Programming and Women’s Shoes
Someone writes to digipundit Joel Spolsky about how to teach non-programmers how to program. He replies that you can’t, saying in part:
Different people have different mental skills. For example, I don’t know or care about women’s shoes. I have no ability whatsoever to comprehend women’s shoes. I’m probably never going to understand women’s shoes. Teach me about women’s shoes and I will feign interest and then promptly forget everything you told me. (What’s a pump? What’s a blahnik? Why do straight guys enjoy porn featuring high heels? DON’T KNOW DON’T CARE!)
Over at Misbehaving.net, Gina Trapani apparently disapproved of Mr. Spolsky’s metaphor. She replied in Spolsky’s comments that:
Your women’s shoes analogy was an unfortunate for 2 reasons:
1. It caused several comments to wander off topic. (Must we discuss porn here?)
2. It came dangerously close to reading: “Men are interested in programming” and “Women are interested in shoes.” I know you didn’t mean that, but suddenly the whole thing became unecessarily gendered.
I’m troubled by her response for a few reasons. One, while he might have avoided mentioning porn, I think Spolsky’s metaphor is apt. I, too, feel unable to make judgements about women’s shoes. In fact, I always reply “yes” to the question “aren’t these shoes cute?” While he has
Two, conversations on the Internet, unless heavily-moderated, tend to meander. This is the nature of the medium–and particular to unthreaded conversations like this one. It’s an age-old Internet pattern. I often put this question to those who wield the off-topic=bad equation: are off-topic posts really that troublesome?
Three, there’s absolutely no hint that Spolsky was implying that “Men are interested in programming” and “Women are interested in shoes.” In fact, he specifically only refers to his own opinions on the subject. Should we never use a gender-specific object in our metaphors? Have we become that hyper-sensitive?
Lastly, I observe with some irony that while Ms. Trapani had the luxury of commenting on Spolsky’s post, she didn’t extend the same courtesy to her own readers. I wouldn’t have bored everybody with this message if I could have posted it in a comments thread on Misbehaving.net.
Anonymous 
Jamie