that in a nutshell, are completely inflexible. I've beaten this drum before here. Software development tasks complexity is ever increasing and functioning in a collaborative manner as a team is crucial. In my view, FWIW, the days of the hero developer are gone.

On the topic of women at NASA, I recommend the film Hidden Figures. It's superb

The Economist nails it. https://www.economist.com/news/21726...nging-rebuttal