Why is computer science a sausage fest?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.stubbornella.org/content/2010/07/26/woman-in-technology/ <comment><USER3> On someone's complaint about Google setting up a special grant program for women, OP writes:

 _This stinks of jealousy. Why not be happy for the female students? Why rain on someone else's parade? Something good happening to someone else seems to disgust fringley. Frankly, it comes off as childish._

That's a terrible argument. Can't you say that about _any_ form of discrimination? "So what if all the nice houses and neighborhoods and schools and drinking fountains and restrooms and universities are all restricted to white people? Can't you be happy for them? Why rain on someone else's parade?" There are good arguments to be made for reverse discrimination, but "can't you be happy for someone else?" isn't one of them.

Other issues:

 _I believe CS and Web Development currently select for certain masculine qualities that are largely unrelated to someone's prowess as a coder. I believe it is these tangential code-cowboy qualities women are unable or unwilling to emulate, and not their skill or capacity for abstraction, problem solving, creative thinking, or communication — All of which actually make them better developers._

Then she lists a lot of code-cowboy vs. good-developer differences, involving things like "working in teams" and "understanding human elements" and "respecting people" (which are implicitly feminine traits, according to the OP, unlike the focused solitude that "code-cowboys" employ.) This is triply problematic--she dismisses out of hand the idea that men are better than women at abstract reasoning and such, but implicitly argues that the qualities of "good developers" are feminine and the qualities of "code cowboys" are both bad for development _and_ masculine.

After all this, she complains that her talents were viewed as better suited to management, when all that supposedly-feminine stuff like teamwork and respecting people _are important parts of management_.

Incidentally, I think the reason for the gender gap is something she pointed out in all of this--women are less likely than men to engage in deeply focused solitary activities. Unlike her, I don't see the deep focus and solitude of programming as a bad thing at all--even if it does keep out women.

EDIT HISTORY: Added "There are good arguments to be made for reverse discrimination..." sentence.

<comment><USER4> Actually, a better analogy would be African-Americans getting extra scholarships, to compensate for the relative lack of wealth their families accumulated. I certainly wouldn't begrudge this.

Whatever cognitive differences there are between the sexes, I think they're very minor. Do they keep people like Shakespeare from being considered great writers, though women are said to have stronger verbal ability?

Anyone reading Hacker News knows how important communication, teamwork and the human elements are, in real-world software development. We are not troglodytes who shuffle into the office at night to partake in an ancient ritual of becoming one with the Platonic forms. (Not most of us, at least.) The reality is more like Office Space.

In fact, it is strange to consider men good at even just the technical aspects of programming. Most apparently have a hard time solving basic programming tasks (a common complaint here). Lore abounds of programmers with intimidating resumes who turn out to have problems with basic datastructures. The software world looks less like a meritocracy, and more like a cushy office job that beats working at Wendy's.

<comment><USER5> "Actually, a better analogy would be African-Americans getting extra scholarships, to compensate for the relative lack of wealth their families accumulated. I certainly wouldn't begrudge this."

While I most certainly agree I've always wondered why they don't give the scholarships based on economic rather than racial conditions. Quite frankly, with the way that the US is right now, this would end up mostly benefiting minority families anyway and would be much more palatable to the general public.

That said, I grew up in a fairly well-off majority white suburb so I may not have the best handle on the situation.

<comment><USER3> Martin Luther King actually had very similar ideas. The fact is, racism was used as a wedge issue for decades to divide poor whites from the black community to the detriment of both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Obviously anyone making any comment about this article is wandering into a minefield of appearing sexist. While I agree with the sentiment (attracting girls into CS is OK, putting some money at the end of a stick is OK, and CS will benefit from them being there), one of the points did bother me.

 _The first time I spoke at a conference, John Allsopp contacted me to ask if I would do it. I never would have submitted a proposal. You might say that I should have, but I would counter that I shouldn't need to act like a dude to get respect._

To which I shall counter, _but you should have._ This is an attitude of entitlement. "I am not the way you work, but I am a _girl_ , thus everything is much harder for me, so I am entitled to have people bend over backwards telling me how wonderful I am and flattering me by asking me to speak at a conference."

She makes the assumption that all men are speaking at conferences too; but they're not. Speaking at a conference is an honor. We've seen lots of stuff on HN about how people make their own luck. If people are hungry, they will make things happen. She wasn't hungry. She didn't _want_ to speak. That's not a girl thing, that's just her. There are plenty of men in that boat too.

These articles, as alanh described, are almost always strewn with male sexism too. I'm sad to see that this one is the same way.

The wider question is not one of male/female, but of equality in general. Locker-room antics (of which I am guilty), work/life balance, teaching of the sciences and engineering in schools... these are all things that need to be reviewed about equality, not an us vs them, male vs female, attitude.

<comment><USER7> _"To which I shall counter, but you should have. This is an attitude of entitlement."_

Clay Shirky has written about this at length [1]; the basic point being that women are socialized their whole lives to not be entitled or aggressive but to stay quiet and in the background, while men are constantly socialized to take what they want, step forward, go for it, "be a man" etc. Obviously there is much variation, and yes, geeks tend toward the not-so-aggro end of the table, but I think it's still an important point.

I'd also suggest that, sure, there are lots of men not speaking at conferences, but I suspect _proportionally_ there are even more women for whom that is true.

[1] <http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/01/a-rant-about-women/>

(edit: added link)

<comment><USER8> The passivity thing really puzzles me. Why would I want something and not go for it?

<comment><USER9> Oh boy...

Depending on how much you want something, and your personality, the following and more may readily discourage you:

* Fear of rejection

* Fear of seeming out of place

* Fear of general embarassment

* Fear of disappointment or being underwhelmed upon conquering fear of embarassment and/or ignoring embarassment produced

* Fear that "it won't be worth it"

/a male

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "CS education also focuses a lot of effort on puzzles and very abstract concepts when practical applications where you can see the why and how might work better for women (and a hell of a lot of men). I like yummy algorithms, but we could make CS education more accessible by putting them in context."

Why must we make a field more accessible? It would also be more accessible if we just threw BS degrees off the back of a parade float. But, sorry, programming is at its core thinking about the abstract, learning to realize that, although you are writing in python/json/xml/rpc/wtf you are really just doing discrete mathematics. CS programs should not teach in the specifics, because frankly, the specifics don't matter.

This was the same argument that the women in physics tried to make when I was an undergraduate. Appalled at the poor retention rate of women in first year physics programs, the solution was to make first year physics more 'accessible' (i guess this means easier). I'm sorry, but this is not the right way of thinking about the problem. Raise the students up, do not bend the program to raise numbers.

Diversity is great, but context free grammers and recursive descent parsers are greater.

<comment><USER11> It also doesn't seem to account for the reduction in gender diversity over the past 20 years or so. Around 1990, women were around 35% of CS majors, and today, they're around 17%. What accounts for that drop? I don't think it can be "puzzles and very abstract concepts". If anything, the core theory/systems/PLs areas have declined as a proportion of the overall CS curriculum over that time period, and more applications-focused areas have increased in prominence. Many CS departments now have HCI faculty and classes, for example, which virtually none did in 1990, and there's lots more robotics and other explicitly applications-oriented areas in the curriculum as well.

Not that _I_ know why there's been a decline in women in CS over the past 20 years, either. But I think any explanation of why there aren't many women in CS now has to account for why there were more women in CS in 1990--- despite CS not being that much different at the time, and probably actually more "hardcore" systems/theory oriented.

<comment><USER6> I was under the impression (and by impression I mean I have no idea where I read this and thus cannot back up anything I say) that the problem was at the secondary schooling level; girls started out with a healthy interest in science and engineering when they begin at 11 or 12, but that interest level rapidly decreases as they move through schooling.

The question is what is happening in the way we're teaching girls that they get so turned off by it? Obviously its not _innate_ , because as you note, there used be a lot more women graduating with CS. I guess there could also be a societal argument as well, but I wouldn't know enough about the cultural norms of 1990 to comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12>
        CS education works best for people who already know how
        to code before they begin. CS teaches the theory behind a
        practice in which they assume you already have some
        skill. Women are less likely to already know, because
        they don't play video games as much.

This does not make any sense. How does playing video games translate to coding skill?

<comment><USER13> One anecdote that I heard from people involved with the CMU admissions criteria for CS. In addition to GPA, leadership skills, etc. they used to also look for something interesting technical that you'd done prior to college. They have now removed that criteria from the selection process because they found that it did not correlate with success upon coming to CMU, but it did correlate with gender.

<comment><USER14> Could you provide a citation for that? I'd be VERY surprised if doing technical work before college did not correlate with success.

In my admittedly anecdotal experience (at a college way below the level of CMU), introductory programming classes had a classical bimodal distribution. There was a cluster of grades at 30 (people who weren't interested in programming) and another cluster at 80 (people who coded as a hobby and already knew nearly everything the class had to teach).

<comment><USER13> That's certainly true for the first programming class, but I don't think it has any effect on the first theory class.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A "sausage fest"? Classy rhetoric! Is nursing a "tits fest" or elementary education a "vagina fest"?

It'll be great when intelligent people can stop identifying themselves or their sense of humor by their genitalia, race, or any other physical characteristic that has little to do with how good they can be as _people_.

I agree that women might not want to hear "dick jokes" or "be groped" but _most people don't_ regardless of gender. It's not a male/female dichotomy we're dealing with - it's a respect/idiocy dichotomy.

<comment><USER16> You're completely right, of course—but I have to point out that elementary education _is_ a "vagina fest", and not even a self-selected one. There is definite discrimination preventing men from entering the field—mostly by parents who don't want men around their kids.

<comment><USER17> I seriously doubt that is the reason - on the contrary, I constantly hear that people would like more male teachers. However, I don't think the salary is sufficient to feed a family. Not sure if that is the main reason, but it might be a factor in men's decisions.

<comment><USER3> There's a massive witchhunt against pedophiles that keeps a lot of men out of most occupations dealing with children.

<comment><USER17> I don't think that is as much of a problem here in Germany, so I doubt it is the major deterrent. Though in general being a teacher seems rather risky to me. Certainly if pupils or parents want to screw up your life, they have all the possibilities to do so.

<comment><USER16> Ah, my comment was only meant to include North America; I am not at all sure whether elementary education in other places has equal amounts of gender- iniquity.

<comment><USER17> I have heard the same complaint about almost all teachers being women here in Germany (at elementary school level). And of course we worry about paedophiles, I just don't think it has reached witch hunt proportions yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > On the other hand, he assumes those women didn't deserve to be sent to > JSConf. Why should he assume that?

Utter crap. That's clearly not what the critics are concerned about. The women may indeed deserve to go — but no more than men who are _not_ being offered the same grants. _This_ is what is objectionable. This, and the implication that women need pushed into the field or artificially assisted, strike some as sexist.

While she does make some good points towards the end, this whole piece is strewn with similar assumptions of male sexism, and is devoid of any realization that some perceived affirmative action as reverse discrimination.

<comment><USER19> Except, they're _not_ just assumptions of sexism. You should at least skim the MIT study she refers to in her article (<http://web.mit.edu/fnl/women/women.html>). It was an eye-opening, empirical study showing that discrimination did exist – and that it didn't look like ordinary bigotry.

I can't help but think that it's only possible to get worked up about reverse discrimination if you don't believe that the "forward" discrimination exists in the first place.

<comment><USER18> You're absolutely right about "the only way people would get worked up about reverse discrimination," of course. What I object to is her assigning evil intentions to people she's never met.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As usual, I like Philip Greenspun's explanation better than all of the anecdotes and fuzzy generalizations in this blog post: <http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/acm-women-in-computing> <http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science>

tl;dr: It's because the women who would do well in CS/STEM have much better paying, or easier, or more prestigious options available to them.

<comment><USER7> …or, you know, the directly hostile and sexist things women sometimes experience in the industry. As described in the original post.

Not to say that Greenspun is wrong in his conclusions, but when women are saying "I find it unpleasant to be in the industry because…", it seems kinda patronising to turn around and suggest that _they're_ wrong.

<comment><USER17> To experience the sexist things, you would first have to enter the industry, though. I somewhat doubt it is a good explanation. Also, is life in CS really so unbearable for Stubbornella and other women?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Who cares?

Whether meaning to or not, these posts always degenerate to a laundry list of why men are slobs | jerks | adolescents who are living in Mom's basement | a disgusting unwashed bachelor pad | a van down by the river.

Guess what - the reason that there are so few women in CS / programming, is because most women have decided to do something else with their lives (for whatever reason).

That kind of thing tends to happen in a free society.

</comment><comment><USER22> Ive seen many articles talking about code cowboys, or the lone rockstar programmer. It might just be the places ive worked at but I have yet to see anyone who fits this description. An anti social arrogant person who makes a lot of mistakes would simply find it hard to stay hired in todays comp sci world.

</comment><comment><USER23> > We are veterinary technicians not veterinarians, dental assistants not > dentists, medical assistants not doctors.

Women are now a slight majority of medical students and ~95% of nurses. Women make up >75% of the students in veterinary school, and around ~50% of students in dental school.

<comment><USER24> None of which in any way contradicts what she said.

<comment><USER25> except for the whole women are "not doctors" thing.

<comment><USER26> That depends on whether they go on to become doctors, veterinarians and dentists instead of assistants to those. The fact that someone has a certain education does not preclude them from ending up in a more assistive job related to the education. In fact, if women are still underrepresented among new doctors, veterinarians and dentists, that would be a likely explanation.

<comment><USER17> I don't think somebody studying medicine ends up being a nurse. Not the women mentioned here either. I suspect Stubbornella simply didn't check many numbers.

For example, maybe because a lot of women are working in people facing jobs (secretaries, receptionists), it distorts impressions. Meanwhile, the men are shoveling shit in the backyard. At the same time lots of men and women have "better" jobs, but they are not as visible. So the impression is "women tend to become receptionists".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If you take a look at @fringley's Twitter page, there's a comment from Diana Clarke, employee of FreshBooks. It says,

      I wonder if Dr. Browne, Dr. Hutt, Dr. Ruiz still want to give you a reference.
      Don't worry, I'll ask for you (@fringley).

Now _that_ is low. Women who are able to compete on merit, not backstabbing or special treatment, should be disgusted as well.

Also, more proof that this is a forbidden topic. I can discuss wars, religion, and economic policy until blue in the face. But say anything about gender policies and face the consequences.

</comment><comment><USER28> ugh. I really can't help but cringe whenever anyone tries to throw their hat into the ring and take on this problem, even if they have an inside take.

 _CS education also focuses a lot of effort on puzzles and very abstract concepts when practical applications where you can see the why and how might work better for women (and a hell of a lot of men). I like yummy algorithms, but we could make CS education more accessible by putting them in context._

I kind of wish this had happened when I was doing CS. What does that say about me? (I'm a guy)

I think these kind of over-generalizations about an entire gender do nothing but contribute to the PC echo chamber.

I don't know what contributes to the gender disparity, but I _can_ say that I have plenty of male friends who also can't really contemplate being a programmer, and for many of the same reasons that are cited that women may not be attracted to the profession... I think it can be an intimidating profession no matter what your gender- anything like coding that has such an insular culture is the same.... Maybe it's just a chicken and egg problem.

<comment><USER29> Seems like you put a lot of effort into this reply.

<comment><USER28> I did, because in I feel like gender stereotyping in general is overstated. Are there differences between men and women? Of course there are, but blanket statements, like the one you made below _I suspect women aren't attracted to computer science careers as often as men because they generally like more artistic and creative ventures_ ...I feel like it's statements like this that don't help things. Women are more artistic and creative? I'd like to think that gender is a more nuanced (and maybe fluid?) thing, that has more subtle qualities to it than reductive statements like that suggest it does.

<comment><USER30> i'm glad to read your comments, as i feel the same way. i get remarks based on my gender from both men and women. the fact of the matter is, i am female but i am also the type of _person_ who likes to spend a lot of time alone thinking and controlling my immediate environment. thus computing appeals to me. i also was introduced to computing at the right age, before adolescence when being sociable wasn't so much of an urge so even though i didn't code much through my teenage years i was able to pick it up later very easily and with confidence. i think it's really this simple: a blend of personality type, circumstance and privilege.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> _It is much more subtle, but just as ugly. These days, bright, thoughtful, enlightened people assume that the absence of women in certain fields results from women being unable to compete on merit. The assumption that, if someone creates a scholarship for women, it is because otherwise, women can't hack it._

I tend to think it is that women often don't have the type of personality that allows them to enjoy a highly technical field. I can't be the only one whose noticed that a _lot_ of computer scientists have some mildly autistic qualities. I do okay in most social situations but I have gone _weeks_ without talking to anyone (besides the cashier at the grocery store, etc.) and I have been the awkward guy in a number of situations. And I am much better socialized than a lot of my colleges at work and in college. The field appears to attract this type of personality, I don't know why. And women appear to have these problems less frequently and less seriously than men do. And this also jives with her "code cowboy" stereotype.

</comment><comment><USER32> It's interesting to compare to the proportion of women in or entering other "traditionally male" fields that are often seen as having a "boys club" atmosphere:

\- ~21% of practicing software engineers and ~21% of CS degree recipients are women. [http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/298007/Making_I...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/298007/Making_IT_Work)

\- ~25% of practicing lawyers and 44% of law students are women. <http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P2-4197736.html>

\- 30% of doctors and 42% of med students are women. <http://www.uslaw.com/library/article/ABAWomenJustice.html>

It seems that medicine and law are significantly more effective at recruiting female students, and somewhat less so but still significantly more effective at attracting women to the workforce.

Is there anything CS has to learn from these professions that are often seen as "macho", individualistic, and prone to long work hours?

<comment><USER33> Better salaries?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> When we truly treat people as individuals, we'll accept whatever the situation exactly as it is.

The diversity we find in humanity is exactly what has been required for us to get as far as we have. Its an absolute necessity, yet many are troubled when we see different types of people pursue different things. And just as many are troubled when other individuals pursue things they're "not supposed to".

I think we all need to learn to go with the flow.

</comment><comment><USER34> Some, but not all, of women are capable and some, but not all, of men are capable. Perhaps the numbers of capable men exceed the numbers of women. Even so that doesn't mean women as a whole are incapable of excelling with CS.

All professionals wants to be treated with respect and not be typecast, whether there is a population of 5 or 500,000 for their particular subgroup.

Community members going on about how women are less capable etc. makes for at least a partially self fulfilling prophesy. If a community member is badmouthing my particular subgroup, I am gong to assume they are prejudiced against me. Only the women who really, really love technology will go into a field in which they expect to be significantly discriminated against.

</comment><comment><USER35> The argument that I usually have, and constantly resist, is that a) generally women just aren't as interested in CS as men, and b) that's ok, so c) why give out scholarships to make CS artificially attractive, and d) if the industry isn't suffering for the lack (arguable) what's the big deal?

But I think that the _people_ in CS are being degraded. The women have to deal with a constant stream of rubbish, and men are being conditioned to provide it. It appears that some people are not being given full credit for their skills and work, and in an industry powered by kudos as much as money that should offend everyone.

</comment><comment><USER17> I must admit some parts of that annoy me. You can't argue with the sexist jokes and assumptions of being a secretary. But not wanting to be a Cowboy Coder? What does it mean, women coders always comment their source code? I don't think I have actually ever met a Cowboy Coder (I am 38 now, 10 years professional software developer, coding since I am 12), so I seriously doubt their mysthical existence is a significant deterrent for women in CS.

Also things like "computer games are for men" - well if you really want it, create games for women. Nobody is preventing people (men or women) from creating games for women, or in general, from creating the environment for learning and working they desire.

If it is true that it is harder for women to get CS jobs, it would be a serious concern. I'd like to see more hard data about it, though. The people I know all would love to hire more women.

At the company we currently work for, we also have one woman coder (this is 100000% more women coders than I usually see at companies). But thanks to Scrum, we have several female designers in the teams, so at least the overall atmosphere is not all masculine. That's one of the few things I consider good about Scrum. By overall atmosphere I just mean a lone woman does not have to feel weird. I don't in general encounter penis jokes or whatever in masculine environments either (also no Star Trek posters - most offices simply have blue carpet, some unhappy plants, desks, computers).

</comment><comment><USER36> Why is logging a sausage fest?

Why is construction a sausage fest?

Why is fishing a sausage fest?

Why is trucking a sausage fest?

Why is computer science treated as though gender balance is important when there are plenty of fields where women are nearly non-existent.

<comment><USER37> All the other professions are high-risk and require significant physical strength. Men are generally more comfortable with high-risk, high-reward jobs, and have a physical strength advantage over women.

Computer Science is not high-risk and does not require significant physical strength.

<comment><USER36> So why choose computer science as an area to push for more women to participate in?

It seems like the opposite of equality.

"Here are a bunch of dangerous, yet lucrative career tracks, but I think more women should be programmers because it's safer than climbing a ladder."

<comment><USER37> Women are more risk averse than men. It's a well-known evolutionary strategy for men to choose high-risk/high-reward pursuits.

Also, you completely ignored my point about these careers being suited to physically extremely strong people, which are disproportionately men (due to biological differences).

Women should be programmers because they are as mentally capable as men, and they can handle the minimal physical requirements. If a woman is just as strong as a male lumberjack/fisherman/etc, and perfectly fine with the risk, then she should be able to do that job as well.

(More than 500,000 people are treated in the US for ladder-related injuries.)

<comment><USER36> It's absurd to be fulling willing to believe, on average, that physically a woman is weaker than a man, but for some reason her brain ( a physical structure! ) is identical in all areas of ability.

<comment><USER37> Are you arguing that because men are, on average, physically stronger than women, it implies that they are smarter or more analytical than women?

That's like arguing that because women have, on average, smaller feet than men, they are smarter or more analytical than men.

<comment><USER36> I didn't say smarter. You made that up.

If you're willing to accept that men and women have different physical characteristics and different aversion to risk, why then must the brain have an exemption when it comes to ability? Why can't men be more comfortable programming a computer?

And the more important question, why should there be an effort to lure women into computing?

<comment><USER30> >And the more important question, why should there be an effort to lure women into computing?

well, that's a fair question but what about the opposite? "why should there _not_ be an effort to lure _anyone_ into computing?"

there are a lot of people who have a genuine interest in computing, but don't enter it because of either lack of role models or social pressure. so, they are really missing out on something that may make them happy as adults, and for reasons beyond their control. not beyond their ability.

another factor i've noticed a lot in my career, working as a programmer but interacting with a lot of creatives, is that a lot of people, perhaps young women, are not interested in spending a huge amount of time alone, which may be the only pre-requisite to learning computing - being interested in finding out how stuff works more than going out with your friends and/or succumbing to peer pressure to be sociable. computing isn't something you can do with a group of people. you can sit in the same room but ultimately you need to focus for long periods of time without distraction. i just haven't met a lot of people in my life who can/want to do that, and aren't already in a field that needs that focus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This might be a risky comment for me, but I'll bite the bullet.

Why I'd like to see more female developers?

* I wanted to have more women (girls) around at university. Yes, one reason is sexual attraction (I hope it's not a problem, that I mention this, but I am a human being after all), but I also found that girls are an essential part of how human groups are formed. You might become really good friends with another guy at uni, just because you like hanging around the same girl at the beginning; on the other hand, you might not chat up and start hanging out with that other guy initially.

* It would be far healthier for (young) people to socialize in a mixed environment.

* A lot of women that I know are more social and caring than me in day to day communication. I'd also love to have and learn more of that.

* Women tend to think differently. They have a different approach to problems, which is what teams are all about; having people with many different approaches, so that when a there is a problem, someone can think of the easiest possible solution.

What I'm not sure I like about this post, is that it seems defensive. Tries to prove that _"there are female developers who are just as good as men"_ too hard, while it forgets to focus on what women are better at, and also what the tech community would win if we all _actively_ knew that the community needs more women.

I'd love to work in a mixed community of men and women.

<comment><USER39> I think a lot of men actually stay away from technology both for the same "cultural" reasons as women and because of the lack of women. I know you generally start college earlier in the US, but when you get older you start thinking about what friends you'll spend your life with etc. When you're 23-25 the prospect of spending 5+ year in a quite homogeneous environment can be unwanted.

This might be a complete misconception, but I've gotten the impression that American twenty-somethings are quite childish. And with people attributing Israels startup success partly to youths "growing up" during military service (which I don't recommend), mixing things up seems like a good idea.

This is not aimed towards your comment, but I've notices that a lot of the time when non-technology and especially social science topics comes up here at HN. Everyone seem to disregard research and suddenly becomes experts based on what they feel. It's quite obvious that most people here aren't going to be experts in sociology or women's studies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Pro: I understand the reasoning behind affirmative action better after reading this quote: "People mistakenly assume that affirmative action is about granting minorities undeserved privileges. In it's purist form, affirmative action is about allowing minorities natural talents to flourish by removing artificial, unfair barriers and decoupling the true skills required to succeed in a profession from the cultural baggage that builds naturally within an insular community."

Con: The author seems to try to be fair, but quickly falls into the trap of characterizing men in the field as "socially-challenged-uber-nerd[s]". She says that "a lot of men would rather not live like code-cowboys", but goes on to recite a litany of bad traits that are "masculine qualities" and contrasts them with the traits of a "good developer". That's a good way to alienate male readers who would otherwise be sympathetic. Perhaps men do advocate for themselves more actively in the workplace, and that should be corrected for by affirmative action; saying that men "pester the boss until she finally relents to send them to a conference" doesn't accomplish anything.

Con: spelling.

</comment><comment><USER41> For the opposite reason that nursing is a taco fest.

</comment><comment><USER42> Even if women (statistically) suck at programming (a common claim here), I'm pretty sure that even the good ones are turned off programming because of the lack of female co-workers, discrimination, and other factors.

I'd guess that the average women in technology is underrated (only the real enthusiasts get through), and talking them down is going to lead to further discrimination.

Would I suggest that CS departments aim for 50% female students? Not this decade, and maybe not ever. But should women be given more credit, more opportunities, and more encouragement to start their own projects (rather than just contributing _)? Hell yeah.

_ <http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_women_in_FLOSS>

<comment><USER17> "should women be given more credit, more opportunities, and more encouragement to start their own projects (rather than just contributing)?"

What exactly does that even mean, though? And wouldn't it also be rather patronizing?

Btw, I don't think anybody ever encouraged me to start my own projects. Society in generally encourages you to become an office drone, no matter if you are male or female..

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm not a fan of the male-stereotyping in the article. At best, it's unproductive, at worst, it insults men and so they stop listening.

A lot of the responses here on HN though demonstrate exactly why many women leave software engineering. Read these responses and ask if you like your mother, wife, girlfriend, or daughter working with people who have these attitudes. In an all-male group, the level of misogyny is camouflaged because there are no women to talk about. When there's a woman around, it's exposed, because she is both a target of any misogyny PLUS all the discussion about the drama created by it. Most women cope by becoming "one of the guys" and laughing along when someone makes a sexist remark. The stereotype of the un- made-up geeky female hacker exists because a lot of women notice the difference in how they're treated when they wear a skirt, heels, nice hair, and make-up, as opposed to jeans, sneakers, ponytail. It's a lot easier to dress sloppy and not be made a target.

Another problem is that a significant amount of workplace happiness derives from having friends at work. It's a lot harder to make friends when you're the only woman and you occasionally wonder, "does he really view me as a friend? or is he flirting? that sounded like flirting." Or consider networking - <USER2> best way to advance your career. How do geek guys network? It's not usually golf. Networking with geeky guys usually involves late nights gaming, coding, drinking beer (in my experience). I'm not comfortable going to my single coworkers house to play video games and drink beer until midnight, or staying at work coding with a couple coworkers after everyone else has gone home and the secret mini-fridge in the server room has been opened. It could lead to a bad situation with lots of misunderstanding that could ruin a career. Best to just avoid it.

If it wasn't a wide-spread problem, then why does every single woman in the industry feel like it's something she has had to deal with personally? I've been in the industry 5 years and I'm considering leaving because I feel my gender is holding me back. I'm smart and hard working and I can do really well in a field where being a woman isn't going to hurt my career.

</comment><comment><USER43> If there was ever a field where the current, male dominated, population _wanted_ women in it, it's CS. I've never met a male CS person that wasn't genuinely happy to have a woman in the room doing CS as well.

I think the issues of men in CS relate more to it being a uniquely problem solving discipline, not prone to the kind of social interactions women want it to be. (I know I'm at risk of stereotyping here, but I think the concept is valid).

I've met some really fine women Computer Scientists, and I never saw or heard from them that they'd ever been materially discriminated against for being female. Anecdotal I'm sure, here's another. My group of college friends all formed out of people in the CS program at my school. We were pretty evenly split along male/female lines. Now, many years later, of our group, none of the women have stayed in pure CS (or some branch like InfoSec), opting to go work in different fields, like requirements management, or managing personnel doing CS type work. When asked why they left? All of them say that the relentless focus on pure problem solving eventually just wore them down and that they craved more human interaction. Sitting in cubes all day hacking out code just wasn't what they wanted to do with their life.

Now, this kind of experience may not be true everywhere, I'm sure there are places where there is rampant sexism. But if a woman wants to do CS, she's more than welcome to do it, and based on my experience, barriers to her presence in the field will not be because of sexism. Similarly, you see lots of thinking about "why so few women in CS?" but you don't see any for construction/garbage handling/music composition/long-haul truck driving/<insert list of traditionally male dominated fields>.

I think if you really want to understand the CS question, you have to understand the others. For some of the fields, it's pretty easy to chalk it up to the physical side of the job. But why so few women in music composition? There are absurdly few women in _any_ kind of music composition. I don't mean "song writing" as in lyrics -- there's tons of women crooners. I mean putting notes on a page, or spinning and beat matching discs, or whatever. The demands of the profession are really no different than CS, yet I think representation is very similar.

</comment><comment><USER44> The thing that bugs me most about articles about "women in CS" is that they seem to ALWAYS ignore the most important contributing factor to why there are fewer women in the field: interest. In my experience at my university, it isn't that women aren't smart enough or dedicated enough to do CS. Its just that they don't find it all that interesting to them.

If I found CS boring, I doubt I'd stick around either, regardless of what the opportunities looked like.

</comment><comment><USER45> This is _really_ sexist, and the very fact that she can get away with it (and even get lots of praise) should make us all reflect on how fucked up social conventions and politically correctness are.

I've written about the topic here -> [http://usingimho.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/men-and-women- on-r...](http://usingimho.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/men-and-women-on-rubygems/) and i've been smiten to death in the comments because i dared to state the _fact_ that only around 1% of the opensource projects on rubygems are made by women and that we all should reflect on that.

Here's a passage of her article:

I believe it is these tangential code-cowboy qualities women are unable or unwilling to emulate, and not their skill or capacity for abstraction, problem solving, creative thinking, or communication — All of which actually make them better developers

Think about if a man dared to write the following:

I believe it is this inability to go straight to the point that men are unable or unwilling to emulate, and not their ability to understand other's needs and to understand how social situations work — All of which actually make them better marketers

</comment><comment><USER46> I'm arriving to the discussion too late to make a fairly minor point.. but I do think that this blog post misses the boat completely on her dismissal of the fastest growing occupations for women.

"We are veterinary technicians not veterinarians, dental assistants not dentists, medical assistants not doctors. We like to believe we have evolved, but the data speaks to something else."

Utterly untrue. Women are not doctors? How on earth can she make a statement like this?

According to this site:

<http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/charts1982to2007.pdf>

"Since 1982-83, the total number of women entering U.S. medical schools has increased every year (in fact, the annual increases reach back to 1969-1970). Women's share of the matriculating class has likewise increased. Women went from less than a third (31.4%) of all matriculants in 1982-83 to a high of 49.6 percent in 2003-04. In 2007-08, women were 48.3 percent of all matriculants."

This data is a little old, I wouldn't be surprised if women surpass 50% soon.

</comment><comment><USER29> I suspect women aren't attracted to computer science careers as often as men because they generally like more artistic and creative ventures. In other words, most women prefer careers and interests that allow them to be hand-on empathetic with the objects and people around them. In general, computer science is hardly portrayed as such a career. It may involve aspects of these things, but women generally aren't aware of it. The role models they see are all in the same sort of areas, and the majority of their female peers are all into the same sort of things.

It creates something of an echo chamber that simply multiplies a compounding effect with dominant culture that discourages women from even entering a computer lab filled with sweaty nerds, much less think about joining them.

<comment><USER7> _"…dominant culture that discourages women from even entering a computer lab filled with sweaty nerds, much less think about joining them."_

You have a good point here, but it's not just that they're sweaty, it's that all too often they're actively hostile to women – whether it's sexist jokes, an obsession with rape in DND games (all too frequent) or just the way they seem shocked that a woman could actually be good at coding. Makes things a bit unpleasant, yeah?

<comment><USER47> For pretty much all of my coding life, I distanced myself from the other people doing CS. I stayed and worked hard at it because I enjoy it, and definitely out of no love for the "dominant culture".

Yes, we're all a socially inept bunch of geeks, whatever. Socially inept girls should fit right in, and the rest of the girls can do what I did - ignore it, and just focus on learning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Most of the arguments made seem to suggest there is discrimination in CS education, and subsequently in the workspace.

Even if we assume this to be true, How does this explain the lack of women in open source projects?

Further, the author seems to reserve a special place for the Rockstar developer. Personally having been rescued a few times by such Rockstar coworker's all nighters, I have only respect and awe for such Rockstars.

</comment><comment><USER49> The school I teach at has recently found that women are actually more valued than their male counterparts by employers at the time of graduation. They've been averaging 4% higher job placement and about $2k higher starting salary; 95% and 62k, respectively, for women.

[http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=11721767&hl=2](http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=11721767&hl=2)

</comment><comment><USER50> Another article demanding that coders have no self-respect, but this time, it's assumed that self-respect is a masculine trait.

</comment><comment><USER51> The stereotyping of and bigotry against males in that diatribe was rather offensive.

</comment><comment><USER52> no matter if you think this article is well written or not I'm kinda tired of people's answer to gender inequality. We are not in some golden age of equality. equality has changed for the past 500 years and will continue to change. If you know it's going to change how can you not try and learn why it's changing and how you can affect it?

</comment><comment><USER53> She's just mad because women suck at computers.

</comment><comment><USER54> Computer science is no science at all.

</comment><comment><USER55> There is discrimination not against women but certain traits that are abundant in females. And some of those traits are not suitable for computing profession. Like majority of guys will not be suitable for nursing. It is not about competition, guys can do better nursing if need be and women can do better programming when they do. It is this simple, if women are REALLY capable and NATURAL candidate for Computing, why do we need to create artificial channels for them? Ohh... I get it. This is like saying I have world class athlete but he needs a separate competition to prove it. But still I think if there is (and there is some) discrimination against women, then generalizing men as selfish and evil, won't do any good.

<comment><USER56> Who the hell is natural candidate for Computing anyway?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What would be negative implications of HIV becoming a curable disease? - <AUTHOR>

Would be interesting to explore how society will change and be affected since HIV is mostly tied to homosexuals. <comment><USER2> Nothing that has been discussed on HN lately will, likely, lead to an HIV cure. HIV is notoriously difficult to eradicate due to the fact that it stays dormant inside of immune cells for years. This is why the only cures that you hear about are those that have been induced via bone marrow transplant (which were done for other reasons, not for HIV; BMT is highly dangerous and the risk/benefit is strongly against doing this for cure of HIV alone).

I don't think that your statement about homosexuals is the most useful statement one could make about the HIV epidemic in the United States. There are various groups that suffer more from HIV than others: homosexuals, yes, but also ethnic minorities (blacks have 7x the incidence that whites have). This may just be semantics, but in my opinion HIV isn't really "mostly tied to homosexuals." It is true that a majority of new cases of HIV (57%) are due to male-to-male sexual contact, but that still leaves a vast 43% of the pie for heterosexual contact and IVDU. [http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/resources/factshe...](http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/resources/factsheets/incidence.htm)

</comment><comment><USER3> Curing a disease is always a good idea. And I think your statement "HIV is mostly tied to homosexuals" is factually incorrect, especially on a worldwide basis.

</comment><comment><USER4> Having to listen to people who complain about how many homosexuals there are, and how inconsiderate it is of them to go on living and being homosexual at everyone. Other than that, I can't think of any.</comment>


Veoh Finally Calls it Quits: Layoffs Yesterday, Bankruptcy Filing Soon - <AUTHOR> http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20100211/veoh-finally-calls-it-quits-layoffs-yesterday-bankruptcy-filing-soon/

<comment><USER2> Another one bites the dust!

We've been hearing/talking about Veoh's failure for a while, so I was kinda surprised that it took this long for the "news" to break.

Here's a question: What web video sites HAVE managed to become profitable?

<comment><USER3> Youtube on the cusp of profitability, after several years of being turbo- charged with Google's ad network. [http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20100114/is-youtube- finally-...](http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20100114/is-youtube-finally- ready-to-turn-a-profit-this-year/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Did Hulu beat Veoh to all the copyrighted content?</comment>


I am a fast webpage - <AUTHOR> https://varvy.com/pagespeed/wicked-fast.html <comment><USER3> I hate to be negative, but what really is the point of this? That a simple webpage without any content can be fast? Of course it can.

Is it desirable to inline your CSS, "like a boss?" Maybe if you have one single web page. What if you have dynamic content and your users intend to browse more than one page? With externalized CSS, that is all cached.

Same with images. If I'm building a web application, I certainly do not want inlined images. I want those on a CDN, cached, and I want the page to load before the images.

Not only is this not particularly useful advice, it's bad advice.

<comment><USER4> the guy says he's not an idiot then brags about spending $30 per month on a VPS (idiot), for a single-page static HTML website with all inline-code (idiot+1).

It's not being negative to point out the glaring flaws in a person's statements. My assumption is the entire thing is an advertisement for that hosting service.

<comment><USER5> Also, whether the VPS has an SSD or not is totally irrelevant— if you really were serving a single page it would be cached in the memory of your webserver.

(Or better yet, serve the thing off S3 and let Amazon be your CDN.)

<comment><USER6> Hell, I'd just use my Dropbox account.

<comment><USER7> Dropbox is disabling html hosting on October 3rd

<comment><USER6> Ah, shame. I imagine it's for security reasons, though, so I can't blame them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just to point out, there's no particular reason to host a page like this on a VPS at all. You could just throw it on S3. Even better, you could put it behind a CDN like Cloudfront and the total cost would be a dollar or two a month, not $25+ and it would be significantly faster.

<comment><USER9> > You could just throw it on S3. Even better, you could put it behind a CDN > like Cloudfront and the total cost would be a dollar or two a month, not > $25+ and it would be significantly faster.

I apologize for quibbling (really, I do! but I'm an infrastructure guy! This is my bag!). Yes, host it on S3, but ALWAYS put a CDN in front of S3 with long cache times (even just Cloudfront works). S3 can sporadically take hundreds of milliseconds to complete a request, and you know, AWS bandwidth is expensive (and CDN invalidation is damn near free). And you can use your own SSL cert at the CDN usually instead of relying on AWS' "s3.amazonaws.com" SSL cert (although you will still rely on the that S3 SSL cert for CDN->S3 Origin connections; C'est la vie).

EDIT: It also appears Cloudfront supports HTTP/2 as of today. Hurray!

[https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2016/09/amazon- cl...](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2016/09/amazon-cloudfront- now-supports-http2/)

<comment><USER10> Cloudfront requires JavaScript, which isn't always acceptable.

Edit: Nevermind, confused Cloudfront with Cloudflare. Thanks for the correction, toomuchtodo.

<comment><USER9> Cloudflare does, Cloudfront (AWS' CDN) does not.

EDIT: cm3: I didn't mean to call you out, just wanted my reply in here for historical context. Its _very_ easy to confuse the two.

<comment><USER10> No, thanks for correcting me. The names are similar enough and the purpose is too, so it's easy to confuse. I mean, if you hadn't commented, I would have wondered why it got downvoted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > "I am not on a shared host, I am hosted on a VPS"

Hate to break it to you, but your virtual private server (VPS) is likely sharing a bare-metal server with other VPS. ;-)

Also, you can look into content delivery networks (aka CDN), which will most likely deliver this page faster to clients than your VPS especially when you consider your VPS is in Dallas and CDN's have nodes located around the world.

<comment><USER12> > Hate to break it to you, but your virtual private server (VPS) is likely > sharing a bare-metal server with other VPS. ;-)

Likely? Isn't that the point of a VPS?

<comment><USER11> You can reserve entire machines, even using VPS. Heck, you can even luck out and be the first VPS on a newly provision host.

Chances of either, slim. Still I try not to assume when I don't have the data.

<comment><USER13> Sure you might but be sharing, but the point is that you don't generally have to care.

It's all virtualized and cloudy.

<comment><USER14> VPS performances wildly vary from provider to provider though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not that wickedly fast unless you're really near Dallas where the server is:

[https://performance.sucuri.net/domain/varvy.com](https://performance.sucuri.net/domain/varvy.com)

Hosting on a single VPS is never gonna be very fast globally no matter what you pay your hosting. In fact our free plan on netlify would make this a whole lot faster...

<comment><USER16> Off topic, but is that service showing crazy slow numbers for "USA, Atlanta" for anyone else?

<comment><USER17> It is. Linode's Atlanta data center has been getting DDoS'd on and off since Sunday. This site isn't hosted on Linode, but could there perhaps be congestion in Atlanta from that attack causing general slowness?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> OP has certainly nailed Hacker News psychology. My old coworker called the technique "inferiority porn." Titles like "the secretly terrible developer" or the closing statement of this particular article: "Go away from me, I am too far beyond your ability to comprehend."

As many people have pointed out there are faster methods of static hosting through a CDN, and many of the techniques of this site are inapplicable for larger sites. But A+ on the marketing.

<comment><USER19> I hate this trend.

IMHO there is mainly one way to get attention - it's to get (great and instant) emotion from the user. You can give good emotions or bad emotions.

Personally, I think, that to create a good emotion takes much more effort than to create a bad one. The website/product can say how great am I, but it will not 'click' as instantly as someone telling me I am a dumb baby and I suck [0][1] or I am not superior mere mortal baboon [2], for which most people will get instant rage and will start flame wars in whatever comment section, as there "is no such thing as bad PR".

Most popular writer/bloggers in my country have created these dipshit arogant characters (I tend to believe that they are "normal" people, but they clearly know what sells) who always say that they are richer, smarter and better than you. They create stories about "cheap restaurant breakfast for 60€" and so on, though the most interesting thing is that people buy their shit and then rage on whatever websites about how dared the writer call them a dumbass homeless bum.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12448545](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12448545)

[2] [https://varvy.com/pagespeed/wicked- fast.html](https://varvy.com/pagespeed/wicked-fast.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I make my personal pages fast this way since last century. Probably a huge amount of people did the same. It's pretty obvious.

When you need fancy graphics (a static photo album), things become less easy: you e.g. may want to preload prev / next images in your album to make navigation feel fast.

Things become really tricky when you want interactivity, and in many cases users just expect interactivity from a certain page. But client-side JS is a whole another kettle of fish.

When things become ugly is when you want to extract some money from page's popularity. You need to add trackers for statistics, ad networks' code to display the ads, and complicate the layout to make room for the ads, placing them somehow inobtrusively but prominently. This is going to be slow at worst, resource-hungry at best.

(Corollary from the above: subscription is more battery-friendly than an ad- infested freebie.)

</comment><comment><USER21> A good sequel to [http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/) , which is probably too understyled for most people.

<comment><USER14> I prefer [http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/)

<comment><USER22> For some reason, I'm a fan of this one: [http://codepen.io/dredmorbius/full/KpMqqB/](http://codepen.io/dredmorbius/full/KpMqqB/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Took me almost 30 seconds to load, maybe because the server is being hammered by HN traffic right now? Also like others here were saying, using a CDN would definitely help with the initial latency.

<comment><USER24> I think this is the ironic lesson: for many sites, optimizing for consistent performance (i.e. CDN, geographic caching) is a more important objective than prematurely optimizing for a subset of users.

Example:

Business A - average render time 0.3s, but under load 5-10s

Business B - average render time 0.8s, but under load 1-2s.

Subjectively, around ~10s response time is the point I would close the tab and look for another business if I was trying to do shopping online, anything involving a credit card etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> looks like this whole thing is a scheme to promote his webhsting affiliate link: [http://www.knownhost.com/affiliate/idevaffiliate.php?id=1136...](http://www.knownhost.com/affiliate/idevaffiliate.php?id=1136_0_3_1)

The fastest and most reliable hosting is, by far, based on my own experience is amazon's e2 cloud and S3 bucket services.

<comment><USER26> I picture him coding this in vi with a maniacal evil laugh, thinking of all the money his scheme will make

<comment><USER27> Nothing wrong with that; Smarts should be rewarded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Is this image inlining thing something new? Am I reading it correctly that the images are encoded in base64 and delivered as html? Surely this is a bad idea... no?

<comment><USER29> > Is this image inlining thing something new?

No, it's been around since forever. Just not used terribly often.

> Am I reading it correctly that the images are encoded in base64 and > delivered as html? Surely this is a bad idea... no?

It depends. Making a new request to fetch the image always has overhead. Whether that overhead is bigger or smaller than the overhead of base64-encoding the image depends on:

• file size (naturally)

• file compressibility: The difference isn't _as_ pronounced after gzipping everything, especially if the source data is somewhat compressible

• protocol: http2 allows a correctly configured server to push attached data with the original request, so no second request is needed. Even without server push, http2's multiplexing will reduce the overhead drastically compared to plain HTTP1.1 or the worst case, HTTPS1.1 to a different domain. The latter requires a full TLS handshake, and that's what, >30kb data exchanged if you have more than one CA certificate in the chain? That's a lot of image data.

<comment><USER30> Completely offtopic, but how do you type •? I like it.

<comment><USER31> It's system dependent.

On windows you can do alt+numpad 2022

On whatever is handling input for this XFCE system, control+shift+U 2022+Enter types it.

<comment><USER29> And since I'm lazy, I put it on AltGr+, with xmodmap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Ehh, I just got 10.91s load time in Chrome 53 from Colorado, USA.

Image of Chrome Dev Tools: [https://reportcards.scdn3.secure.raxcdn.com/assets/uploads/f...](https://reportcards.scdn3.secure.raxcdn.com/assets/uploads/files/company/452e0fdee5904b10046de11c0f7bfccb.png)

As an aside, does HTTP/2 provide any benefit for a single HTML file with no external assets?

<comment><USER33> HTTP/2 header compression is one benefit that helps even it you have just 1 request.

<comment><USER34> I want to benchmark this, because intuitively I disagree.

The HPACK spec is a pretty easy read [1]. There is a static, hardcoded table that contains most of the HTTP header names, and even some common predefined KV pairs. You save some bytes on the wire if your header's name or value is one of these entries; the header name will essentially always will be in the static table.

But for names and values that aren't in the static table, you have to put them into the dynamic table and encode them using either the integer packing or the huffman code. The client has to decompress these, of course.

On future requests, you have some leftover state in your dynamic table so future 'duplicate' headers are packed, and take up very little space. But for the first (ever) HTTP request-response pair, you have to trade ALL the headers in "full". So the true benefits of the dynamic table don't kick in.

[1] [https://http2.github.io/http2-spec/compression.html#header.e...](https://http2.github.io/http2-spec/compression.html#header.encoding)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> _> my hard drives are SSD_

Of course that's entirely irrelevant as the page completely fits into the ram of the server (or even the CPUs cache for that matter)

</comment><comment><USER36> Cool... Unfortunately in practice it's easy to find a list of best practices, much harder to implement in a scalable and durable manner on any project of sufficient size, especially if working with a legacy codebase.

</comment><comment><USER37> > "My images are inlined into the HTML using the base64 image tool, so there > is no need for the browser to go looking for some image linked to as an > external file."

This does not work in most cases when you use big images. From StackOverflow answer [1]: "It's only useful for very tiny images. Base64 encoded files are larger than the original. The advantage lies in not having to open another connection and make a HTTP request to the server for the image. This benefit is lost very quickly so there's only an advantage for large numbers of very tiny individual images. "

[1] - [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11736159/advantages- and-d...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11736159/advantages-and- disadvantages-base64-image-encode)

<comment><USER38>
      > This benefit is lost very quickly so there's only an advantage
      > for large numbers of very tiny individual images.

In which case maybe it would be better to use sprites?

<comment><USER37> I don't know, I hate dealing with sprites, it just not worth it in my opinion, the time you spent on every edit...

<comment><USER39> If you're using photoshop you can create a PSD that sources other PSDs and if I remember right create an action that generates the exported image so you could automate things quite a bit if not entirely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Dlang forum (with dynamic content) is insanely fast! [https://forum.dlang.org/group/general](https://forum.dlang.org/group/general)

<comment><USER41> Yeah, this is the site that made me realize just how awful so many other sites are.

It's very fast indeed, and has no useless graphics or javascript effects, but is 100% functional and looks great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> A VPS is shared hosting to me, it's just an instance on a shared system. Shared hosting used to mean a folder on a shared web server but I consider sharing resources in a hypervisor equally shared. ;)

If they truly wanted speed through control of resources they would have used bare metal.

But yeah, the website is easy to optimize when it's simple, the hard part, often outside of your control, is DNS and actual connection handling. Many have already mentioned CDN so there's that.

But you also don't know what kind of firewalls are being used, or switches, or whatever else may impact your site. Why not just do what others have suggested and put it all in the cloud so that Amazon can worry about balancing your load.

</comment><comment><USER43> Pretty good at 97/100 on Google's PageSpeed Insights - [https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=...](https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fvarvy.com%2Fpagespeed%2Fwicked- fast.html&tab=desktop)

<comment><USER44> Don't really think PageSpeed score really accurately reflects page loading speed (maybe initial page loading speed). It seems to not really care about lazy loaded resources as one of my JS heavy webapps I made (around 200KB) actually scores higher than this one [https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=...](https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=io808.com&tab=desktop). Funnily enough the screenshot on the test only shows the loading spinner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Interesting exercise, in an age where web pages are now bigger than most business applications I used to use in the early days of DOS/Windows.

Note: Just checked, and even a simple Medium blog post page won't fit on one those old 3.5" floppy disks..

EDIT: To stay on topic - the OP's page loaded instantly for me here in outback Australia...

</comment><comment><USER46> "Look amazing on any device" ... The right edge of your text is coiled on my phone (not so amazing).

<comment><USER47> Same here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Ok I'll bite as this is near and dear to my heart. Instead of showing me a fast webpage with a minimal content, tell me how to make my tons of css and js load fast! That's a real problem.I deliver web apps, and interactivity is a must.

IMO, the real problem with the web is the horrendous design choices and delivery of very popular news and daily reading sites (ahem cnn) where subsequent loads of ads and videos start shifting the page up and down even when you have started reading something. Let's address that problem first!

<comment><USER49> > tell me how to make my tons of css and js load fast

I went to the doctor and he told me to lose weight. What a fatphobe!

He should have told me how to eat everything I desire without any bad side effects!

/s

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> "Faster than 100% of tested sites"

[https://tools.pingdom.com/#!/ehdlhb/https://varvy.com/pagesp...](https://tools.pingdom.com/#!/ehdlhb/https://varvy.com/pagespeed/wicked- fast.html)

</comment><comment><USER51> For speed optimization it's really important to always fine-tune for you particular use case and apply some common sense. For instance, inlining everything as suggested here is faster only if you expect visitors to open just that one page and bounce away, so browser caching is not helpful. Consequently, it's a very good tip for e.g. landing pages, but it makes no sense at all to serve pages that way to your logged-in users.

</comment><comment><USER52> Few more possible optimizations:

\- Brotli instead of Gzip. Likely saves around 10% size.

\- Minify everything, including HTML. Could save around 3% size on that page.

<comment><USER53> Another optimization: \- zopfli for PNG via advanceCOMP

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Submit to 10k Apart: [https://a-k-apart.com/](https://a-k-apart.com/)

</comment><comment><USER55> How much does HTTP/2 mitigate the need for such techniques, if at all?

<comment><USER29> HTTP/2 with server push will eliminate the inlining hacks, and automatically compress content.

But the other points remain: No Javascript is still the fastest Javascript framework, and while you can do lots of crazy hacks with CSS, _maybe_ you shouldn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Inline all your CSS and you are forcing all your users a full reload whenever you need to change/add something.

This can be tricky if your page grows in complexity/size and you need to change something.

Please, when is more appropriate don't inline your CSS and prefer to take advantage of cache.

<comment><USER57> Well, the entire page is 7 KB.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I think it _feels_ fast because it loads at once, but I'm actually not getting very impressive results programmatically if you measure how long the entire TCP transaction takes (which is what I consider page loading):

        # Both DNS records are cached before request
        >>> print requests.get('https://varvy.com/pagespeed/wicked-fast.html').elapsed.microseconds
        226515
        >>> print requests.get('http://www.google.com').elapsed.microseconds
        92027

Even google.com (92 ms) is about 250% faster than OP (226 ms) to establish connection, read all of the data, and close.

<comment><USER13> But what's 130ms?

Okay, okay, it "matters". But it's nothing compared with the 3s to load all the JS and CSS and the subsequent sluggishness as 20 analytics scripts are loaded and processed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Honestly? I am surprised to see this page with such high vote on the first page. If you really wanted a fast "static" page, you would put it on a CDN. All you wanted to do is put a marketing link in your last paragraph.

</comment><comment><USER60> Your page can be very fast and uses minimal resources and is hosted in a good place. But you always gotta watch out for proximity to user, time to first byte and dns resolution time. Perceived speed is highly affected by those.

It took 2 seconds to load the page on a fresh ec2 box:

        time_namelookup:  0.061
           time_connect:  0.100
        time_appconnect:  0.223
       time_pretransfer:  0.223
          time_redirect:  0.000
     time_starttransfer:  1.935
                        </comment><comment>----
             time_total:  2.066

</comment><comment><USER61> Yes you are. You're so fast I don't even see you refresh.

</comment><comment><USER62> Probably wouldn't make much of a difference, but there is still room for performance improvement by minifying the HTML page.

</comment><comment><USER63> "No Javascript"

Amen.

<comment><USER64> It reminds me the "no synthesizers" used in the 80's by some musicians :-)

<comment><USER63> I know right? I cannot really for the super-cool bloatware fashion craze JS frameworks to die.

Here's an idea: WebAssembly, but use existing Opcodes from the JVM.

<comment><USER65> JS bloat is not gonna go away

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> You can do much better! What's about html-muncher for css class minification?

Those png are not fully optimized and an SVG would probably even be smaller too and even if it isn't in the case of the orange one it would have could be compressed much better.

Making use of data: urls might look good on first visit but honestly with HTTP/2 just push in the resources and externalize them.

Because seriously cache for 300 seconds? How about offline support anyways? It's 2016.

Furthermore where's my beloved Brotli support?

By the what's about WebP support? Ok TBH if the PNG would be properly optimized WebP would actually not beat the file size but hey: "It isn't"

So even though it's only this tiny static page there's still so much wrong with it. Please improve! By the way what's about QUIC?

</comment><comment><USER67> Easy to make a website fast when it has nothing on it. In the real world a site isn't this light. It has images, analytic scripts, stylesheets, fonts, Javascript (jQuery at the least). Using a combination of a CDN and realistic caching, I can make a fast website as well.

<comment><USER57> Real world sites don't need all that stuff.

<comment><USER68> Many real world sites have strategic/marketing partners who ask to add analytics scripts so that they can capture metrics for their partnerships with you/your real world site...And if your site has been optimized, but their servers (which serve up these 3rd-party/analytics scripts) aren't as optimized, guess where the slow down comes from? And senior leaders don't always enforce these partners to confirm to internal performance standards. So, yes, unfortunately real world sites __DO __have - or at least are forced to have - stuff like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Simple text, few links to 'tipps', a little bit of base64 images without any deeper knowledge. For example there was a website which showed the impact of base64 images just a few weeks ago (when i remember correctly)

But it has a referral link.

Thats probably the point of this page.

</comment><comment><USER70> This is odd. Clearly anyone can make a lighting fast page by making a single page since then you can have css inlined versus needing to link to css style sheets with multiple pages, and of course not having javascript would make it faster, but thats a requirement for most all typical sites these days, and loading images that way is nice for hackers but not for real people using cms's by common people and clients. Also paying $25-35 for hosting is not very bright since you can get a $5 digital ocean server ssd, not shared, that would load this particular page just as fast if not faster.

</comment><comment><USER71> His affiliate link for VPS service has its cheapest option priced at $25 a month. You can get a nice little VPS for static hosting on SSD from digital ocean for $5 a month. $6 a month with backup.

<comment><USER72> You can go even cheaper.

Time4VPS offers you 2 cores (compared to one on DO), 80 GB SSD (compared to 20 on DO), 2 TB bandwidth (compared to one on DO), and 2 GB of RAM (compared to 512 MB on DO) for 3 euros (3.36 dollars). 1 additional euro for daily and weekly backups.

Started renting one just two days ago, so I can't really guarantee that it's reliable, but it was recommended to me by a friend who's renting it for over 100 days now without any downtime.

[1] [https://www.time4vps.eu/pricing/](https://www.time4vps.eu/pricing/) (or, if it sounds good and you want to use my referral link: [https://billing.time4vps.eu/?affid=992](https://billing.time4vps.eu/?affid=992))

<comment><USER73> CloudAtCost works perfectly for me. It's a one-time fee for VPS' and they're always having sales.

Use my coupon code to get 50% off any CloudPRO hosting: e6a8yWuhA4

[https://cloudatcost.com](https://cloudatcost.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> I can't wait for half of this advice to become obsolete with HTTP2

</comment><comment><USER75> What an arrogance, the page is done with me? I done with the page yet. I can get the same page much faster by putting the png in an inline svg, strip the source of unnecessary whitespace and returns, serve brotli (or sdhc compressed pages) with firefox, chrome and opera dynamically... or even just do the decompression inline with javascript. Might save another 20% [https://github.com/cscott/compressjs](https://github.com/cscott/compressjs)

<comment><USER57> ... With what are you going to compress the compression library?

<comment><USER75> Brotli or Gzip on server. But you are right, in my enthousiasm I overlooked those bits!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> I can see in the source code that you're expressing all dimensions in terms of ems and %s. A technology such as Bootstrap will always be the way to go; however, could you tell us a little bit more about how you did this? How did you ensure that it looks good not only on your screen but on any screen?

I know people are saying it has some errors on certain mobile devices, but that's still some pretty good job manipulating CSS properties.

<comment><USER77> _A technology such as Bootstrap will always be the way to go_

What? Why?

<comment><USER76> Bootstrap was just an example. It could Bootstrap, Materialize, W3.CSS, etc.

The point is that it's much more convenient to reuse code from a framework, because it's better to sacrifice file size for fast iteration and functionality.

<comment><USER78> There is always a tipping point. We tend to use Bootstrap a lot at work for the reasons you mention, but you can pretty quickly get to the point where your CSS is complex enough that you would have been better off doing it from scratch. All frameworks are like that -- you trade off initial convenience for design constraints.

When I'm doing my own projects I always write my CSS by hand because it ends up less complex in the end. I don't need to see pretty things up front like my corporate customers do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> The whole hosting issue seems to open a can of worm, at least if this comment stream is any indication. I think it probably would have been better if they stated something more along the lines of, 'Choose (and likely expect to pay) for some sort of superior hosting solution which will prioritize allocating resources to your site(s)'.

The general point could be made without leaving so much room for everyone to argue over specifics.

</comment><comment><USER80> Examples of fast pages: [http://www.3riversstadium.com/index2.html](http://www.3riversstadium.com/index2.html)

[http://www.pmichaud.com/toast/](http://www.pmichaud.com/toast/)

[http://home.mcom.com/home/welcome.html](http://home.mcom.com/home/welcome.html)

<comment><USER81> Lol, thanks for the Three Rivers throwback! (Pittsburgh native here)

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> How dare HN spread this kind of speed-shaming hate slander! ;)

We need to see the bloaty-positive alternative, not all websites have to be Google models.

</comment><comment><USER83> A lot of this stuff is outdated now: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12448539](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12448539)

For instance, delivery one giant JS/CSS file is now bad because it is harder to cache, since HTTP/2 removes the overhead of multiple requests there is no downside for many files.

</comment><comment><USER84> This took almost 10 seconds to load for me...

<comment><USER24> Around the same for me, running fibre in New Zealand. Long delay before content even began loading - as mentioned in other comments, would likely have been a non-issue if a decent CDN was used.

<comment><USER85> I'm curious, how much benefit is there to having a fibre connection in NZ except for NZ websites? What's the max speed?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> The best "Shift+Reload" refresh I've managed to get out of this page from where I'm sitting, in Firefox 48.0.x, according to its Network Console, is around 360 ms. It doesn't beat this HN discussion page by a whole lot, and this has actual content, which is dynamic.

</comment><comment><USER87> Interestingly, Google has been going after this with AMP (accelerated mobile pages): [https://www.ampproject.org/](https://www.ampproject.org/)

It enforces a set of rules to accelerate web pages. These rules can be used to validate your pages.

</comment><comment><USER88> Well, many of these points make sense.

If I'm doing a single page application, surely I'll have infrastructure in place already to compile, minify and do whatever I need to. So I could just serve the monolithic page and be done with it. Much like desktop applications used to do.

</comment><comment><USER89> A couple of problems rendering on iPhone 6s

[http://i.imgur.com/EpoC9lG.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/EpoC9lG.jpg)

[http://i.imgur.com/qHS5v2H.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/qHS5v2H.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER10> If it's really all static, you can bundle it into a static Mirage unikernel image with [https://github.com/mirage/mirage- seal](https://github.com/mirage/mirage-seal)

</comment><comment><USER90> I've always wanted to play with putting /var/www into a ramdisk for PHP/html stuff. Would be much faster loading since it's all just text in the end of the day. Completely cut out the bottleneck of SSd/HDD

<comment><USER91> If you own the hardware I imagine much of your PHP/html stuff will be served from the file system cache much of the time so you probably wouldn't see much benefit...

<comment><USER90> The idea would be to do it in an ultra-minimalist setting on a VPS (something under 256MB of ram).

<comment><USER92> I don't think it would do much there either: If it fits in your left-over RAM, then it's probably in the disk cache. If it doesn't, then you can't create a RAM disk large enough.

It might help with latency for the long-tail of data that isn't used very often and thus maybe replaced in the cache by other data, but on the other hand the OS probably had a reason to replace it and forcing it to stay in RAM might slow everything down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> 2.43s TTFB for me - nice and fast once that happened, but that TTFB is a killer.

</comment><comment><USER94> Maybe a lot of people are hitting it, but this webpage loaded slowly for me.

</comment><comment><USER95> I'm curious - would this page see any speed improvement with HTTP2? I ask because the new protocol seems optimized for the exact opposite of this - <USER2> asynchronous fetches.

<comment><USER96> It's already using HTTP/2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> I was a fast webpage.

<comment><USER22> Did you play tag as a kid?

</comment></comment><comment><USER98> Loaded in about 15-20 seconds for me. Even if you think medium.com is slow, they can handle the sudden extra load that your site couldn't.

</comment><comment><USER99> By the site's own admission, this page's visible content not prioritized. I would have knelt before it if not for that flaw!!

</comment><comment><USER100> It took me several seconds to load (compared to about 1-1.5 for HN)... this page needs better hosting for Asian users.

</comment><comment><USER68> Ego aside, this kind of site (and associated commentary on the suggested tactics) i feel is helpful.

</comment><comment><USER101> All being on the html, and doing less external css improve speed? How much? Is it worthwhile?

</comment><comment><USER102> This simple webpage was barely faster than hacker news' list view...

</comment><comment><USER65> Well, not including any javascript was one massive shortcut :)

</comment><comment><USER103> In an ad-free Internet, many more pages would be this fast.

Alas.

</comment><comment><USER104> Took about 15 seconds to load for me...

</comment><comment><USER105> Really cool!

Almost instant even here in New Zealand!

</comment><comment><USER106> what is that `.unit{display:inline-block; _display:inline;_ zoom:1` (the stars..)

</comment><comment><USER107> now we need a framework that targets that standard. as very fast dumb client.

</comment><comment><USER108> Some pages have big egos.

</comment><comment><USER109> Its back to 1985

</comment><comment><USER110> The bit about being hosted on SSDs is silly. I could host that site in unused registers of my CPU.

<comment><USER111> was thinking exactly this, keep loaded in mem for the duration of the server's lifetime. Not too familiar with HTTP2 but could you cache the compressed packet and reuse with minor modification to the headers when needed to speed up the communication?

<comment><USER110> Preformatted payload can be a big win for page speed, especially if your payload cannot vary based on request headers, or has only a few variants.

A special case of preformatted response used to be baked into microsoft IIS. If you connected to an address that could only redirect to another address, IIS wouldn't even wait for the request, it would just send the 302 response and hang up. This, it turns out, was not really compatible with Mozilla at the time, and may have violated some RFCs, but I kind of liked it as a hack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER112> > I make no external calls, everything needed to load this page is contained > in the HTML.

Wont that make your webpage load slower?

<comment><USER113> That one file, but presumably it's loading assets that would be the same total size if they were split. Loading 100k from one source is faster than the same aggregate size from multiple connections.

<comment><USER112> Except if you only need the first 50k to render the page, and can wait for 50k of Javascript to come later, your page is going to display a lot faster. Standard technique.

> Loading 100k from one source is faster than the same aggregate size from > multiple connections.

Usually doing things in parallel is faster than doing them serial. That's why HTTP2 loads slower than HTTP1 - you are sucking everything through single TCP pipe, even though it is multiplexing within.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER114> Inline CSS _shudder_</comment>


Great Hackers (2004) - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html <comment><USER2> I love this quote from the article: "Hackers like to work for people with high standards. But it's not enough just to be exacting. You have to insist on the right things."</comment>


Foursquare APIv2: Woulda, coulda, shoulda   - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.foursquare.com/2011/07/08/apiv2-woulda-coulda-shoulda

<comment><USER2> POST to /add to create a resource? Strange, redundant, and the sort of thing I thought died with old versions of Rails. Riak/Webmachine and CouchDB get this right. Because knowledge is power, here is the section on methods in the HTTP 1.1 spec [http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec5.html#sec5.1...](http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec5.html#sec5.1.1) . Sorry to inject facts into an otherwise opinion-based situation. If I've bummed you out, I apologize. Here's a laughing penguin to cheer you up <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fbt1fVfi-g> .

Worshipping at the altar of HATEOAS,

Lil' B</comment>