Untangling the Tale of Ada Lovelace 124
theodp writes: To commemorate the 200th birthday of Ada Lovelace, Google's CS Education in Media Program partnered with YouTube Kids on Happy Birthday Ada! for Computer Science Education Week. For those seeking (much!) more information on The Enchantress of Numbers, Stephen Wolfram has penned a pretty epic blog post, Untangling the Tale of Ada Lovelace. "Ada Lovelace was born 200 years ago today," Wolfram begins. "To some she is a great hero in the history of computing; to others an overestimated minor figure. I've been curious for a long time what the real story is. And in preparation for her bicentennial, I decided to try to solve what for me has always been the 'mystery of Ada'." If you're not up for the full 12,000+ word read, skip to "The Final Story" for the TL;DR summary.
Stephen Wolfram's Blog (Score:2, Insightful)
Smart as the guy undoubtedly is, I think it has already been established that Wolfram's greatest talent is for self promotion. I would really rather not see his blog become one of Slashdot's go-to sources for slow-news-day stories. He gets quite enough publicity all by himself without Slashdot slapping his every bloggy utterance on the front page.
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Surely everyone who's read even a single page of a New Kind of Science -- or just that title, actually -- must admit that Lord Wolfram is a modest, self-deprecating kind of guy.
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Surely everyone who's read even a single page of a New Kind of Science [...]
Yeah, that's as far as I got, too.
Re:Stephen Wolfram's Blog (Score:4, Insightful)
This is one of those times when I actually RTFMed.
I agree there was self-promotion, but Wolfram has the chops to really digest and understand the Victorian era style and necessarily rough first casting of novel ideas. Plugging through all that documentation couldn't have been easy, and it's not like the guy doesn't have other things to do, so he deserves some kudos in my opinion.
Wolfram may have been serving himself, but he also served Ada and Charles Babbage, and that makes it worth reading.
Re: Stephen Wolfram's Blog (Score:1)
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...Same boat. What a vexatiously self-aggrandizing man. Excellent writing, and probably some very insightful substance that has never been summarized with the right perspective anywhere, but it really needs less Stephen Wolfram. Perhaps someone could re-edit the whole thing to exclude him—and polish the Wikipedia article while they're at it.
Unrelatedly, Turing's paper on his eponymous test [oxfordjournals.org] is mentioned in the biography and has some hilariously sketchy logic in it. If only publishing were like that tod
Hero? (Score:1, Troll)
All respect to women, programmers, engineers, and human-beings in general notwithstanding, don't you need to have undertaken something dangerous to qualify for the term "hero"? Especially "great hero"?
The dictionary definition mentions "exceptional courage and nobility and strength"...
Re:Hero? (Score:5, Insightful)
All respect to women, programmers, engineers, and human-beings in general notwithstanding, don't you need to have undertaken something dangerous to qualify for the term "hero"? Especially "great hero"?
The dictionary definition mentions "exceptional courage and nobility and strength"...
The dictionary definition does not specifically say one must exhibit all three characteristics to be e hero. Strength of character. Strength of the mind. Courage to take a path less travelled. Courage to explore a field of knowledge in which you might not represent to majority. There are plenty of interpretations. It is not restricted to brutality on the battlefield nor the sports venue.
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There used to be a Hero Parade in Auckland, NZ
It was to celebrate gays, lesbians and transgender
I don't think Ada Lovelace qualified for that, since she was Babbage's mistress, and presumably straight
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I don't think Ada Lovelace qualified for that, since she was Babbage's mistress,
Apparently not. She seemed to have a very good relationship with her husband, and he was excited with her work.
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This is the modern society trying to assign motives to historical figures. Two men who were friends, clearly they must have been gay. A man and woman who were friends, clearly there was an extramarital relationship there too. It's all prurient gossip by armchair historians.
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Is he? I never heard him being called hero — just about any other praise, yes, but not hero. And for the same good reason.
It is not about the enormity of the challenge, it is about willingly taking some risk to life (or limb or, at least, wealth and station in life), that shows one's bravery and thus heroism.
Re:Hero? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm afraid you're the one who is sexually confused. When you see me, you believe I am a woman. Who told you that? I didn't. In fact, I'm surprised when I'm even clearly dressed as a man when you call me "ma'am." Then when you see on my papers that I was assigned the male gender, you'd probably freak the fuck out and blame me for the way you gendered me. But anyway, I digress. Not my problem your image of a trans woman is a man in a dress.
Back on topic. Random trivia: Lovelace also died from uterine
OT: Sexual confusion (Score:2)
And a human being born with a penis yet without a womb is a male. Deal with it.
+1 Funny!
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And a human being born with a penis yet without a womb is a male.
That's not an accurate statement. Sex and gender are two different things.
One is what is what is between your legs, the other is how you feel and identify.
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Bullshit. The two words are synonyms — the latter was thought up simply to be able to have a conversation about certain matters without the younger part of those present giggling at the former. Says the dictionary:
People wit
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People with a mismatch of these two are not well. Abnormal.
They used to say the same thing about homosexuals. We're far more enlightened now.
You're welcome to your regressive beliefs. I can't say or do anything to change them. Just be aware that they'll soon be a relic of a by-gone era, with people excusing statements like yours with a quick "he's just from a different time" or "things were different when he was young, they didn't know any better".
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Bullshit. The two words are synonyms
You personally may think they are synonyms but they haven't been synonyms for a few decades now. Didn't you get the memo?
Abnormal. Up until a few years ago one could be expected to be generous and humour them so as not to hurt their feelings, but their more recent antics require a pushback of some kind.
People might say the same thing about aspies. But what are the antics you are referring to? Besides, those that tend to use the term "pushback" tend to be the kinds of people who are upset they have to be nice to people that they weren't expected to be nice to in the past.
Why should we view a woman calling herself a man â" or the other way around â" any differently?
Because it IS different. There aren't a large number of people claiming to be Napoleon, but transgender people have existed throughout history, this isn't something new.
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For the purposes of this conversation, homosexuals are no different. Something is not quite right with them...
Attitudes change back in forth — Ancient Greece was generally acceptin
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Glad you at least enjoy my attempts at humor, but you're still missing the other point, mi.
At some point in the next week, you will see somebody you've never met before. You will believe this person is a woman. This person will actually be a man.
How do you intend to establish this? Do you perform the Crocodile Dundee maneuver on every woman you meet just to be sure? How do you control for bottom surgery? Do you have a portable ultrasound device or something?
I'm honestly curious. The only reason you kn
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I do not intend to establish it at all. I'm already married, thank you very much.
... and I still don't know that.
It was not "assigned" — the male-female distinction pre-dates any sort of "assignation". The external signs are perfectly obvious.
Yes, there is a tiny number of people (and other animals) bor
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And I say, your mind needs treatment
Bit late to reply, will make this request when this comes up again if you don't want to respond here. (I hate this site's UI.) If you have some kind of psychotectic method you're keeping secret, there are many trans women out there who would love for you to publish your studies.
(I've made up my mind anyway since I'm attracted to men and would rather be a heterosexual woman who can't have children than a homosexual man with mutilated genitals who can't have children. It's not a perfect choice. In all tru
Re:Hero? (Score:5, Informative)
Nonsense and bullshit. Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] cites her biography thus, for example (emphasis mine):
Somebody lied to you, honey. The "Victorian Britain", however much it is hated by the "progressive" teachers of yours, was not as bad as they were telling you.
She happily married later and had three children with a loving husband.
Re:Hero? (Score:4, Informative)
Engaging in an activity typically pursued by men and risking the wrath of the sperglords for doing so?
Nonsense and bullshit. Wikipedia cites her biography thus, for example (emphasis mine):
She was presented at Court at the age of seventeen "and became a popular belle of the season" in part because of her "brilliant mind."
Somebody lied to you, honey. The "Victorian Britain", however much it is hated by the "progressive" teachers of yours, was not as bad as they were telling you.
Actually, you're really overstating your case. And you're overlooking important hints about what was really going on here. She was admired for her "brilliant mind" not just as a woman, but because she was presented at Court.
She wasn't just a woman -- she was a rich, aristocratic woman who thus had a bit more freedom to do things she wanted to without raising as many eyebrows. But keep in mind that there were still severe restrictions even on noblewomen -- during her lifetime (1830s), Parliament confirmed that women absolutely did NOT have the right to vote, they were basically unable to get a divorce without applying for an individual Act of Parliament to do so, when married their property rights generally didn't exist individually (this was typical of marriage laws back then), etc., etc. You might benefit from reading a bit of the history of feminism in the UK [wikipedia.org] to get a better sense of how restricted women were at this time.
Sure, educated women in the upper classes were allowed to pursue various intellectual pursuits, basically as long as they weren't seen as having any serious practical consequence. If Ada Lovelace wanted to become a lawyer or a doctor or something like that, she would have faced HUGE obstacles. If she wanted to be taken seriously as a scholar and employed as a professor at a major university, it would have taken serious convincing.
But if she -- as a wealthy lady who supposedly had nothing better to do with her time -- spent time fiddling with random gadgets that weren't understood to have any practical purpose as yet and working with some theoretical mathematics that wasn't really groundbreaking (it was the connection to technology which was novel, not the math itself), then she wouldn't be "stepping on the toes" of any men in any serious practical professions.
So, GP's claim was a bit nonsensical, because wealthy aristocratic women did have freedom to pursue intellectual pursuits to some extent. But your response is equally nonsensical in acting like "Victorian Britain" wasn't that bad for women. For women of the lower and middle classes, they certainly wouldn't have had the option to do anything like this. And for upper-class women, this sort of thing was pretty much limited to women who essentially took on the status of "independent scholars" and were generally admired FIRST for their wealth and social standing. But they could participate in intellectual discourse to some extent, as long as they mostly confined themselves to theoretical works without demanding actual recognition or a practical career.
Re:Hero? (Score:4, Insightful)
False. She was presented at Court, because she was a girl of noble birth coming of age — all such teenagers were presented at Court, whether they were dumb or smart, or strong or weak.
She fought none of these restrictions and so is no "hero" on that account. Her intellectual pursuits do her credit, but, because these required no risks are not signs of any heroism either.
Every woman in 19th century had the necessary freedoms for such pursuits. Being wealthy and well-connected provided the means, but not the freedoms.
You just agreed, that it was not as bad as the GGP made it appear, and yet, you are calling my response equally nonsensical? Wow...
Not because they lacked freedoms — only because they didn't have the wealth. A very important distinction, when judging a culture.
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Blah, blah, blah. You're more interested in having a fruitless argument than recognizing the broader points. Of course she was presented at court because she was a noblewoman, and her mind was only THEN admired because she happened to be thus presented (because she was rich). If she weren't rich, she wouldn't have been admired for her mind, because she likely wouldn't have even have had the opportunity to pursue such things... and even if she had, no one would have paid much attention to her.
And as for
Fuck feminism (Score:2)
Now you are sounding like a feminist...
I brought up her being admired for her mind to counter the contention, that "Victorian society" looked down upon smart women.
The point of my original post was to question the validity of the term "hero", when applied to Ada Lovelace, who never had to risk neither life, nor limb, nor wealth, nor station in life to
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I thought I've seen everything, but I certainly never saw or expected to see a die-hard libertarian singing praises to the Victorian era.
Then again, we've had another self-described libertarian fapping on Sarah Palin not that long ago, so I suppose it makes some perverted sense.
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She wasn't doing anything physically dangerous, but consider the context. In Ada's time, a woman trod on men's societal turf only at the risk of losing her social position -- and lifetime income.
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Huh? Citations, please... Could you name a few women from Ada's society, who lost their social positions?
Though Ada's father was an asshole (like many poets), her mother was a freaking baroness — and "independently wealthy". And it was her mother, who promoted little Ada's interest in Mathematics.
If you want to find an actual hero among women-scientists, that would by Hypatia [wikipedia.org], but Ada Lovelace has
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OK, didn't realize Ada was in an assured position. Yes, I know about Hypatia, but this thread is on the 19th century.
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Well, what did you mean then, when you wrote about her risking her "societal position"?! Being smart was not at all considered "detrimental" — indeed, Ada Lovelace was praised in the royal court for having a "brilliant mind" (see Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]).
Yes, and the 19th century Britain was, probably, among the best places to be a woman. Baroness had it easier than a commoner, but even for a commoner it was not quite so awful
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Wait, you haven't seen how Ada and Babbage fight crime and have adventures? [sydneypadua.com]
Anyone interested in Ada Lovelace and/or the story of computing will enjoy that utterly respectful comic.
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FFS, there's no need to get your panties in a wad over trivial semantics.
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If we went by the dictionary definition, we'd have to revoke the hero title from thousands of people. Pulled a kid out of a burning building, but it is just normal run of the mill courage and below average strength and no aristocratic heritage.
Difference Engine (Score:4, Informative)
If you have not seen the Difference Engine reconstruction at The Computer History Museum in Santa Clara, I highly recommend it. They actually operate it, and it's hypnotic to watch it.
Re:Difference Engine (Score:4, Informative)
*sigh*
The difference engine. Really? Seriously?
Repeat after me: Ada Lovelace wrote a program for the Analytical Engine architecture.
I'm sure Babbage's Difference Engine is fascinating, but it can't be programmed. The architecture you're looking for is the Analytical Engine. At least get the basics right.
Here: A Sketch of the Analytical Engine [fourmilab.ch]. It has never actually been built, although I understand one of the mills almost was.
The woman [fourmilab.ch] page [fourmilab.ch]. (That's a joke, son.)
And finally, the table of contents [fourmilab.ch] in case I've missed something in my nerd rage.
Re:Difference Engine (Score:5, Informative)
*sigh*
The difference engine. Really? Seriously?
Repeat after me: Ada Lovelace wrote a program for the Analytical Engine architecture.
I'm sure Babbage's Difference Engine is fascinating, but it can't be programmed. The architecture you're looking for is the Analytical Engine. At least get the basics right.
Here: A Sketch of the Analytical Engine [fourmilab.ch]. It has never actually been built, although I understand one of the mills almost was.
The woman [fourmilab.ch] page [fourmilab.ch]. (That's a joke, son.)
And finally, the table of contents [fourmilab.ch] in case I've missed something in my nerd rage.
In fairness, you can't go to see an Analytical Engine reconstruction., because there isn't one. So the best you can do is the Difference Engine, which, as you correctly point out, Ada had nothing to do with. It's still worth seeing. And it's in Mountain View, not Santa Clara...sorry, about that.
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*sigh*
The difference engine. Really? Seriously?
Repeat after me: Ada Lovelace wrote a program for the Analytical Engine architecture.
I'm sure Babbage's Difference Engine is fascinating, but it can't be programmed. The architecture you're looking for is the Analytical Engine. At least get the basics right.
Given that the OP merely mentioned that the Difference Engine exhibit at Santa Clara is fascinating, and made no mention of Ada, I'd suggest that your nerd rage is out of control and you need to sit back and take some deep breaths before you next post.
Difference Engine Demo (Score:1)
I saw the Difference Engine reconstruction at the Computer History Museum a few years ago, and was fortunate enough to see the engine operated. It is hand-cranked, and uses ripple carry. The operator reported a significant increase in torque needed when the accumulator hit a major carry.
et tu Slashdot? (Score:1)
Now you load more garbage on your web page than can be hauled buy a 20 ton garbage truck?
Oh Ada...not Linda (Score:1)
Was confused there for a second.
Why haven't we replaced Alice and Bob? (Score:5, Funny)
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Why haven't Alice and Bob been replaced with Ada and Babbage yet?
Because then the movie with Ted and Carol would seem even weirder,
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I don't think most people even get the allusion. I had to think about it for a few seconds.. (I've never seen it, but have heard about it.)
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Hey, just come out of the closet; there's no shame in being gay. And stop trying to make yourself look smarter by belittling women - it doesn't work.
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If being gay is OK, then it's hardly a slander? But it is not uncommon for gays, who have yet to come out, to harbour rather cramped views on things like women, politics or being gay, to name but a few. And when you seem to be really quite misogynistic in your pronouncements, then it is not unreasonable to guess that you have reasons for favouring men - being gay is one such reason. But most gay men I know, don't feel hostile to women - it isn't a very wild guess to suspect that you don't feel good about yo
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Wow, i've never heard that one before. I make a statement the SJW's dont like and its because you think I'm in the closet. How novel! I suspect you are the gay one or british, same difference, lol.
We live and learn :-) Enlighten me, what is an SJW?
Still, I have trouble understanding why it is that some men are misogynists - so I try to make some wild guesses. Perhaps you have a better explanation? I am indeed British - not gay. I know, it's hard to tell the difference, but the slightly pained expression and awkward gait has another explanation: The Tory Government, who have a preference for, shall we say, approaching us from behind.
tl;dr (Score:5, Interesting)
According to Wolfram, she was educationally at the level of around a PhD candidate working on a thesis. She had gotten to the cutting edge of math knowledge of the time, and then had started working with Babbage, with him being kind of like an adviser. Looking at the machine, she did have some fresh perspective and ideas (like you would expect of a high-quality PhD candidate), and she did understand how the Analytic Machine worked. Wolfram predicts that if she had stayed alive, they would have been able to finish the Analytic Machine (Babbage was horrible at project management, and he would have helped her with that).
Ada comes out looking really good. She was not a fraud, and she did understand what she was doing. Unfortunately, you can't really call her the "first programmer," or the "first person to write a paper on Computer Science," but that's ok. She was a bright, energetic person, with some interesting ideas, who died too young to really investigate them deeply.
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Er, where does racism come into this? Did you just grab the wrong card from your stack of SJW talking points?
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Why are these things mutually exclusive? We had plenty of smart people who were off the rocker in more recent time - think John Nash or Van Gogh. Babbage himself must have come across as a mad scientist at the time - spending all the money on hundreds of gears and muttering about building a machine than can think. It probably took a person who didn't care much about social norms to associate with him publicly.
Even if she had a lot of help and training from Babbage to publish her book, she was still plenty s
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I've had enough Wolfram crap for the next 10 years.
I don't really know what personal issues you have with Wolfram, and actually I don't care either. I also don't care if he's a complete lunatic.
The only thing I care about is the quality of this particular article, and actually, it was a good article. So leave your weird interpersonal issues aside.
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Who is then? Her writings seem the closest to what we consider "programming". Iteration, conditionals, and (of course) function calls have existed before that time, but her writings are the first that targeted an actual Turing-Complete computing machine, that I know of, rather than just abstract steps.
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We don't really know that. He taught her how his machine worked, but he was not particularly good at describing how it did actual computations on paper it seems, mixing up mechanical ideas with abstract computation ideas.
It appears they had a back and forth dialog on how to better articulate what it does, and she was the better documentor. Whether that's the first "programmer" or "programming manual writer" is a relatively minor distinction.
She essentially wrote, "Analytical
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Whether that's the first "programmer" or "programming manual writer" is a relatively minor distinction.
I think that's a fairly large distinction lol. Anyway, she was translating an article written by someone else (although she added a large section of notes to it).
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The key is then how important her additions were. It's my understanding that the original gave few if any explicit examples.
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What matters is who she was, and what she did, and I think the article does a good job assessing that.
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It appears she's more than a documenter, she probably was the first to formulate and author concrete examples of digital computer programming (for a general purpose computer), or at least heavily contributed to it. Nobody is claiming Ada invented a computer.
(By "digital" I mean it's based on discrete values, contrasting with say the ancient Greeks "rope programs" for automating puppet shows.)
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Small nit to pick. The rope puppet shows were from Heron. Yes, Heron was a Greek and his goods did end up in Greece. However, he is fully titled as Heron of Alexandria. It was there, in the library (which was more than a library like we have today), where he worked and spent his time learning. Attributing his work to the Greeks is a bit misleading. I don't think we're even positive that he was born in Greece but I'm unsure of which historian was discussing that and where.
It should, of course, be noted that
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This article is good because Ada is the most controversial person in computer science. Some people claim she was a genius who invented computer programming, and others claim she was a fraud (Babbage told her what to write), gambler, and opium addict.
As another post said, why couldn't she be both? And in fact, she sort of was both -- though perhaps not really a "genius" nor exactly a "fraud."
Ada comes out looking really good. She was not a fraud, and she did understand what she was doing.
Yeah, she comes out looking a little TOO good. Wolfram was pretty fair, but he didn't really get into the more controversial stuff and the reasons why many historians say she is massively overrated. She wasn't a fraud, but she is often given too much credit for work that was derivative or which was likely developed together with Babbage.
Wolfram is not a histori
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Also, I thought the OP was interesting because it delved into the Mechanical Notation Babbage used, and discussed how it enabled h
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I can't imagine why two women who hang out with an eloquent gentleman like you still don't have jobs. You all sound like winners to me!
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I know, how eloquent! A gentleman... wait.
Let me try again.
All this hand-wavey bullshit about how "misogynerds" like me (again, the premise being that I'm male because I was born with an oversized clitoris) are chasing women out of tech is simply fucking wrong.
Oh, sure, you want to pretend I'm the one being sexist. That fits the convenient bullshit Narrative. You don't go after the asshole managers that chased them out, do you? Why not? Gee, I wonder.
So sure, I'm the one being sexist. I will admit tha
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So many generalisations. You're not a very logical person, are you?
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Eh, probably not anymore.
Where is the logic to be found here? I tried to proceed logically, say true. I told women who thought computers were for boys, "You're wrong. Women can be programmers, too!" What did it get me? "ur an asshole!" That's what it got me. "ur sexist." Again, that's what it got me.
There is no logic to be found here. If there were any logic, some feminist would have helped me transition--and I'd be living as a woman today with some hope of a normal life--instead of calling me a qu
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It probably can't, say true. Help me out here, Ms. Crates! I am trying to answer one question: WHY?!
Don't get me wrong. I had a hand in mentoring both, but in the end one was just flat out turned off to tech by a sexually harassing manager, and the other is a better hacker than I am at this point. She mentored me in how to do Javascript correctly (yes, it can be done correctly, amazingly enough--in the end we'd almost implemented actual object oriented class inheritance in javascript!, but that's a st
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You're correct. I haven't been clear. I got triggered.
(Granted, shoehorning class inheritance into Javascript was fun but fundamentally flawed. Still, an interesting exercise.)
I live in a world where, apparently, Ada Lovelace is evidence of my sexism. I wasn't assigned the same gender as her at birth, so therefore, because I chose (even though the warnings should have been clear it was a poor choice) to learn programming, I'm a fucking sexist, end of story. Hey, I was a kid at the time. I didn't unders
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Yodel-Adle-Eedle-Idle-Oo!
idiot lame filter idiot lame filter