I can't believe my first post in this subreddit is a rant.

So this showed up in r/programming earlier today, and I thought it would make for an interesting conversation : https://archive.today/JdnZF

Disclaimer : I haven't read the full article simply because I couldn't stomach it. Not necessarily because it was written by a female, but because defeatist woe-is-me blog posts such as these are very unpleasant for me to read. I opened the link thinking it would contain information about how a girl actually codes, as in, what environment she uses, what type of work she does, but it turned out to be a nothing more than a rant, one that is devoid of code snippets.

(And yes, I'm aware Ada Lovelace is considered to be the first programmer in the world. As far as I know, she didn't write a blog post about how the patriarchy prevented her from reaching her full potential.)

But I did read it a bit, and what I understood from the small portion I read is this : the woman in question complains about not being taken seriously in the tech industry because she dresses and acts in a feminine manner. She explains that after giving a presentation, the audience complained about her slides being too pink, about her pushing her hair behind her ears occasionally, etc.

I don't know about you, but if I gave a presentation and my peers complained about trivial things like these, I would be flattered because that would mean the core content of the presentation is impeccable.

The commenters on the r/programming thread were quick to point out the fallacies in her arguments, with varying degrees of aggressiveness. They explained that the way she behaved was unprofessional regardless of her gender. Basically, if you replace all occurrences of \"feminine\" with \"unprofessional\" in the article, it will suddenly make sense. For example : instead of going full pink on your slides, it's more professional to opt out for a color that is easy on the eye. Or instead of playing with your hair, how about doing meaningful gestures to emphasize the crucial points of your presentation ? And instead of dressing like a barby doll, why not wear something more professional ?

Another thing I noticed, the fact that she dedicated an entire blog post to the idea that people have a hard time believing she was a programmer seems like humblebragging to me. I wouldn't care much if people didn't perceive me as a programmer, I'd let my accomplishments speak for me. I'm inclined to think that the point she's trying to make is \"I am a female programmer, therefore I'm such as snowflake that people have a hard time believing it\", rather than \"I'm upset because I'm a female programmer and nobody perceives me as such\".

I'll refrain from commenting on the whole \"do X like a girl\" part, you probably heard enough of those expressions already.

Oh, by the way, the twitter screenshot was taken out of context. Full context here : https://twitter.com/caseyjohnston/status/541302491313213440