overheard

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 23:40:00 GMT

Today I overheard Richmond Guy asking one of my fellow devs if we could start using a Restful API, since it is all the range now (is it?), and also proudly announced that he was using reusable grocery bags (on a related note, the company is going green so we have to throw out all of those styrofoam cups). The vibe that I get from Richmond Guy is that he does things because they look like the right thing to do and they will help the stock price when and if we become a public company. This is not always an entirely bad motivation for doing something, but I usually think about how easy or hard things will be to maintain in the future and things like system performance.

My favourite overheard thing today was when PHP Guy compared women and the perl programming language saying they were the “same”. PHP Guy, as I mentioned hates perl so by the transitive property PHP Guy is a misogynist. Anyone who has ever worked in an organization that is mostly men will not be surprised by this sort of language, and women do sometimes make generalizations about men. I think it's much healthier to have a more balanced mixture.

I disagree with PHP Guy though, there are many things that I like about both perl and women and they are nothing alike. I was going to insert a joke here about perl being easier for me to understand, and then deflect the implicit criticism by pointing out that this is due to my own limitations, but I actually interact quite well with women. In fact I would love to see more women in programming, not for gender equity (although I am all for that), but because I think it would make a better work environment. Work environments with mostly men tend to behave badly, but if you throw in even a few women, it tends to moderate the worst behaviors. On a smaller scale, whenever Lena comes down to Maryland to visit, it alters my behavior in a positive way.

For now of course, what I think is academic, until my Plan for World Domination proceeds a little further. For now I am tracking the character flaws of the people around me in case I need to use thing information in my rise to the top.

The Twilight Report

overheard