Re:'Women write more expressive, sensitive code'
by Tichy on Monday June 09, 2008 @08:02PM
(#213353)
What makes you think my comment would have been different if she had not been a woman, but a man? I have experienced enforced comments, and that was in all men environments. I have complained about it against men, too.
I feel confident enough from my experience to say that her commenting rules are bullshit. I gave the reasons, too: comments are bad because they go stale. Enforced comments lead to ridiculous comments and tedious typing work that is resented by developers. If she really has found a way around that, it would be sensational, I would love to read an article about it. If she has several mandatory comment fields in the code, it is essentially just a TPS report translated to coding. Before you can write any code, you have to fill in a form - that can't be fun, not matter if the boss is male or female.
Maybe she is still a super-coder, it is not as if she is the only one coming up with awful rules in face of the unsolved problem of managing IT projects. Most managers probably resort to such means eventually (that's why the TPS report joke exists), and then forget to switch back when it doesn't work out. That is why big companies become horrible work places in the long run. Now she works for a big company, so maybe she does a good job for that environment - I don't mean that as demeaning, I guess somebody had to do the corporate stuff (I actually envy corporate folks for their endurance and staying power). I merely pointed out that I loathe that kind of thing. If you like it, more power to you.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but this really has nothing to do with sexism. On the other hand, you display exactly the kind of "political correctness" that makes people resent issues like sexism, because it is just used as a manipulative tool (you can always brush off criticism by crying "sexism").
I feel confident enough from my experience to say that her commenting rules are bullshit. I gave the reasons, too: comments are bad because they go stale. Enforced comments lead to ridiculous comments and tedious typing work that is resented by developers. If she really has found a way around that, it would be sensational, I would love to read an article about it. If she has several mandatory comment fields in the code, it is essentially just a TPS report translated to coding. Before you can write any code, you have to fill in a form - that can't be fun, not matter if the boss is male or female.
Maybe she is still a super-coder, it is not as if she is the only one coming up with awful rules in face of the unsolved problem of managing IT projects. Most managers probably resort to such means eventually (that's why the TPS report joke exists), and then forget to switch back when it doesn't work out. That is why big companies become horrible work places in the long run. Now she works for a big company, so maybe she does a good job for that environment - I don't mean that as demeaning, I guess somebody had to do the corporate stuff (I actually envy corporate folks for their endurance and staying power). I merely pointed out that I loathe that kind of thing. If you like it, more power to you.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but this really has nothing to do with sexism. On the other hand, you display exactly the kind of "political correctness" that makes people resent issues like sexism, because it is just used as a manipulative tool (you can always brush off criticism by crying "sexism").