Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere
On 07/02/13 13:49, Shlomi Fish wrote: Before I answer your question, let me add that I think we should train potential female (and male) contributors to not give up so easily after running into a potential difficulty. I have no idea how you train potential contributors to not give up but you don't do it by being an arse. Studies show that boys are encouraged to keep trying, and girls are often told oh, let me do it for you from very, very young ages. That seems like training potential female contributors to give up and after a lifetime of that kind of training I don't see it as very surprising that some women are likely to stumble and give up rather than be tenacious. Sad, but not surprising. However, having said that, we're not held to what we learned as children. There are many professions which require tenacity, such as athletics, law, business management...; and so women can and do learn such skills. It's just worth understanding that some women are coming into learning such skills at a disadvantage to those men who were lucky enough to be taught them for the majority of their lives. There's another key difference that should be recognised, and the situation isn't that there is a dire shortage of women who know Perl (25-30% of Perl programmers out in business), there's a dire shortage of women involved in the Perl community. (between 2 and 6%) The tenacious women are learning Perl, they're just doing so for work. *Not for fun. * I suspect that when there are people who are approaching the Perl community in an attempt to try to learn to program, or who already know how to program and want to learn Perl, we have to *compete with other **fun**pursuits.* When the few bad apples in the community are allowed to behave badly towards them, that's not fun. *If learning Perl isn't **fun**, they won't stay.* Why would they? There are other, more fun things to do than be insulted, treated badly, harassed or otherwise in pursuit of something you thought could be cool. This is a problem for Perl and, in my opinion, for programming in general - *programming is not competing as well against **other fun pursuits*. It's also worth noting that when people flame others on mailing lists, or abuse others in IRC channels, active contributors also go away. You can lose up to 25% of your project just from one long flame-war. *People are in open source for fun*. Take the fun away, make it worse than work, and lots of them won't stay. It's easy to find entertainment on line these days that doesn't involve dealing with people who are being arses. Telling people that they have to have a thick skin, in order to have fun, will not work into the future. Knowing Perl or being a developer in a lot of open source is no longer enough of a hallowed destination that it's sufficient reward for weathering the abuse between newbie and achievement. Perl (and a lot of open source) needs new developers more than it needs developers with thick skins. *Getting a thick skin isn't fun.* It doesn't matter what you had to go through. It's inevitable to face hardship and abuse, because even I, as a guy, faced them, and still do, and have to know how to overcome them. Yes, men face abuse too. The abuse men face is rarely gendered. Women may face worse abuse if their gender is known than you likely have any idea about. Regardless, strangely enough, *abuse is not fun* regardless of your gender. Some people will stick through it, but I can't blame the people who don't. I think trying to restructure a so-called-hostile community is like making the mountain come to Muhammad. On the other hand, a single motivated person with some amount of creative thinking, and who is not willing to give up can make a world of a difference. *Hostile communities are not fun* for people who don't want to show off how much of an arse they can be. If we want people to come to learn Perl and participate in the Perl community, because *Perl is fun* (and as a language I really believe it is) then we need to make sure that*participating in the Perl community is fun*. Or at least we need to make sure that participating doesn't suck. Yes, individual motivated people can change things, they do all the time. People who stand against hostile behaviour and work to welcome and encourage all potential contributors are changing things. People who encourage involvement and shared decision making are changing things. People who make sure that their actions are*increasing the level of fun* rather than sucking it out, are changing things. On Thu, 07 Feb 2013 11:54:29 +1100 Jacinta Richardson jar...@perltraining.com.au wrote: Feminists (and there are both male and female feminists) are not at fault for pointing out that lots of entrenched behaviour is not okay. It just isn't. Things like using soft porn in slides should be obviously not okay. But things like asking a woman who's turned up
Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere
On 06/02/13 14:55, Shlomi Fish wrote: I hope I won't get attacked for it too much (and I am an active contributor to advocacy@perl.org), but I think part of the problem is that Feminists (and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminazi -s - a term which no longer mean the same thing) are *never* happy from whatever behaviour the good-intentioned male hackers exhibit towards female developers who wish to start, I realise this is derailing the thread further, but I'm going to object to this. Shlomi, there are *many*, *many* men in the Perl community who manage to get along with the women in the Perl community without any gender-related problems at all. For starters, they don't insist on using guruess or hackeress after being told that guru and hacker were not originally gendered and don't need to be so (and I'm delighted to see that you've improved in this area). They're also the ones who wouldn't even bring up the word feminazi if trying to make your point, when it has never meant the same thing and is and always has been a deliberate slur against feminism. They're also the ones who don't jump to point the finger at feminists for what is clearly a society-wide problem. Feminists (and there are both male and female feminists) are not at fault for pointing out that lots of entrenched behaviour is not okay. It just isn't. Things like using soft porn in slides should be obviously not okay. But things like asking a woman who's turned up to your tech group if she's there because her boyfriend is, or who her boyfriend is, or even if she has a boyfriend, is also not okay. If someone is correcting you on what you view to be relatively mild transgressions perhaps it means that mostly you're doing okay. Or, occasionally, perhaps it means you didn't understand that your transgression isn't that mild. As a feminist, I can say with pride that (although not perfect) the Perl community at large is my favourite group of tech people to hang out with largely because it's the least sexist. Sure, I got asked what the partners' program was like, less than an hour after my talk at YAPC::EU and sure, I get challenged to prove my Perl credibility by people who don't know who I am at YAPC::NA (a few times) but mostly this is a really good crowd. So I don't agree at all that part of the problem is that Feminists ... are *never* happy from whatever behaviour the good-intentioned male hackers exhibit towards female developers who wish to start, The Perl community has many men who behave wonderfully towards women who wish to start in Perl, and I (and I'm sure a lot of feminists) are delighted with that. What do I mean about behaving wonderfully? I mean treating them as you should treat any other starting developer: assume competence, determine background, point out appropriate resources and provide help when it is requested, and only that help, versus here let me finish it for you. I don't think that Perl's decline in popularity is all that related to why Perl has too few women in its communities. Over time, my training classes have probably averaged 25-30% women (which is on-par with women's representation in IT in business). Skud's survey (years ago) suggested 6% women (which is 3 times higher than women's representation in open source for pleasure, although the survey may have been answered by people who only worked in open source for work). I think Perl has too few women in its communities for almost all the same reasons that too few women are involved in open source for pleasure, and they're well documented elsewhere. That is, this isn't a Perl problem, but a wider problem. All we can do is promote (haha) the strengths of our community and treat our newcomers well. All the best, Jacinta
Re: Nature of this list
Shlomi Fish wrote: wanting to help them. As a result, I suggest moving it to advocacy@perl.org (or maybe beginners-c...@perl.org or possibly perl-c...@perl.org , if Ask and friends will be kind enough to set it up (modelled after the haskell-cafe concept, where discussions are moved from the main haskell mailing list). Anyone can send an email to advocacy@perl.org , even if they are not subscribed and everyone can subscribe to it by sending an email to advocacy-subscr...@perl.org . Anyway, it was a good place to discuss social issues in the past, and it's very quiet now so I don't think people will mind the action. I mind the action. Not because I mind discussion on this mailing list, but because I do mind having a conversation dumped in here that doesn't make any sense. This might be a good place to discuss social issues, but only within the limits of how those social issues impact on Perl advocacy. The conversation fragment we've been subjected to so far does not seem to have any relevancy. If you want to have a different mailing list set up, then go about getting that done the right way; not by dragging an unrelated and irrelevant (and not particularly friendly) conversation onto a list where it doesn't belong. It is not this mailing list's responsibility to get you a -cafe set up. In the future, if you feel you feel you do need to redirect a conversation from one mailing list to another; and it is relevant to the new mailing list, please provide context for the new mailing list readers, rather than just continuing the conversation as if everyone else has been following it already. (Context in the form of a link to existing archives is better than nothing, but poor form all the same.) J
Re: Interesting place: free books online
Steven Lembark wrote: What's this got to do with Perl: http://freecomputerbooks.com/langPerlBooks.html Not all of these are books per se. For example, http://www.faqs.org/docs/perl5int/ is Simon Cozens' rather nice intro to Perl5's guts. Why might we care? Given the amount of good work available about Perl (and Parrot), this page should fall off the screen. I'm not sure whether you meant should or shouldn't. However some of this material is made available in disregard for copyright (such as the O'Reilly CD bookshelves). I understand that this page is just linking to them, as opposed to hosting the offending material directly, but it's a concern all the same. J -- (`-''-/).___..--''`-._ | Jacinta Richardson | `6_ 6 ) `-. ( ).`-.__.`) | Perl Training Australia| (_Y_.)' ._ ) `._ `. ``-..-' | +61 3 9354 6001| _..`--'_..-_/ /--'_.' ,' | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | (il),-'' (li),' ((!.-' | www.perltraining.com.au |
Re: [Israel.pm] http://www.yapc.org/index.html should contain a list of previous YAPCs
Gabor Szabo wrote: I was looking for the web sites of previous YAPCs and I could not find them on http://www.yapc.org/index.html Could you please tell me where can I find them? If they are not on that web site, would it be possible to add them? Excellent translation. ;) With respect to storing this information, if one was to translate Philippe's excellent YAML file into a nice XHTML page with links (where they exist - not all will), how would you recommend it be ordered? By date? Country? Continent? I'm fairly sure it would be less than a day's work (certainly no more than 2) to write a script which used that YAML file to generate appropriate pages. Perhaps if someone is eager they can do so, and offer it to Jim Brandt as something that could be included on the YAPC.org page. It might not have any success, but at worst it's just a little fun. ;) All the best, J -- (`-''-/).___..--''`-._ | Jacinta Richardson | `6_ 6 ) `-. ( ).`-.__.`) | Perl Training Australia| (_Y_.)' ._ ) `._ `. ``-..-' | +61 3 9354 6001| _..`--'_..-_/ /--'_.' ,' | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | (il),-'' (li),' ((!.-' | www.perltraining.com.au |
Re: Central Wiki for Perl (?)
Shlomi Fish wrote: Hi Jacinta! With your permission I'd like to move the present and future content of the Perl-Begin MediaWiki: http://perl-begin.berlios.de/site-resources/wiki/ To http://perl.net.au/ . Go ahead! The more the merrier. Regarding the essay you mention, linked to at http://xrl.us/oxve , I would appreciate it if you were to double check with the author before moving it across as I'd hate to impose a CC license on his work without his agreement. All the best, J -- (`-''-/).___..--''`-._ | Jacinta Richardson | `6_ 6 ) `-. ( ).`-.__.`) | Perl Training Australia| (_Y_.)' ._ ) `._ `. ``-..-' | +61 3 9354 6001| _..`--'_..-_/ /--'_.' ,' | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | (il),-'' (li),' ((!.-' | www.perltraining.com.au |
