6 ms·

To add some more context... of the 850k lines, 500k lines are mostly models and machine generated code. Andrew is definitely smart (smarter than an average HN u

To add some more context... of the 850k lines, 500k lines are mostly models and machine generated code. Andrew is definitely smart (smarter than an average HN user) and his code is very important but I have never seen so much display of misogyny and sexism against a woman scientist. She never took any credit and clearly said that this was a team effort. Some of the top posts on reddit are trying to mischaracterize the work that Dr.Katie has done and the comments are so vile.

kpp 7y ago
> so much display of misogyny and sexism against a woman scientist There are no woman scientists, science has no gender. The article is sexiest not people who are curious what Dr. Bouman actually did to be honored to mention in BBC article.
- nagVenkat 7y ago
  We don’t exist in a purely meritocratic and egalitarian society. Maybe you have never been told that you are not good enough for some work but growing up in deeply paternalistic society, I constantly heard “women are too stupid for hard sciences and they should just stick to kitchens”. If celebrating her achievements in this way changes minds of a few people and inspires a few girls to believe in themselves, I think it is worth the “biased” coverage that she is getting for her work.
  - kpp 7y ago
    > I grew up hearing women are too stupid for hard sciences Bad for you. Thanks God I grew up in a society where every person no matter of gender and age can do hard science.
    - nagVenkat 7y ago
      Nobody is saying that only some societies have both genders doing hard sciences. It’s the matter of opportunity.
- scott_s 7y ago
  People don’t surrender their outside identity when they become a scientist.
  - kpp 7y ago
    People don't surrender their outside political views, their lineage, sexual orientation and other background either. See how stupid the article would sound if titled: "Jane Doe: The divorced homosexual black democratic woman with three children behind the first black hole image". Science matters.
- charliepark 7y ago
  It's fallacious to presume that — because gender, sex, race, etc. shouldn't impact peoples' opportunities — that we should treat is as though it doesn't impact them. This is a good article on the concept: https://everydayfeminism.com/2013/09/dont-see-race/ https://everydayfeminism.com/2013/09/dont-see-race/ [Edit:] Or this, as a complementary one: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-dont-see-race https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-dont-see-race
pbhjpbhj 7y ago
I don't see what you're seeing, I see news headlines and comments that are suggesting Dr Bouman worked alone. They just need "a" instead of "the", or "lead" if she's responsible as leader of a team. For me, I am slightly primed by the "Apollo code" story: the claim was (paraphrasing) "this programmer created all the code for the Apollo programme" with an image of a person standing with folders of printouts stacked up to their shoulder. Well that person was the lead of teams of coders and didn't personally do it all. The implication, explicit in some cases, was "women's contribution is always hidden, this person did it all and got no recognition because vile men refused to share the spotlight". (Hamilton's contribution as a lead programmer was vital to the Apollo programme, but it doesn't appear to have anything to do with her being a woman). Now, this story appears to be doing exactly what was claimed there, people's contributions being ignored. Normally a headline would be "Bouman leads team to image blackhole", but the use of a clearly gendered forename suggests the headline writer is trying to pick out the sex of the subject. "The" suggests singularity (pun attempted!) of contribution. So, it's natural to ask why, and if you've been subject to the social media "women do it all and men get all the credit" one is bound to question the contributions. Then looking at GitHub and seeing 2k loc vs 850k loc -- paired with the programming vs computer science confusion -- it appears like another exaggeration to forward a feminist agenda rather than an attempt to report science.
- nagVenkat 7y ago
  I can not believe you have written the last sentence without any sense of irony. We are just discussing about how stupid the LOC metric is and how most of the LOC Andrew write were machine generated. People were also saying that her commits were more math heavy. Anyway if you actually believe that there is a secret feminist agenda, I don’t think I can say anything that will change your mind.
  - wallace_f 7y ago
    There are, just factually speaking, a lot of headlines reading something like "this is the woman who wrote the code..."
  - edraferi 7y ago
theoh 7y ago
One of the few redeeming features of the HN conventions of civility and seriousness is that we don't have Reddit's problems and we don't need to talk about Reddit. But what could possibly qualify you to say that "Andrew is definitely smart (smarter than an average HN user) and his code is very important"?

kpp 7y ago

> so much display of misogyny and sexism against a woman scientist There are no woman scientists, science has no gender. The article is sexiest not people who are curious what Dr. Bouman actually did to be honored to mention in BBC article.

nagVenkat 7y ago
We don’t exist in a purely meritocratic and egalitarian society. Maybe you have never been told that you are not good enough for some work but growing up in deeply paternalistic society, I constantly heard “women are too stupid for hard sciences and they should just stick to kitchens”. If celebrating her achievements in this way changes minds of a few people and inspires a few girls to believe in themselves, I think it is worth the “biased” coverage that she is getting for her work.
- kpp 7y ago
  > I grew up hearing women are too stupid for hard sciences Bad for you. Thanks God I grew up in a society where every person no matter of gender and age can do hard science.
  - nagVenkat 7y ago
    Nobody is saying that only some societies have both genders doing hard sciences. It’s the matter of opportunity.
scott_s 7y ago
People don’t surrender their outside identity when they become a scientist.
- kpp 7y ago
  People don't surrender their outside political views, their lineage, sexual orientation and other background either. See how stupid the article would sound if titled: "Jane Doe: The divorced homosexual black democratic woman with three children behind the first black hole image". Science matters.
charliepark 7y ago
It's fallacious to presume that — because gender, sex, race, etc. shouldn't impact peoples' opportunities — that we should treat is as though it doesn't impact them. This is a good article on the concept: https://everydayfeminism.com/2013/09/dont-see-race/ https://everydayfeminism.com/2013/09/dont-see-race/ [Edit:] Or this, as a complementary one: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-dont-see-race https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-dont-see-race

pbhjpbhj 7y ago

I don't see what you're seeing, I see news headlines and comments that are suggesting Dr Bouman worked alone. They just need "a" instead of "the", or "lead" if she's responsible as leader of a team. For me, I am slightly primed by the "Apollo code" story: the claim was (paraphrasing) "this programmer created all the code for the Apollo programme" with an image of a person standing with folders of printouts stacked up to their shoulder. Well that person was the lead of teams of coders and didn't personally do it all. The implication, explicit in some cases, was "women's contribution is always hidden, this person did it all and got no recognition because vile men refused to share the spotlight". (Hamilton's contribution as a lead programmer was vital to the Apollo programme, but it doesn't appear to have anything to do with her being a woman). Now, this story appears to be doing exactly what was claimed there, people's contributions being ignored. Normally a headline would be "Bouman leads team to image blackhole", but the use of a clearly gendered forename suggests the headline writer is trying to pick out the sex of the subject. "The" suggests singularity (pun attempted!) of contribution. So, it's natural to ask why, and if you've been subject to the social media "women do it all and men get all the credit" one is bound to question the contributions. Then looking at GitHub and seeing 2k loc vs 850k loc -- paired with the programming vs computer science confusion -- it appears like another exaggeration to forward a feminist agenda rather than an attempt to report science.

nagVenkat 7y ago
I can not believe you have written the last sentence without any sense of irony. We are just discussing about how stupid the LOC metric is and how most of the LOC Andrew write were machine generated. People were also saying that her commits were more math heavy. Anyway if you actually believe that there is a secret feminist agenda, I don’t think I can say anything that will change your mind.
- wallace_f 7y ago
  There are, just factually speaking, a lot of headlines reading something like "this is the woman who wrote the code..."
- edraferi 7y ago

theoh 7y ago

One of the few redeeming features of the HN conventions of civility and seriousness is that we don't have Reddit's problems and we don't need to talk about Reddit. But what could possibly qualify you to say that "Andrew is definitely smart (smarter than an average HN user) and his code is very important"?