I watched the whole thing. He makes some solid points.

In my own current work we build pretty complex web based software in Python and JavaScript. Parts of the Python use the Django framework and almost all of the JavaScript uses React. React is another beast of its own, but Django projects use objects where they make sense—to model records pulled from a database—and functions with simpler data types almost everywhere else. We get work done and avoid the over abstract silliness of object oriented programming by not trying to follow it strictly.

“It’s not just about writing the code, but you have stand up for your code and defend your code, and there is a certain male attitude that is endemic in many projects where a woman would just not feel comfortable claiming that she is right,” he explained. “A guy who knows less than that woman might honestly believe [he is right], so they present a much more confident image.” In his experience, van Rossum sees incompetent men’s ideas gaining acceptance more often than merited because they are more forceful in how they present them.

I agree with him and this is not only a male versus female issue. Less confident males also shy away from confrontation and have their better ideas ignored.

Our social instincts tell us to follow strong, confident leaders. Codes of conduct will not change that. They can (if enforced) stop obvious things like insulting other people, but they can’t stop a confident person from writing with confidence, nor can they make a timid person sound confident.

Ironically, codes of conduct themselves are often adopted because they are championed by confident loudmouths whom others dare not oppose.

The hard truth is everyone involved in a project needs to be aware of how their own social instincts work and inspect proposals rationally instead of blindly following what feels like the right answer (what the most confident person is saying).

The thought that white men—and not our own failure to think rationally—are the problem and you can be a champion of the oppressed by fighting white men is ego boosting. The thought that you can be that champion simply by supporting a copy‐pasted code of conduct is also appealing.

The real issue is complicated and beyond most peoples’ understanding.

Even when you understand the real issue the answer is complicated and involves constant diligence. There’s no easy answer and certainly no big ego boost where you get to feel like a champion of the oppressed. That’s why so many fall head over heels for codes of conduct and battling oppressive white males.

Some of what you’re predicting is already happening in Python. It now has optional syntax for static typing and forcing named arguments. These are tedious features of older languages that help reduce bugs and keep things in order when building larger systems.

JavaScript is going through something similar. It’s another easy to use language with automatic type casting, but it also becomes unwieldy when you build large programs with it. Now that JavaScript is being used to build large software programmers are seeing the problems with loose typing and TypeScript is becoming popular.

Leave like the senior devs did. They probably left first because they’ve been around long enough to know a train wreck when they’re working for one.

If you have near zero experience or qualifications and need this job because you don’t look good enough on paper to land anything better put your time in, get a few years on your resume, then start looking elsewhere.

I did it. Lots of people around me at the same company did it too. Now that I think about it every developer working with me at that company was either a hopeless hack, or someone with talent but no credentials putting in their time to get something better. The salaries were low. Most of the work got done by people who were too good for that company.

I second this too.

One thing you may not realize is that it is normal in computer programming to learn specific languages and technologies on your own. The other programmers around you who have degrees sometimes have more knowledge of fundamentals and how things work under the hood, but they probably learned their practical C++ skills on their own or on the job just like you.

Not bad. A more up to date version of shooting yourself in the foot in various programming languages.

The best part is that color="crap" gives you brown.

All of the major search engines I just checked show your search query in the URL of the search results page. You ISP can’t see the contents of the page, but it can see the URL. The search engine query forms use the GET method to submit your query. The GET method doesn’t hide the data you are submitting.

Based on the other random computer science questions they asked him he thinks it was all stuff they dug up on Wikipedia.

As a job seeker, I mostly found them to be annoying middlemen. They post vague job descriptions and refuse to reveal the company the job is for. They have to hide the company name because if they didn’t, job seekers would contact the company directly and go around them. The problem is that I need to know who the company is to have a good idea of who I would be working for and what I would be working on. With a recruiter in the way, you have to get to the point of having a scheduled interview to find that out.

They are another reason why every professional should keep professional networking in the back of his mind. You probably went to school with people who work in your field. You’ve worked with them at at least one company. You can meet more through local meet‐up groups and friends of friends. Make a habit of making friends with other people who do what you do. Keep in touch with them. 3 years from now, when you realize your current employer is unable or unwilling to offer a decent raise, or the job is going sour, you can check in with your network for a list of other companies you could work for, or even a recommendation for a job.

I did deal with a recruiter to get one job though. They hid the employer’s name until the interview, as usual, but they coached me before the interview and I got the job. The funny thing is they started contacting me about two years later about opportunities at other companies. I think that’s why the company they placed me at fired them. It was interesting to have a recruiter I could contact to find something new, but it’s not as good as having my own personal network. People you know will tell you anything that might help. A recruiter only wants to fill one of his current leads and won’t talk about anything else.

I don’t think treating developers poorly creates more jobs. It just makes more of the jobs crappy.

In my own case I know why. My earliest code was bad because I didn‘t yet know how to logically divide code into separate, independent pieces.

It didn’t help that in my early days I was doing Windows programming. The win32 API was intentionally designed to be onerous to hinder small competitors. Any experienced programmer would build a wrapper around it for whatever he is working on. I was not experienced, so my code tended to be long sections of hard to read win32 function calls.

I also had few comments because at the time I was writing it those win32 function calls made perfect sense to me. I assumed I would still remember what they are later. Another amateur mistake.

Programming well takes more intelligence than most people have. On top of the intelligence you need to be interested in it.

It’s not a matter of educating more people. Teaching every kid to code will not make a new generation that can program things for themselves, it will find the rare ones who are good at it and annoy the rest. A hundred new students studying computer science will result in only a few good programmers.

Even the armies of programmers and firms in India have not driven down wages by much. Only a small percentage of them are good and those ones charge more.

So… no security updates?

That was the main thing that pushed me away from Django, although it wasn't terrible in that regard.

Thanks. That's a good summary.

I haven't use Python for more than a few shell programs since 2011. I was using Django to build websites. Is Flask the most popular Python web framework now?

I don't think of any particular technology when I think of donglegate. I'll take your word for it that it was at a Python conference because I don't remember. I only remember that a highly ineffective talent scout was causing trouble at a conference where she was supposed to be making friends with the type of technologists her company wanted to hire.

That's a very good point.

Many of the non‐gmail addresses are under university or tech company domain names. If you get a pull request from somebody@ibm.com or somebody@wisc.edu it looks more trustworthy than one from somebody@gmail.com.

The Graph on the right in Fig. 5 is interesting. At first I thought it was important that for outsiders the acceptance rate is lower for known females and higher for unidentified female contributors.

Then I noticed something far more obvious. The acceptance rate for gender neutral contributors is ridiculously higher than for either type of known gender. Is there a ridiculous bias against anyone who clearly identifies themselves?

If you look closely at these chart's you'll see that the vertical is zoomed in tightly. The differences between the genders are only 1%‐3%. The difference between known genders and gender neutral is still about 10%, which is odd, but there is definitely no widespread bias against either gender here. A small handful of project maintainers could be biased against women they don't know and cause that difference. It could be a statistical anomaly.

Now I'm wondering why identifying yourself enough to discern gender makes you 10% less likely to have a pull request accepted as an outsider.

I've started downloading these kinds of assets and hosting them myself for the last reason. I don't want to contribute to the routine spying companies like Google engage in every day. If people can visit a website I built without any major web tracker recording their visit, I'm a bit happier. There also isn't much benefit to linking to external hosts for these files.

I automate a lot of Linux system installation / setup tasks. My main tools are Puppet to automate configuration on mulitple systems and backup / restore commands for data and most of my own user config.

Every time I setup a new system I marvel at how much time I used to waste typing in package install commands and editing config files and copying things manually from backups. Once I have the basic OS and networking setup I only need to check on it a few times while the machines do hours of work by themselves.

On a less technical note, don't underestimate the value of a good task / reminder system to get things out of your head so you can focus on the present without worrying about forgetting things. I personally use Toodledo and Google Calendar, but there are a lot of ways to manage your life that are far better than the ad hoc disaster some of us run by.

I've read that before and it takes the cake here. I'd be willing to bet there's an old precedent for it somewhere in the history of the obfuscated coding contest.

The only thing I can think of that matches that is a huge mess of nested and/or recursive function calls and callbacks that somehow puts together the correct string in the end. I don't have the tools an old C programmer has.