From: Ivor Paul <ivorpaul@...>
Date: 2007-05-05T22:07:01+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby love

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My apologies.

The notion of my comment "Have you guys reaped any benefits? :p" being
seriously interpreted as a power-hungry "could I maybe unlock some hidden
power here" type phrase had not even occurred to me. I made a comment which
amongst my friends would have been interpreted as a cute retorical foray
into "stereotypical geek role-playing".

I recognise that the comment should have stayed within my close group of
friends where the potential damage could be contained and handled.

Regards
Ivor

On 5/5/07, dblack@wobblini.net <dblack@wobblini.net> wrote:
>
> Hi --
>
> On Sat, 5 May 2007, Gregory Brown wrote:
>
> > On 5/4/07, Ivor Paul <ivorpaul@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Great, thanks guys.
> >>
> >> I think I will start by trying the guessing game and maybe make it more
> >> complicated from there on.
> >>
> >> So...has this payed of for anyone? Have you guys reaped any benefits?
> :p
> >
> > You know, this is a little bit more of a sensitive topic than it might
> > seem.  It is a great to teach people close to you to program, but I
> > don't know that it's for you to reap 'benefits'.
>
> The fact that discussions of women in computing, among men, always
> seem to take a locker-room turn sooner rather than later may be part
> of the problem.  I'm certainly not a prude, but I'm pretty tired of
> this particular strain of prurience.
>
> > I wonder if there are good ways that we can get more women involved in
> > programming.  Me teaching one of my ex-girlfriend's Perl was actually
> > a pretty bad experience because I found myself treating her like a
> > hacker automatically and it caused a lot of social stress...
> >
> > Of the females on this list, how did you get into programming?   How
> > can we be better at being supportive of getting women involved in
> > programming?
> >
> > These questions I think are important for us to think about...  If
> > you've been to any users groups or conferences (and I know this isn't
> > just a Ruby problem), the  gender imbalance is startling...
>
> A number of years ago, I had this perhaps quixotic notion that perhaps
> Ruby could be the one to break the mold and approach a balance.  With
> this in mind, I contacted the then president of the Association for
> Women in Computing, and asked whether she thought there were steps we
> might take, with regard to publicizing conferences and so forth, that
> might take us in this direction.
>
> I got a somewhat puzzling answer.  I think she may have thought that I
> was talking about the Ruby hardware description language; she said
> something about Ruby being concerned with a traditionally
> male-dominated domain (which is an odd comment to make about a
> general-purpose programming language).  She also brought up what
> seemed to me to be biologically deterministic arguments -- precisely
> what I least expected.  Anyway, it didn't go anywhere.
>
> It may be time to try again, in one way or another.
>
>
> David
>
> --
> Q. What is THE Ruby book for Rails developers?
> A. RUBY FOR RAILS by David A. Black (http://www.manning.com/black)
>     (See what readers are saying!  http://www.rubypal.com/r4rrevs.pdf)
> Q. Where can I get Ruby/Rails on-site training, consulting, coaching?
> A. Ruby Power and Light, LLC (http://www.rubypal.com)
>
>

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