I am pretty sure that individual was referring to themselves with that term.

I was indeed, but still a very valid point and after all without Grace - there would be no COBOL.

I am pretty sure my intent was not to misgender him (else I wouldn't have said "Or"), but to point out that women can be Super Cobol Programmers too, and in fact the first Super Cobol Programmer was a woman.

If you're touchy about people gently correcting accidental unintended sexism, take a moment to think about how women like Grace Hopper and Ada Lovelace have felt about being on the receiving end of systematic intentional sexism all their lives.

https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace

>If you're touchy about people gently correcting accidental unintended sexism

The point was that there is no sexism, unintended or otherwise, in the post you are "correcting". Projecting your touchiness onto others isn't very polite or constructive.

You are correct but the poster does raise fair and yes, nothing intended directly nor indirectly - however it would be possible to read that into it and the reply initially was fair and did restore balance for those that may mis-read and all done in the best possible taste - they used a geek-wink ";)".

However, it is easy to view such balance as over-balance and it can then snowball into something of which it was not, and words, like code - heck nobody writes perfect code first time, let alone wording. So you can easily get bugs, be that in the code or in how things are worded that open those words up to tangents or ambiguity that was never the intention.

Anyhow - we are all on the same page of that issue I do feel and with that, let's poor one out for Grace, who without her we would not even be having this conversation that COBOL has given us today.

I just vouched this after it just got flagged and as it is in response to myself that sent this path in motion and already been covered in this thread and no offence was meant or intended by myself of Don Hopkins, can we please read thru it all is cool.

We are all human after all and words are like code - bugs happen and we all operate our own unique brain-CPU's so things can and do run differently. No lines need to be read between here. Be well all and sorry, just thought I should clarify in the name of fairness for all and Don did nothing wrong in my eye's and it's all good.

>but to point out that women can be Super Cobol Programmers too, and in fact the first Super Cobol Programmer was a woman.

Well said and an extremly valid point upon many levels, let us not forget Grace.

I perhaps should of phrased it as COBOL Human, though that may of confused others more than not, more so with the mixed superheroes conversation and that in itself had legacy baggage as do many things that are easily tripped up upon.

I'd upvote you more as detail is as always important and should never be overlooked.

Unnecessary

Yes, but from my perspective - not unwelcome and I actually support the comment and took no misalignment or judgment from it - I'm all about balance and fairness - not that everytime the word man or women is used we have to then add lots of small print disclaimers. But it does remind us how some can read into things and reminds us to be more mindful of that aspect.

COBOL human to the rescue would of been better perhaps, so again unnecessary, yet not unwelcome and with that - everyone gets some karma.