Do Women Write Better Code? 847
JCWDenton writes "The senior vice-president of engineering for computer-database company Ingres-and one of Silicon Valley's highest-ranking female programmers-insists that men and women write code differently. Women are more touchy-feely and considerate of those who will use the code later, she says. They'll intersperse their code ... with helpful comments and directions, explaining why they wrote the lines the way they did and exactly how they did it. The code becomes a type of 'roadmap' for others who might want to alter it or add to it later, says McGrattan, a native of Ireland who has been with Ingres since 1992. Men, on the other hand, have no such pretenses. Often, 'they try to show how clever they are by writing very cryptic code,' she tells the Business Technology Blog. 'They try to obfuscate things in the code,' and don't leave clear directions for people using it later. "
Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Women (Score:5, Insightful)
I've seen all genders write obfuscated code--but it worked. And every single time it was because we were under the gun for a deadline or there was simply no other way to do it. It's preposterous to even try to sound like you have empirical data supporting this blanket assessment.
I could combat her anecdotal subjective statements (probably describing herself) with my own anecdotes or go on a rant about how many of the great programmers are men (like Donald Knuth and his 'literate programming') but what's the point? Men can be just as meticulous as women can at providing good documentation and women can be just as sloppy.
It's good to have a healthy mix of diversity and I wish that programmers were 50/50 split on gender (trust me, I really really do) but it's not because women are better than men at coding. Prime example of American sexism in one of the few forms it exists today.
Simplistic? True? (Score:5, Insightful)
Any such broad classifications such as this should be taken with a *lot* of salt.
That being said, the article reminded me of a large digital systems design project that I had back in college, writing assembly for a 6502 processor in a device we made. My lab partner was a girl (probably only 10% of the class was female) who really, really thought differently than me in a way. It was weird -- some of the things I thought were impossible or not worth doing she would code in 10 hours; and the reverse was true. It was pretty much pure synergy (forgive the cheesy phrase) and we were extremely productive and got along well.
However, to reduce anything like this to gender differences is almost nonsensical. I could have been good lab partners with any number of people that thought differently than me, male or female. Personality is complex, not binary. I know many girls that code beautifully, and many more that can not code at all. This article is kind of interesting cocktail conversation, but nothing more IMHO...
Since the whole article is based on anecdotes... (Score:5, Insightful)
A male colleague, OTOH, likes to write code in style such as
for (unsigned int i=0;ij;i = i + 1)
{
There, I've the counterpoint for the article with my own biased view!
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:4, Insightful)
What's a prime example? The fact that coding is a male dominated workplace? Or that someone can make blanket, derogatory statements against a group of people based on their sex/race/religion and get away with it?
Never mind, actually. I'd agree either way.
I write code like that guy (Score:5, Insightful)
I also comment obsessively because I want to be able to come back to the code a year later and know, quickly, what I did and why I did it.
Many years ago I was porting someone else's C code from 16 bit to 32 bit and came across "//Why did I do this?" at the top of a couple hundred lines of uncommented code that had multiple embedded while anf for loops, with a pow() and a couple of sizeof()'s in there. I had to print it out and trace it by hand to figure out what he'd done, and why. Took awhile.
Too many comments can be ignored, too few can give you heartburn.
Bad programmers methinks (Score:5, Insightful)
Forget a male/female issue. I think she needs to hire better programmers period. Anyone in a professional code shop that's deliberately trying to write obfuscated code shouldn't be there and she's not doing her job properly if she's not firing them or getting them into remedial classes of some kind.
Of course (Score:5, Insightful)
Poor observation skills (Score:5, Insightful)
The same sort of thing applied here at the University I teach at - a certain ethnic minority had a very bad reputation as producing cheaters in Comp.Sci. So for a few years, I carefully recorded every instance of cheating, and kept track of the ethnic background of the people getting caught. You know what? The only reason more people of that background were getting caught is because they represented 85% of the population in the department - the overall percentage of them that were cheating was actually LOWER than others.
Perhaps this McGrattan person should concentrate more on fixing the problems than on blaming them on some group she doesn't like.
Re:Not my experience (Score:4, Insightful)
Rediculous nonsense (Score:3, Insightful)
Short Answer: No (Score:2, Insightful)
Any programmer (whether male or female) who 'try to obfuscate things in the code' are on a fast tract to sacked-ville, and ignored-for-promotion town.
Sooo tired (Score:2, Insightful)
But if the article says "women code better than men" then everything is ok. Is like some spot by Boss (at least in Spain) where the woman could replace the man if he wasn't able to use the stove or the washer
I think coding is about the person not about the gender. Careful people comment more and make more comments while rush people may make more cryptic code. Sometimes some brilliant people just don't comment but makes the most elegant code
Re:Since the whole article is based on anecdotes.. (Score:3, Insightful)
* Explain your intent, then write your code.
This goes beyond just "put comments in your code." When you want to write a routine, or a program, start by describing the problem in natural human terms. One good approach is to open a new text file, write the problem description in English (etc.), but put comment/remark syntax markers around it. For each sentence in the problem description, you can often insert the real programming code necessary, and leave the English description behind.
Adding translations and comments for every line of code, to explain every single operation, is not effective documentation. Instead, write your intentions for how the routine should work in English, and follow it with several lines of code. Put strategy in comments, tactics in code. This will help you write code cleanly and logically the first time, and it will help your associates decypher the program later. Commenting code shouldn't waste time, it should save time.
If they wrote "// walk the array of customers" (above the loop) instead of "// increment i from 0 to j in increments of one", wouldn't that help you follow the chain of thought so much more? Of course, literate programming would rather you use variable names that conveyed their intent as well.
Here's my anecdote (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, I don't think this is 100% gender related, because the female programmers that act like the stereotypical programmers also kinda suck at work too. I think it's more of an issue of having people skills and my anecdotal evidence supports hiring more female programmers.
A pathetic cry for help (Score:3, Insightful)
If women write better code, does that mean we shouldn't hire bulldykes ? Talk amongst yourselves!
Re:Simplistic? True? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:5, Insightful)
Bah! I can think of three female programmers immediately who I've worked with closely enough to comment on their code. Two of them were C++ programmers and I don't remember their code being anything atypical in terms of comments, though one wrote very elegant code. The third works primarily in Java and somehow manages to turn out hideously unreadable code. Conversely, I've seen numerous men who program in a variety of ways, readable and otherwise.
It's now well established that the human brain builds negative stereotypes more easily than positive ones and that people see what they are expecting and apply a double standard. This person sees what she wants to see.
Puhlease! God devs comment. Bad ones don't. (Score:3, Insightful)
"Pandas comment better than Gnomes at coding". (I guess it's cos pandas take time to think. Gnomes are just to fast for their own good.)
"Short people code better on average than tall people" (Presumably because their heads are closer to the computer?)
"Hispanics code differently to black people." (I have no idea what I can say about this comparison that won't sound racist, and the point of this comment is to show how STUPID any general comparisons like this are.)
On the other hand, maybe these would be valid comparisons:
"Managers write worse code than developers". Yep, it might come as a shock that on average people who practice are better.
"Good developers comment more than bad developers." Shock! Horror! There's a surprise!
And while I'm at it. The picture that the WSJ used to illustrate their article shows a dramatic lack of imagination. Next time let's have a pictures of a naked coders instead of a half-assed, inappropriate, royalty-free attempt to use a bit of beauty into an otherwise daft article.
Re:I write code like that guy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think so. (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty much kills that theory in my book. Men and women often think differently, and even different programmers of the same sex think differently. There are a lot of generalizations one can make about women and men in the world, and argue religiously about whether it is environment or instinct... Somehow I don't think programming style is one of them.
Re:Since the whole article is based on anecdotes.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I work on the assumption that the next person to read the code will have at least a vague idea of what the programming language is, and how to speak it, so comments are the subtext to explain what happens, where, and where any obfuscations are. (Deliberately obfuscating is bad; occasionally it's unavoidable, and therefore needs more comment)
Stereotypes are an ugly thing.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I certainly do not write my code in a "cryptic way" to show off. I find it a little insulting to my entire gender to be pigeonholed in that way.
I was taught that when you write code it should be easily understandable and well commented and that's what I do.
Sheesh.
Greg C.
i don't know if women write better code (Score:5, Insightful)
congrats slashdot for picking a topic everyone feels entitled to comment on and absolutely no one actually says anything useful on
Re:That's not why! (Score:3, Insightful)
This day and age, the few extra cycles to do something in a more readable fashion are worth it for most tasks. If performance is critical, those rules are out the window and it can get pretty hairy. But those are also the times when you write novels for your comments to let others know what's going on and why it was done.
Layne
Re:Wow, What A Revelation. (Score:3, Insightful)
Deadlines... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, been there, wrote my share of spaghetti code to tack on another feature the quickest and least elegant way.
Now add a management that is not willing to invest in refactoring during slower times, and the code will degrade over the years as one quickhack is added to the next.
She could be right ... or be deeply biased (Score:2, Insightful)
That there is a difference I could buy. But that the difference is so easily stereotyped in the way she describes I find a little hard to believe. In fact, were this a man talking about the "difference" in the same way, I'm sure they would be in enormous trouble for offering such a blatantly sexist anecdote. I'm a little surprised that someone with such an attitude has a management position and is so bold about stating their prejudices. I'm all for getting as many women in coding jobs as are interested and are skilled at it, but I'd think twice about working at a place where someone in charge has such obvious gender biases.
Improve coding practices by requiring better documentation and setting standards? Great idea. Attribute existing differences in those practices to gender? Sounds like foolishness unless she's got some kind of scientific study to statistically back it up.
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, this article is almost completely fallacious... Let's look at the facts quoted:
So, basically, she'd get a higher score if she guessed "man" every time than if she tries to be clever. Clearly, then, she does think some men's code looks like it's been written by a woman, which invalidates to point of the article.
Re:yeah yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)
Also I have nearly 20 years of professional software development. You wound me sir.
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:2, Insightful)
I comment my code profusely and stick notes about "why" (not "what") all over the place, and I'm a guy.
I think the OP is generalizing way too much. The point of my post is that everyone is different, not just because they are men and women. Women can be just as elitist as guys and write clever code that runs as efficiently as possible (in other words, can be a little hard to understand) then assume that anyone following them should know what they are doing so not comment much. It can look obfuscated but sometimes to get max performance that's how things turn out.
Tell me something new... admittedly I have to push myself to comment, but in my old age it's coming a lot more naturally. Everyone is different and sex has little to do with it.
-Viz
Re:I write code like that guy (Score:3, Insightful)
What if the comment doesn't match what the code does and is obfuscated? Your never going to tell where I screwed up.
There is a lot more to writing readable code than just adding comments. In fact, I've come across a lot of code where the comments weren't any more helpful than the code was in the first place.
Much more important than good comments are: Using descriptive variable names not overusing language shortcuts. Not overusing order of operation. Isolating complicated code into it's own functions and keeping functions short and to the point instead of trying to do 15 things in a function.
Re:Poor observation skills (Score:4, Insightful)
I completely agree with the parent.
From the FTA:
Hmm, most of the women modify existing code or review existing code rather than write from scratch. Where is the comparison between male and female "heavy lifting" code writers and between make and female quality assurance/adaptor coders. Or was this comparison not as sensational as blaming the sex of the coder rather than the type of coder?
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:2, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:5, Insightful)
However you could leverage the fact that men and women think different to gain fault tolerance. If you have two independent programmers do the same work, with the same requirements they will frequently arrive at different solutions. As most know this can be leveraged by comparing the output of both solutions to verify the solution is proper. If one solution was done by a male and the other by a female the probability of difference should go up due to the difference in thought patterns, I would think.
That is a real chance of benefit versus the male hating nonsense she spewed.
Programming Options (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Cheap
2. Fast
3. Correct
You can choose any two options when developing something. Guess which two my clients usually make?
Regarding this, I agree - flamebait, article - I've only ever worked with one other female coder. Her code was the sloppiest thing I've ever gone cross-eyed staring at. Usually that doesn't matter to the clients much as long as it works, her code didn't even work half the time. With 0 lines of documentation 2 out of the 3 projects I worked with her on I ended up completely redoing her responsibilities myself.
Do I judge all women coders by her standard? No I'm not that ignorant.
Re:Since the whole article is based on anecdotes.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think either men or women are better at engineering, but there are just plain fewer women in these fields and they tend to be very competent, in my experience. More wheat; less chaff.
Re:Of course (Score:5, Insightful)
Cos we all know that testosterone is bad, and women engineers are all better because, well, they're not mad things driven by their hormones, like silly men.
Basically the woman is a fool with an agenda (women into computing) so is constructing a theory to fit the purpose using crass gender stereotypes. There are good coders who document and comment clearly. There are good coders who don't, but should. There are rotten coders who both do and don't document and comment clearly. But any attempt to assign any of the former attributes to gender specifics is pathetic, and more than a little worrying for someone who, I presume, is responsible for employing people under present gender discrimination laws. If I worked for her I would more than a little annoyed at being patronised and my coding style & skills being categorized by gender.
Re:Bad programmers methinks (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Actual comments from woman-code: (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, I couldn't stand to see an unclosed comment... It was driving me nuts.
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:5, Insightful)
Inept male programmers have an easier time hiding in the crowd. Inept women programmers can't.
Because of this culling effect, the women that are still around are, on average, more capable.
Industries dominated by women have a similar effect. The males end up being better because they need to overcome the inherent prejudice to get the same performance review.
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:McGrattan's Blog (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks for the link. When she refers to gender as "women" and "boys" it really makes it clear where her prejudices are.
As a young man, I have worked hard to mentally apply the words "women" and "ladies" in place of "girls" during recent years because I have found that many females have a reasonable personal preference not to be called "girl" ("chick" is also a bad choice).
In any case, seeing "boys" applied within an "anti-man" argument is a refreshing reminder that women also suffer the negative effects of sexism and bigotry.
Re:McGrattan's Blog (Score:5, Insightful)
How does "nothing I'd ever thought about before" and "fairly androgynous" code add up to "at least 80 per cent of the time [ft.com]"?
If you publish shit based on psychic code-reading ability and made-up, pulled-out-of-your-unthinking-ass subjective factoids, you need to publish it as what it is - fiction.
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:2, Insightful)
2)Nerds don't need their VCRs to tell time or record with. They use a HTPC.
Re:Even if true (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:5, Insightful)
When giving directions, most men will say something like, "Turn north on Smith Street." Technically, it's correct, but most people don't know north from south.
A woman usually navigates via landmarks, such as, "turn right at the Shell station." That can also be confusing if it's *too* generic and the driver is going to be passing a lot of Shell stations. OTOH, it's often a lot easier to see and remember a landmark than a often obscured street sign. That doesn't make it more or less concise than a man's directions.
When giving directions, don't give people your special "short cut route" unless you're having to do so they can avoid construction or other major delay. Short cuts are rarely direct and it's best to have as few turns as possible even it means it's longer mileage-wise. If you write down directions to send, it's best to double check with a map as it's easy to leave out parts when it's somewhere you travel all the time. Or better yet, just Goggle a map, print it out and tuck it into the invite.
As to code, sloppy, lazy code is just that and there's no helping someone with bad habits. But if someone is trying to make it cryptic on purpose to be macho or, more likely, a feeble attempt at job security, they're an idiot. THEY may have to go back one day and rework that code and trust me, they won't remember what they were doing. I think a lot of coders don't document like they should, usually because they're under a deadline. Or they think they won't have a problem because they're working in it all the time. And they almost never go back after the project to document. But consider that, situations change, and you might find yourself changing languages, working for a year or so on another project. THEN just try and go back to ASP after being immersed into ASP.net or Perl or something else. You'll wish you'd paid more attention to documenting.
Re:Wow, What A Revelation. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest problem with "brains work differently" is that "differently" is too easily interpreted as "better". People simplify this down to a one dimensional score of IQ. No matter how you rig the scores, one group is going to come out looking "better". Then you get things like how former Harvard President Summers' speech was interpreted. And you get denial for purely political reasons, insistence that everyone is equal because otherwise it would be unfair.
Which is the better chess piece, the knight or the bishop? That's not a good question. It presumes that there's a clear advantage to one or the other when actually it's situational. The knight is regarded as better for closed positions, while the bishop is better for open positions. Nonetheless, chess experts couldn't resist concluding that perhaps the bishop is overall slightly better, and have gone as far as giving computers a blanket preference in that direction. Perhaps the bishop is the better piece for the computer's typical style of massive tactical computation paired with ever more sophisticated but insufficient heuristic rules to compensate for zero understanding of the overall strategic considerations of a chess position. (For instance, computers have been known to continue to grind out move after move in positions where the outcome is already known, positions such as king and knight vs king which is a draw no matter what the players do, because unless specifically programmed to do so, computers do not assess positions from a view of what is possible.) What I wonder is if programming is a situation in which men's or women's style of intelligence seems to work better, or is programming a more varied situation than that?
Re:Wow, What A Revelation. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:5, Insightful)
Second, your supporting data makes no sense. Why are you asking about names of famous flute players and comparing to the stats of high school flute players? Those data points may exist, but you have not demonstrated them anywhere in your post. There is no direct correlation between high school flute players and famous flute players unless you can show data that says otherwise. (Such as, "80% of famous flute players played flute in high school", or similar).
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:4, Insightful)
Turn left (North) on 16th street (Starbucks on the corner)
Go 1.5 miles (about three minutes) to Broadway (Shell Station) and turn left (West)
The problem is that people tend to give directions one way, or another, but not both. Both is always better, even for those that tend to work one way better than another.
I don't mind obfuscated code, if it is well documented as to what it does. It can be more efficient way to get something done.
The some of the best coders make some of the worst documenters, because they think everyone should think like them.
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not Male vs. Female, it's Verbal vs. Analytical. (Score:4, Insightful)
1) 80% of software cost goes into maintenance.
2) Developers rarely stick with a position for more than 3-5 years.
It's more cost effective to have code that is easy to maintain, thus her focus on READABILITY. I can't tell you how many man-hours have been lost on our projects because our code is stupid and unreadable. Remember every time you've wanted to throw a brick at the guy before you? Yeah, that's stress that I really don't want yo be paying for on my project. Now:
3) Developers spend more time reading code than writing code.
4) Developers absorb code density faster via code examples than they do via documentation.
So, it's better to write self-documenting code, than to document highly analytical code. That means sensible variable/method names as well as collections/relationships that are relevant, at least where OOP is concerned.
Now, most business software is non-algorithmic, i.e. it isn't really computing so much as it is moving data around. The math isn't all that complex when the hardest thing you have to model is your database and the queries used to run it.
Considering all these things, I often hire programmers with better verbal skills, even at the expense of their analytical skills. Women tend to be more verbal than analytical, thus the authors conclusion. It's also easier to teach optimization and performance than it is to teach English grammar/syntax and how to "port" that to a programming language, and as outlined above, this is the part of the software that is not only the most expensive, but will give you the higher ROI over the life of that software. Enterprisey stuff can linger for tens of years, incurring maintenance costs all the while.
Now if the author had looked beneath the surface of what her gut (correctly) told her into the real cognition of what was going on, she might not have pissed off a bunch of insecure slashdot trolls. She might have even realized what was "better" about what she was seeing and how to train the rest of her staff to perform at that level.
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:3, Insightful)
Whilst your intentions are good in the above, and you are correct as far as it goes, the real problem of -isms is not whether one group is generally different to another or not, but when members of a group are presupposed to conform to the stereotype. We know that a bishop moves in a specific way in chess. But the real world that you are comparing to has "bishops" that may tend to move in a particular way but very far from always do. For a generalisation such as this article makes to be a useful guide to decision making such as what gender to employ, even if the article were correct in a general case which I'm very far from allowing, the tendency would have to be absolutely overwhelming before it became more efficient to pre-judge people based on their gender rather than assess people for who they actually are.
Quite simply, the average man is seldom average, and neither is the average woman.
Why make this a gender issue? (Score:3, Insightful)
I've never been paid to write code, but I know how. If you're going to write code that nobody other than yourself is ever going to see or have to modify, then you can get away with not embedding comment text and generally being sloppy. You can also be as obfuscated and cryptic as you want, because again nobody else is ever going to have to try to decipher it. But seriously, if you're getting paid to code you have to assume somebody down the road is going to have to deal with how your source is written. If nothing else, your boss may want to look it over, and if your boss can't make heads or tails of it without a sherpa guide, then you're not going to be viewed favorably, are you? In a nutshell, I think writing clear, concise code, with clear, concise commenting, is the professional way to do the job.
Now let's put gender back into the equation: I wouldn't be surprised if the ratio of male to female professional programmers is 1000:1, if not 10000:1 or higher. The few women coders out there HAVE to be more professional, HAVE to do a quantum level better job than their male counterparts, if they want to be taken seriously, don't they? It's a sad commentary on humanity in general that we have to see this sexist bullshit attitude day in day out in this world, but that's what they have to contend with, so that's the only way they, as professionals, can handle it.
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:4, Insightful)
Heheh, unfortunately I have.
A lot of people feel the same way about COBOL, but for a language used in more than 80% of the world's businesses [wikipedia.org] it's done pretty well. Say what you will about it, but it has been very influential, and was groundbreaking in its time.
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah I know a female programmer - me.
I've known good female programmers and have met a few bad ones (like a database programmer who claimed joins were impossible). I can say the same thing for my male colleagues.
As far as commenting goes, it depends on the programmer.
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:2, Insightful)
as a female coder, i think this is b.s. (Score:4, Insightful)
do i comment my code? yes, but it's not because i'm "touchy-feely". i hate commenting my code. i hate documenting my work. it's a chore and a bore (and something i often leave until the very end). i do it because it's essential for me to be able to go back to my work in a few months time and understand what the heck it was i was doing/thinking at the time. this was drummed into us at school by our prof, who made code commenting and documentation 15% of the grade. he also required we use informative variable names and write legible code and we'd get dinged heavily if we didn't. i think he was right and so i continue to try to follow his advice every day, and this includes code i write purely for myself, but it goes against my nature.
i'm reminded of one time, early in my career, where i was given a small problem to solve. i solved it, then set about seeing what i could do to make it tighter and more clever, getting very caught up in the process. finally, i was very pleased to have something that used all kinds of nifty, bit-shifting tricks and whatnot and fit all on one line. i was pretty stoked, actually. awesome! it looked cool! the senior programmer mentoring me took a look at it, told me he thought it was way neat, but requested that i redo it all so that it a) was on many lines and 2) made sense to everyone else who'd have to come by later and figure out what i was doing. oh, and could i please be sure to include comments? lesson learned.
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:2, Insightful)
The biggest problem with "brains work differently" is that "differently" is too easily interpreted as "better".
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Don't be clever! If you have to be clever, write a ton of documentation as to why you did it the way you did it.
2) Don't optimize (unless you must), and even then, leave the unoptimized (readable) code commented out. And only optimize the code blocks than a profiler tells you to... there is no point optimizing a loop that runs once.
I actually don't understand how some people can write such obfuscated code. I write comments like there is no tomorrow because in 2 days, I won't know what it does any more than another developer would! Refactoring is a bitch, or impossible, when you don't understand what you've written.
Anyone who writes code like a "hotshot" is anything but.
Re:Bad programmers methinks (Score:3, Insightful)
If they are managing to get obfuscated code past a code review, either:
a) people reviewing it can't comprehend it or do the research to comprehend it and don't want to look stupid to the rest of the team.
b) the team lead isn't establishing solid coding practices. In many instances team leads/project managers have no coding background - and thus can't establish standards.
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:3, Insightful)
How come you were *all* so scared that not a single one of you had the guts to ask for it to be removed? Even when it was demonstrated hands-on that a request like that would be perfectly acceptable?
Peer pressure? Afraid of being seen as being afraid of seeing dicks?
It is pretty clear why a female boss would put up a poster like that as a blatant display of power. Every guy that walks into her room will glance over the poster, compare his dick with the one in the poster and maybe get slightly uncomfortable. Imagine having a salary negotiation with your boss with ten dicks on the wall. She knew what she was doing, and that it was "illegal." Yet by having it, and intentionally breaking the rules, she demonstrates that she has more authority that anyone else.
Oh, the word "bitch" (Score:3, Insightful)
Instead, I prefer to say "what a fucking asshole" or "what a fucking jerk" which are more equal-opportunity and apply equally well to men and women. I know it's weird to say, "Mary is such an asshole," but give it a try and you may find you enjoy the refreshing change.
However, when I run into a particularly impenetrable bug in my code, I am wont to say "this bug is a cunt," but I don't think it's especially demeaning, as it is both funny and British-sounding.
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:3, Insightful)
Women may or may not comment code by nature, but comments and organization are hardly things which cannot be learned. And it's hardly an innate gift of females to do this all the time. I'm willing to bet any sum of money that there are at least a few out there that don't.
And the fact of the matter is that it's easy to learn to comment and format things, it's far more difficult to learn how to code in an efficient and reliable manner. Comments and formatting help a lot, but you can still sort of spaghetti code even with comments and organization, it's just organized and formatted crap.
I'm really not a very good programmer at all, I rarely finish anything. The only reason why anything I code ever works is that it's formatted in a way that allows me to find the myriad errors. If I couldn't do that, I wouldn't even be a bad programmer.
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:5, Insightful)
I generally agree, with one comment. Don't leave commented code unless it is well documented WHY you are leaving it. In this example I think I would prefer that a good explanation of the purpose of the section rather than leaving the unoptimized code. The reason is that over time there is a good chance that someone will modify the executing code, but not the commented code. I've worked on a number of projects where code was commented out with a note
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:4, Insightful)
a) Write it the easy-to-understand way.
b) Write some really good unit tests (100% or greater code coverage.
c) Optimize the hell out of it, and make sure the tests still pass.
The unit tests work as a form of documentation, as well as for regression testing. a and b can of course be reversed, if you're into that sort of thing. I usually do a bit of both.
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Gender differences (Score:3, Insightful)
Not worse, nor better really, just
You know who else think differently, my friends, they think different to me as well. Amazing isn't it? They like different things, like different girls, have different priorities, etc... It is almost as if we are ALL individuals, not part of some great group hive mind.