Comments on C for Coding: Is it Politically Incorrect to Criticize Open-Sour...

From the articles I've read it seems that wome...

2009-08-09T05:32:38.785+08:00

From the articles I've read it seems that women find computer science educational programs to be overly competitive. Some universities are considering making their offerings more "supportive" and less competitive to attract more women.

I'm a little skeptical that this will be much benefit for anyone over the longer term.

Your first argument about women in CS appears to c...

2009-08-06T05:04:13.805+08:00

Your first argument about women in CS appears to circular. Please correct me if I'm wrong but you seem to be taking the results of a study which demonstrate that the ratio of men to women is much higher in CS than in other tech disciplines, and concluding that this is natural because women simply aren't as interested in CS as men. It would seem more productive to do what many universities are doing, and actually look into
1) why this is the case, and
2) how this can be changed.

except Spring (Interface21 generally) isn't a ...

2009-07-31T01:53:18.878+08:00

except Spring (Interface21 generally) isn't a charity. They don't do this out of the goodness of their hearts. They make money off of service engagements, support, books, and partnerships with Accenture. To believe that Johnson et al are designing these 'products' because they just love to write code is absurd.

Criticisms should always be welcome. It's not the burden of the critic to sugar coat either. Speak your mind, enagage in debate, accept where you are wrong, reconcile at the end.

The Spring community is a group of loosely coupled independent consultants whose livelihoods depends on the success and popularity of Spring artifacts. If Spring Batch becomes unpopular, forthcoming books won't sell as much, less consulting gigs are in the pipleline, and folks have to retrain. Hence critics of Spring * will usually receive a viral response. Though in this case, the response from the Spring Batch team has actually been timid and productive compared to what I've seen from other Spring Components.

There are poets, authors, artists and musicians ou...

2009-07-30T16:49:12.529+08:00

There are poets, authors, artists and musicians out there who, like open-source developers, do not do it for money but put their own time in because they want to. Yet its ok to criticise art but not software!?!

If there is an attack, which I agree with the others there isn't, its on the code not the coders and that can only lead to better code and better coders - its why its generally called constructive criticism when you provide suggestions on solutions rather than just pissing on someone's ideas.

>But, to flame a project just because it doesn&...

2009-07-30T05:14:48.014+08:00

>But, to flame a project just because it doesn't fit YOUR
>specific needs is chickenshit. The title of your post
>says it all: "Spring Batch or how NOT to design an API".

well, i'm nothing to do with spring batch. but i can say that if i was the architect of the system, i'd have found the "how not to design an API" post fantastically useful. although it's a bit indendiary, it actually contains significant content about what the author things is wrong with the API and how it can be fixed.

this type of critique is rare and valuable to a designer. most mature designers would shrug off the title and concentrate on the substance (if any) of criticism.

Here's the way I see it: The developers of th...

2009-07-30T04:54:16.878+08:00

Here's the way I see it:

The developers of the open source frameworks that you are using are not paid by you. They are offering something of (arguable) value to you...for free and they are often doing the development on their own free time out of some passion for the project. If you don't like a project, feel free not to use it. If you like a project but have some suggestions for how to improve the framework, great. Make a suggestion or better yet, get involved with the project and give back some of what you are taking.

But, to flame a project just because it doesn't fit YOUR specific needs is chickenshit. The title of your post says it all: "Spring Batch or how NOT to design an API". Yeah, I'm sure that backhanded compliment is going to have them jumping out of their chairs to address your issues with the framework ASAP.

It seems so easy to some to hurl insults at people tucked away comfortably behind their keyboards; I'd suggest you try walking into the office or cubicle of one of your co-workers and make a similar comment: "Joe's recent checkin...or how to write worthless, incomprehensible software". Let me know how that works out for you.

apache projects do have terrible documentation, ab...

2009-07-29T04:27:19.736+08:00

apache projects do have terrible documentation, absolutely appalling in many cases.

as for the problem of women in computing, there are 2 parts:
1. are there women with the requisite qualities for good programmers avoiding the field for some reason unrelated to the core field itself?
2. if so, how can we encourage them

now (1) is empirically true -- the ratio of women programmers has actually gone down over time, but the ratio of women entering technical subjects as a whole has risen. of couse, this doesn't necessarily prove the point -- it's still possible there is something genetic that predisposes women against computing, but it's unlikely given that they seem to do fine at natural sciences, maths, physics etc particularly compared to computing.

(2) gets into a more difficult area. given that women are avoiding the field, do we head down the uncomfortable road of +ve discrimination? that would lower standards for entry for one group, as per most other +ve discrimination programs.

however, +ve discrimination is not the only way to crack this problem as programs to get girls to enter maths subjects at schools have shown over the last 20 years.

Writing more blog posts will get your problems fix...

2009-07-28T23:54:48.888+08:00

Writing more blog posts will get your problems fixed quicker, no dobut.