Edward Tufte - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Tufte

<comment><USER2> Forgive me for asking, but why is this link here on HN? I mean, he's a great guy and all, but what is the relevance to HN at this point?

<comment><USER3> Lots of companies/projects work in the field of information visualization, on the bookshelves of almost all of them, you can find Tufte's books. He's largely considered the leader in the theory of displaying information in as dense and as clear of a method as possible than enables people to perceive the encoded information as rapidly and as correctly as possible.

He's best known for sparklines we all enjoy when looking at tables of stock prices, but those are likely the the least of his contributions to the field.

references:

<http://www.palantirtech.com/>

<http://www.futurepointsystems.com/>

<http://www.caida.org/tools/visualization/walrus/>

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visualization_(computer_graphic...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visualization_\(computer_graphics\))

<http://www.esri.com/>

<http://nvac.pnl.gov/></comment></comment>


Little Benefit Seen, So Far, in Electronic Patient Records - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/16/business/16records.html?_r=1&hpw

<comment><USER2> This is not an improvement that we will see in the matter of months, or probably even a few years. I suspect that we'll see _very_ marginal incremental improvements, followed by a large spike in productivity / efficiency. It would make sense that EMR's, like the Internet, and PC's before it, will be adopted collectively as a generation.

I've personally been involved in a reasonably large deployment of a high- profile EMR system. In my case, we're talking about introducing networked software systems to _an entire workforce_. Doctors. Nurses. Residents. Receptionists. These aren't even people in the corporate business world, where computer / internet skills are considered vital skills. We're talking about starting from the ground up, "This is how you log into your computer". Even once they've been trained, it's not the same as having staff full of tech- savvy employees, who intuitively know how they can make software work for them.

EMR's have a long way to go as well. many of the packages out pretty much just duplicate the functionality of paper records as pages of forms. The only difference is that the info is displayed it on a screen. Additionally, Presumably in an attempt to lock up a young market, there doesn't seem to be a lot of horizontal integration going on yet. This too will change, I think, as the market demands more as they become more widely adopted.

On a side note, you have _no_ idea how old-school many med-school programs are. I was really surprised at how much technical innovation there is in the engineering of medical devices, but not in medical practice.</comment>


Ask HN: As a self-taught programmer where can I learn some CS? - <AUTHOR> I've seem some resources scattered around but I was looking for something more "definitive". Any ideas? Thanks! <comment><USER2> [https://teachyourselfcs.com/](https://teachyourselfcs.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://bigmachine.io/products/the-imposters- handbook](https://bigmachine.io/products/the-imposters-handbook)

<comment><USER4> How good is this book?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I highly recommend Gregor Kiczales's CS classes from UBCx as a starting point [0]

Gregor's courses are based on the "How to Design Programs" book that Matthias Felleisen at Northeastern, Shriram Krishnamurthi at Brown, and others wrote.

They have a great paper discussing the pedagogical philosophy called The Structure and Interpretation of the Computer Science Curriculum [1]

[0] [https://www.edx.org/course/how-code-simple-data-ubcx- htc1x](https://www.edx.org/course/how-code-simple-data-ubcx-htc1x)

[0] [https://www.edx.org/course/how-code-complex-data- ubcx-](https://www.edx.org/course/how-code-complex-data-ubcx-)

[1] [https://www2.ccs.neu.edu/racket/pubs/jfp2004-fffk.pdf](https://www2.ccs.neu.edu/racket/pubs/jfp2004-fffk.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER6> I built [https://algodaily.com](https://algodaily.com) to serve as a gentle intro to CS fundamentals for non-traditional students. Check it out and see if it's what you're looking for.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've collected resources for getting better at CS here: [https://github.com/connor11528/cs- fundamentals](https://github.com/connor11528/cs-fundamentals)

</comment><comment><USER8> [https://github.com/ossu/computer-science](https://github.com/ossu/computer- science)

</comment><comment><USER9> MIT Introduction to Computer Science

<comment><USER10> MIT Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs :-)

The opening statement:

"I'd like to welcome you to this course on computer science. Actually, that's a terrible way to start. Computer science is a terrible name for this business. First of all, it's not a science. It might be engineering or it might be art, but we'll actually see that computer so-called science actually has a lot in common with magic, and we'll see that in this course.

So it's not a science. It's also not really very much about computers. And it's not about computers in the same sense that physics is not really about particle accelerators, and biology is not really about microscopes and petri dishes. And it's not about computers in the same sense that geometry is not really about using surveying instruments

...

Now, the reason that we think computer science is about computers is pretty much the same reason that the Egyptians thought geometry was about surveying instruments. And that is, when some field is just getting started and you don't really understand it very well, it's very easy to confuse the essence of what you're doing with the tools that you use. And indeed, on some absolute scale of things, we probably know less about the essence of computer science than the ancient Egyptians really knew about geometry."

Still prescient 30 years later...

[https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and- compu...](https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer- science/6-001-structure-and-interpretation-of-computer-programs-spring-2005/)

<comment> a-saleh This is the reason why i kinda like, I didn't study Computer Science. I studied Theoretical Informatics :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> MIT's CS50 is great!</comment>


Ask HN: Client Threatening about blog post against me - <AUTHOR>

I am a creative designer with a good reputation. I have recently done a logo for a social media marketing guy. He sells information product on social media marketing. After doing several revisions of the logo and working very hard for the client, he told he don't want to continue with me and asked for refund of advance. I dont do that because I have put lot of work into it.
Now the client is threatening me by telling about his skills in social marketing. He says he will do all possible thing to do negative publicity against me and a reputed Design agency, where I am working part time.
Just got an email telling he has given me deadline till Wednesday and after that he will start putting blog posts and other social media things against me.
Anybody faced similar thing before ? What should I do ?
FYI: There was no official agreement or any thing signed. Only exchange of emails. <comment><USER2> At first I wouldn't worry about it. Firstly it could just be a threat, if he actually does start doing such things, you should wait and see what happens.

You know what they say, there is no such thing as bad publicity. It is possible that he could end up promoting you if your name gets out there.

He isn't going to recommend you anyway.

If he defames you, you've got a potential lawsuit. Otherwise, you could get a bit social yourself and link to his posts with copies of your work. Comment and respond to his negative posts, if he actually does post something. Make sure you're out there answering the questions and standing up for yourself if you believe in your work.

But if he is a professional, I doubt this is anything but a threat.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm sure a lot of people won't like this, but hey, fight fire with fire. Send him an email - use formal language - stating how he's not entitled to a refund due to the nature of your work, and making slanderous threats about damaging your reputation. Make sure to point out the legal implications of the threats he's making.

Here's the fun part: end it with "P.S. I've CCed in my lawyer". Find a local lawyer firm and just make up firstname.lastname@example.com, paste that in the CC field.

Worked for me once before. They get scared, look up the actual lawyers online - they're real - stop with their threats. This is cheaper than getting an actual lawyer but equally as effective at scaring them out of it.

</comment><comment><USER4> IANAL, but what was exchanged in those emails is your agreement. Do you state in those emails that the advance is non-refundable? If so, you're completely in the right.

On the other side of it, is there anything in those emails that suggests the other party expects a full refund if the work doesn't meet their standards?

</comment><comment><USER5> You're probably already thinking this, but in the future don't do a project without a contract. I'd agree with pedalpete that you should take a stand for yourself if he chooses to run anything negative.

</comment><comment><USER6> Send him this:

<http://vimeo.com/22053820>

(That's the "F*ck you. Pay me." from Mike Monteriro that was doing the rounds a few weeks back)</comment>


Ask HN: Would you like your banking data in real time via IPython / RStudio? - <AUTHOR> Hey,
We're building an intelligent financial assistant (meetcleo.com) at a startup incubator here in London (joinef.com). We were thinking of building out a feature where you could run your own Python / R code in the browser to analyse your transaction data.
The process would look like the following;
1. Connect your account(s) - we use Saltedge.com to pull the data.
2. You'd get a browser IPython / RStudio Server instance with your data loaded into a dataframe (we pull new data once a day)
3. You can run your analysis / schedule jobs / save scripts, etc.
Let me know if you're interested and we'll build it! We build really fast! <comment><USER2> I personally don't see it as a value add and therefore wouldn't pay for it.

First I don't analyze my finances that often just looking once a month for potential fraudulent transactions (In the US it's more frequent than when I lived in europe).

Second if I would really care most banks export in CSV format which makes it easy to process with panda [1]. My gut feeling is that's what most tech savvy users would do, and they are tech savvy if they can write Python or R.

I'm probably not your typical user but I hope that helps.

[1] [http://pandas.pydata.org/](http://pandas.pydata.org/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also, would you potentially pay for this feature? (small monthly subscription)</comment>


JavaScript cannot be fixed - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@richardeng/as-others-have-noted-the-fundamental-problem-with-web-development-is-that-javascript-is-a-broken-7f9675048c77 <comment><USER2> Absolutely agree. I was looking at this exact same thing last week. From what I'm come to understand from the overly bureaucratical responses I received from JavaScript community members, is that the language is designed with two intentions in mind:

1\. Never break legacy code. 2\. Be an open adaptable language that any developer from any background (or no background) can write code in.

It's a messy messy attempt at being the popular kid. For example, classes, a popular new feature of ES6 looks like this:

<comment>

class Hello {

      constructor(name) {
        this.name = name
      }

      hello() {
        return 'Hello ' + this.name + '!'
      }

}

<comment>

Cool. However in ES5, this is how a class is created:

<comment>

function Hello(name) { this.name = name }

Hello.prototype.hello = function hello() { return 'Hello ' \+ this.name + '!' }

<comment>

Okay...this makes sense and while the ES6 version is syntactically cleaner, it breaks the paradigm set in ES5. Knowing what I know of other languages, I'd expect something like this:

<comment>

class Hello {

      function constructor(name) {
        this.name = name
      }

      function hello() {
        return 'Hello ' + this.name + '!'
      }

}

<comment>

I was told the reason is that methods are not functions. Which is an okay reason, but wait, they are functions in ES5...

Furthermore, you can't use ES6 class syntax in non strict mode. At first I assumed a valiant attempt of deprecating older features, by requiring a strict mode as a sort of psuedo deprecation. However what stinks about this is that it still doesn't fix the issue 100%. There are already too many tutorials out there describing how to write bad JS code. What ultimately needs to happen, is that browsers, nodejs, etc, need to always operate with strict parsing. The "use strict" flag is too easily forgotten. Yes this will break programs that are 50 years old, but everything has to come to a halt eventually. Another solution would be to "fork" or start a new language from scratch to replace it. I'm aware this is the intention of Dart, however it's adoption rate seems too little to make an impact as evidence by it's lack of care to be included in Chrome even ([https://www.dartlang.org/support/faq.html#q-will-the-dart- vm...](https://www.dartlang.org/support/faq.html#q-will-the-dart-vm-get-into- chrome)).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Email Charter: A campaign to solve email overload - <AUTHOR> http://www.emailcharter.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> The solution appears to be currently "let's get together to discuss a solution"</comment>


Magic Cube 4D - <AUTHOR> http://www.superliminal.com/cube/cube.htm

<comment><USER2> I remember this program back in high school. Great fun when you're getting into things like solving Rubik's cubes and such. It also has one of the nicer interfaces for something initially so complicated.

My only complaint is that while trying to learn it, the speed of rotation was defaulted to so fast I couldn't tell what was happening. But slowed down, it's quite satisfying!

</comment><comment><USER3> dead link</comment>


How to pick a microcontroller platform - <AUTHOR> http://embedded.fm/blog/ese101-picking-platform <comment><USER2>
      Microcontrollers come in 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit, and even 64-bit variants.

4-bit microcontrollers have existed for a couple decades now: they're used for clocks, timers, etc. The Epson MCUs come with a built-in LCD driver: [http://global.epson.com/products/semicon/products/mcu/4bit_i...](http://global.epson.com/products/semicon/products/mcu/4bit_index.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here: I debated adding that, but thought no one would care - but I'll add it since someone else cares about 4-bit'ers too. :-)</comment></comment>


Norway Wealth Fund Outsmarts Flash Boys as Algorithms Abandoned - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-16/norway-wealth-fund-outsmarts-flash-boys-as-algorithms-abandoned.html <comment><USER2> I don't understand this article at all. The pension fund uses block trades. Who takes the other side of those trades and how are they compensated?

I suspect that an equity desk takes the block, parcels it out into lots of small pieces, and works the market to get it off their books. Of course, they charge for that service, both in commissions and spread. So effectively, instead of paying HFT firms for providing liquidity, they're paying an investment bank equity desk. Does this really save money? If it does, why all the hoopla about HFT if you can avoid them by going through an equity desk?

Don't tell me that they just put their block on IEX and the tooth fairy fills it without price impact. That would be some serious magic.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you, and I think the author, like most people who are writing against the "flash boys," fundamentally misunderstands what's going on.

I think the "black and white" rule that the large firms who feel they are being hurt by HFT want is the ability to execute a full trade before it impacts the market (since otherwise it's impossible to describe the exact moment they feel their trade is a signal to be traded off of). I think that's highly unreasonable, but if you do believe that I think IEX is probably relatively successful at it. It's totally possible that a block could be fully sold off on IEX before the 350ms latency allows that information to escape to the outside world and be traded against, no? Market impact is ultimately about the same, just delayed enough to allow the seller to escape.

I would happily be correct on any of this, since I don't work in finance.

<comment><USER4> IEX only delays the order entry side of the system. Market data (they are dark atm so no quotes/book feed of course) and trade reporting is not delayed. The magic shoe box is there to stop a very specific situation from occuring: IEX pricing pegged orders against stale market data.

<comment><USER3> So I don't fully understand what IEX does then. Let's say A puts 500 shares of AAPL onto IEX at $100/share, and B puts a buy order in for 500 shares at $100/share, but in between posting the BUY and the order executing (in that 350ms), they get more information, and decide they actually want to pull out, are they unable to?

Let's say B instead only buys 250 shares, what happens to the remaining 250 shares?

<comment><USER4> They are unable to do so. It is a queued system with a fixed transit latency through the queue of 350us. Any remaining un-executed of A is left on the IEX book.

IEX has this transit latency because they have order types that offer pegged execution, i.e. midpoints. A midpoint order is executed at the midpoint of the prevailing NBBO. The data required to build a view of the prevailing NBBO comes in from all other lit venues.

IEX has a 350us delay because they want to slow down the order entry side to give themselves enough time to make sure they are not pricing their pegged orders using stale market data. Simple as that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Galactically enormous state-sponsored buy-side firm thwarts tiny sell-side firms. Implications for broader market contemplated.

</comment><comment><USER4> Look, all this guy is saying is that he is paying someone else to take on the risk of executing his large orders. Block crossing networks and sell-side traders have existed for a long time. Hell, that's what Brad (IEX CEO and Flash Boys protagonist) did prior to starting IEX. This guy is saying: rather than use an order execution algo to get my trade done, I'm just doing a cross upstairs with some sell-side guy, paying them a known amount, and letting them deal w/ how to handle it on their side.

They aren't outsmarting anyone. They're simply transferring execution risk, and they pay handsomely for it, trust me.

<comment><USER3> So why do they care so much? Are they literally paying more because the idea of HFT burns their cookies?

<comment><USER4> Because they suck at technology. Its easier and more justifiable to pay someone else to take on the risk and pension fund gets less variance in their execution costs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Everybody always cries "front running!" I believe front running is an overblown issue. I also believe that most defenses of HFT as "liquidity providers" overlooks a large share of prop firms and hedge funds using HFT for speculation and are not in fact liquidity providers.

But the firms that do play liquidity -- the firms that compete with one another for your order after it comes thru your broker -- aren't hurting anybody by front running. In fact, they value your order flow so much (for their own info) that they price-improve for you so they capture more/all of the order. IIRC over 60% of stock trades are price-improved.

<comment><USER5> As I understand it: provision of liquidity is not a function of intent. Liquidity is a property of the market, not of a trading strategy. Some strategies (happen to) add (sell) liquidity, and some remove (buy) it.

The term "front-running" is terribly misused in these discussions (I can't tell from your short comment if you were, though). You "front-run" someone if they reveal their trading intent to you, and front-running usually involves an agency problem (ie, your broker and their responsibility to you as a client).

<comment><USER6> The point about "front running" being misused correlates with my point that every time HFT gets discussed, ppl cry "front running" and blame HFT for various ills.

About liquidity providing... brokers don't generally route orders directly to an exchange. In most cases your order will get routed to a 3rd party liquidity provider, a firm who agrees to buy at the bid and sell at the ask and do so quickly. Often, these guys will pay the broker for order flow or price-improve your order to capture all of it, or both. Competition between these firms goes a long way towards guaranteeing the NBBO price that your broker is obligated to provide.

Connecting the dots leads you to a conclusion that the order flow is valuable enough to them (for purposes of their own prop trading, strategic option selling, etc) that they act as market makers.

<comment><USER7> Some of this seems wrong.

> In most cases your order will get routed to a 3rd party liquidity provider,

This is only true if you are a regular person, ie using IB to buy in your rrsp or ira account. Almost exclusively, anyone who is a professional will go direct to market( DMA). They will never go through Citadel or some other liquidity provider.

> Often, these guys will pay the broker for order flow

Not often, always. They always pay for this, there are no freebies:)

> a firm who agrees to buy at the bid and sell at the ask and do so quickly.

If you can find someone who will guarentee that they will fill my buy orders at the bid and sell orders at the ask, please let me know and I'll give them all my flow:)

> Competition between these firms goes a long way towards guaranteeing the > NBBO price that your broker is obligated to provide.

What does this even mean, even without someone buying your flow you are still guaranteed to get the NBBO price, RegNMS says this is the law. Let me be clear, 3rd party brokers have no part in guaranteeing you get the NBBO price. The law says if your order can trade at the NBBO, it must.

<comment><USER6> I'm not a fan of the point-by-point redressing so I'll just say a few things and leave you the last word if you want it. And I'm sure that there are some fascinating differences when trading as a hedge fund, and maybe you can share more about them. The process I laid out is generally "how orders get filled" for just about everybody reading this. If you know enough about how your specific orders get filled, I suppose you're not the audience I was writing for.

1\. Brokers don't only send orders to 3rd party market makers because they're being paid for order flow. You're right, they won't get order flow for free, but I didn't mean to imply that they did.

2\. Quoting and buying at their published bid/ask is precisely their function. Possibly we're just disagreeing on terms. The SEC's website is fairly good at explaining this flow. [http://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/tradexec.htm](http://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/tradexec.htm)

3\. What I'm discussing is the actual mechanism for HOW nbbo is fulfilled. Competition in the marketplace -- third party market makers and arb firms -- absolutely play a role in ensuring the efficiency of the market. If brokers had to run this infrastructure themselves, it would be non-trivial and without any financial incentives that I can think of.

<comment><USER8> > Quoting and buying at their published bid/ask is precisely their function

I think he was making a little joke about this. He said:

       fill my buy orders at the bid
       and sell orders at the ask

I'm with him, I'd give all my business to someone who could do that. I could retire in one trading day if I could find someone to do that for me. This was exactly the downfall of Knight Capital Group. It only took about 45 minutes for them to lose $440 million.[1]

Of course, that _wasn 't_ what you originally said, which was

       a firm who agrees to buy at the bid
       and sell at the ask

hence the smiley at the end of his comment. There's a difference between "buy at the bid" and "fill my buy orders at the bid". :)

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Capital_Group#2012_stock...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Capital_Group#2012_stock_trading_disruption)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Since Flash Boys keeps coming up in these threads I want to provide an alternate reference for those curious. A recent rebuttal has been published called "Flash Boys Not So Fast". If you're interested in the topic, I highly suggest you pick it up. [http://www.amazon.com/Flash-Boys-Insiders- Perspective-High-F...](http://www.amazon.com/Flash-Boys-Insiders-Perspective- High-Frequency-ebook/dp/B00P0QI2M2)

<comment><USER7> I posted that book awhile ago.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8577237](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8577237)

It didn't really get any attention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "We're trading less using algorithmic trading now than we did some years ago and are doing much more trading in large block sizes to avoid pattern- reading."

Interesting... given that large blocks are what HFTs feed on.

How exactly is a party suppose to drastically increase supply / demand for a stock without impacting price?

<comment><USER10> It's hard to tell much in detail about their reasons from the article. I read it as just a change in tactics in how they move large blocks of stock. They seem to feel that, currently, moving a large amount of money using their previous algorithmic strategies has become too easy for other traders to read (perhaps also algorithmically), and then interfere with in ways that are detrimental to their trades. And they believe that negotiating large outright block trades is a better strategy in the current market, given their current goals. Maybe true, maybe not; it seems like a very fact-specific decision, hard for someone without the data to evaluate just from general principles of markets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Managing that much money must be an enormous challenge since there are so few places where you can put a substantial amount of it.

<comment><USER8> They could be putting substantially more into real estate. They're at 5% allocation, which seems low to me. I suspect that in the USA, most people are at either 0% (renters) or 50%+ (homeowners).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Content free - there is really no information in this article outside of the fact they say Norway's Sovereign fund use "Block Trades" which is really what dark-pools are supposed to be all about. Dark pools and block networks have been around for at least the last 5 years, and introduce their own set of issues (not getting your orders filled, showing Goldman Sachs your order on their promise that they won't don't anything with that information :-)

<comment><USER13> Well, they do point out why you don't want to be a little player on IEX:

 _"Trying to find liquidity without having an impact when you're doing it is an over-arching challenge we will always have,"_

Huge players don't want to have a price impact before they trade - they want the price impact to happen after. I.e., it'll happen to the little guy rather than to them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "But flash trading isn't about front-running" \-- standard HN apologist

<comment><USER15> "I have no idea what front running actually is" \-- standard HN complainer

<comment><USER16> When a large buy order comes in price rises. Front running would be buying before that large order can execute, and selling immediately after it completed and moved market price up.

<comment><USER4> Wrong. Front running has a very specific definition and requires a broker to be acting on behalf of a client.

1\. Broker takes client order.

2\. broker trades his own account first (with knowledge of client order)

3\. Broker executes client order.

If you don't have clients you can't be front running. It is black and white and as simple as that.

<comment><USER17> _Wrong_

It's also Front running and illegal to pay a Broker for prior knowledge in front of their clients trades.

Also, the term may apply to using insider knowledge. _Khan & Lu (2008: 1) define front running as "trading by some parties in advance of large trades by other parties, in anticipation of profiting from the price movement that follows the large trade". They find evidence consistent with front-running through short sales ahead of large stock sales by CEOs on the New York Stock Exchange._ [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_running](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_running)

" _" Front running" is sometimes used informally for a broker's tactics related to trading on proprietary information before its clients have been given the information.

For example, analysts and brokers who buy shares in a company just before the brokerage firm is about to recommend the stock as a strong buy, are practising this type of "front running"._ Brokers have been convicted of securities laws violations in the United States for such behavior. "

<comment><USER15> Calling all insider trading "front running" does nothing but muddy the waters.

<comment><USER17> Not all insider information, just insider information about large pending trades.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


This is Not ok - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jessitron.com/2012/09/this-is-not-ok.html <comment><USER2> It is the weekly females in tech industry time again?

At the risk of derailing the thread, why do so many people want to get more women into programming? Isn't that just as misguided as trying to get more men into nursing? Just because we strive for gender equality doesn't mean every job has to have exactly the same gender ratios.

<comment><USER3> I don't want to get more women into programming. I want to end the endemic and prolific discrimination against women in programming. The lack is a symptom.

I also find it very weird that an entire industry went from being female dominated to male dominated and everyone defends it saying "it's always been this way! Equality isn't about enforcing even ratios!"

Well no, it's not, but when you have these situations, where the number of people who could do something is vastly different to those that stick it out as a career, and those that do talk about systematic intolerance and abuse, there is a problem there.

<comment><USER2> As others have said, it's very hard to discriminate against women since it's is mostly based on problem solving/programming skill. But that is not to say there isn't a general air chauvinism and/or objectification in the tech industry.

I agree that getting more women into tech is a solution, but this always operates under the assumption that women actually want to be in tech.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm kind of disappointed by the comments here. Not just by the fact that people couldn't read the entire article before making judgments but more that I would have thought the people of this website would understand why it's important to bring women into tech.

Women aren't biologically inclined to not like STEM fields (which I sadly see is a popular sentiment). The reason women don't go into these fields is because of the misogynistic culture. The stereotype of a computer whiz is a man. Ask yourself why you never considered becoming a nurse (if you are a man) and you will understand why women reject the idea of working in the tech industry.

<comment><USER5> >The reason women don't go into these fields is because of the misogynistic culture.

[Citation needed]

<comment><USER6> There are definitely studies that show this is why some women leave the field, even after overcoming the hurdles to get into it in the first place.

[http://www.lpfi.org/sites/default/files/tilted_playing_field...](http://www.lpfi.org/sites/default/files/tilted_playing_field_lpfi_9_29_11.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> She isn't upset by the fact that the ladies room was relabeled as a mens room, she was frustrated by the fact that she didn't find as many female peers at the conference. She felt encouraged around other women to discuss technology and wants to encourage other women to become excited about the field.

I have some insight into this. I'm engaged to a mechanical engineer who works in a largely male dominated industry. To this point, I've never heard her discuss another female engineer at her company. We've discussed the issues of women in engineering and how interesting the dynamics are for a woman and I can agree that it would be an enjoyable ideal if there were more women in her field. At the same time, she wants nothing to do with women in her field that are simply there to prove that women can do the same jobs as men. I have to agree with her on this point. Every time I see ads for computer schools encouraging people with no experience to get a degree and flood the market, I shake my head. Why should I want someone with no passion, who simply wants a job, to enter my market and drive down the price of labor?

So, I understand where the author is coming from here. She enjoys the company of her sex and would like to have a larger network of her peers be female. I have no problem with that. I would say, though, to be careful about what you wish for. You want women who are passionate to join the workforce, not just any old gal.

<comment><USER8> "Why should I want someone with no passion, who simply wants a job, to enter my market and drive down the price of labor?"

Because for every 10 people with no passion who simply want a job, you get one who is incredibly passionate but simply wanted a job. One who didn't realize that hey, this is actually pretty cool stuff, and maybe it's more than just a job, it can be a passion and a career.

I am of course making up the numbers. But discarding someone because they don't care _before they've even learned a subject_ is even sillier than assuming that women don't want to be in tech because they're not interested in tech, rather than simply because they never took to looking into it because of all of the stereotypes (many of them true) about the male dominance of the industry.

<comment><USER7> I may not have made it clear enough, but I'm not saying we shouldn't encourage women or non-technical people to pursue technical experience and/or education. I personally prefer to work in a diverse workforce and enjoy sharing my workday with people of different sexes, ethnicities and cultural backgrounds. I'm not sure what stereotypes you're referring to, either, as I personally have worked across a multitude of domains and have not seen any difference in the approach of the professional development world to that of the rest of the market (my last software company was co-founded by a woman in fact).

I'm saying that simply wanting women or any other sociological division of people to be more prevalent for the sake of presence is a mistake. In your example, you say that out of 10 people that are encouraged/trained, you might get one very passionate developer. I know the math is made up, but if you look at this in the other direction, you now have 9 developers that are bad at their job, dislike/don't care about their job or possibly both. This would mean that 90% of the workforce is now comprised of people who are hindering the other 10%. That 90% of the code written is probably poorly executed.

I think that the career of being a developer is attractive enough that anyone interested in pursuing it would see it as a viable option. Segregating encouragement along the line of sex I think does more harm then good though.

<comment><USER8> We already have the more-to-fewer split of terrible programmers to great programmers. They just mostly happen to be men. That's all. Not having a passion for programming is not an exclusively female characteristic; neither is having an undiscovered passion.

I expanded a bit on my underlying point at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4597547> , and there is an excellent reply regarding early-stage discouragement by nancyhua there as well. I have no interest in a sociological division being more prevalent just because. The problem is they're subtly discouraged from joining our field altogether, and, as others have pointed out in the past, that means we're missing out on a full 50% of potential awesome developers (or whatever other subfield you want to talk about).

Or potentially so. We don't know, because there isn't a truly equal sense of this field being a possibility.

<comment><USER7> I just want to say that I think it's great that you're impassioned about this topic. I'm definitely not trying to discourage you from it. My reticence comes more from the fact that this is such a complicated topic for me.

On one hand, I'm all for supporting the goals and opportunities of all individuals equally. When it requires special interest in certain groups though, I sometimes worry that it will create a larger divide. Sexual identity has such a huge impact on us during our developmental stages. The pressures of it don't just stem from adults, but from peers and school as well. I'm of the opinion that rather than singling out individuals by sex, it would be more valuable to expose all of them to it.

This is anecdotal, but I have a personal experience with a program that encouraged more adoption of specific fields by females in my classes. In middle school, a large number of girls were separated from the regular classes to attend special math and science classes. These girls were provided a more in-depth education when it came to mathematics and were given more support in learning the material. It really irked me, especially at that young age. I couldn't understand why these girls were being singled out for certain topics and why I couldn't be involved with them simply because I was a boy. I can't speak to the effectiveness of this program. I do know that a large percentage of these girls ended up in my high school math and science classes which regularly had a nearly 50/50 split, but again, that's not evidence that the program worked.

What it did do, though, was make me realize that I was not an equal. It was probably my first realization that not everyone was treated equally and that there was really no rhyme or reason to why. I saw similar things throughout my years in school, but this one affected me the most. When I hear about the professional female organizations that go to schools and encourage girls specifically to pursue careers in mathematics or engineering, I cringe. I want equality, but I don't know how inequality gets us there.

<comment><USER8> I think the point of those situations is to make sure they're not under the impression they're alone in domains where, if you don't do specific programs, girls often think they are. Essentially, you create a social support net that may not otherwise be there.

In my view, you're technically right. We shouldn't have to emphasize one side over the other. The problem is we're combating an existing, underlying emphasis. If a balance scale is unbalanced towards one side, you don't balance it out by adding weight to both sides. You have to add weight to the one side until you've restored balance.

Now, I think it's fair to question how much we should segregate and isolate with respect to that. What you describe as happening in middle school is probably not the best approach. I think it would probably make more sense to open a whole class, gender-unspecific, but, again to create that social support, perhaps try to group the girls in the class into one of the sections (assuming there are multiple ones). The problem is, in that case, probably a marketing one. Presenting it as an girls only course may increase the mystery and interest, and, thus, enrollment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This doesn't really make sense.

She's complaining that at an event with 97% of attendance by men (by her own statement), they got, say, 92% of the bathroom facilities, and then throws a fit.

Not buying it.

If this is the biggest outrage in your life you should consider yourself fortunate.

<comment> artumi-richard When you realised that "this doesn't make sense", that was the time you should have asked "or is it me..."

As for women in IT, I can see why IT would want women, but I can't see why women would want IT.

<comment><USER10> You can't see why a woman would want to be paid quite handsomely to do work that is mentally challenging, not physically arduous, and -- in many cases -- can have a positive societal effect?

So... why do -you- want to work in IT?

<comment><USER11> Let's compare this to golf, circa 1965. Caving to pressure, a local club opens its memberships to Blacks. One or two tokens with strong business relationships to Whites join, but where are all the other Black businesspeople and professionals?

A liberal White member sighs, "I don't understand why the Black people don't want to relax in our luxurious club, play a round on our excellent course, and eat our sumptuous dining fare. What is the problem?" Meanwhile, the Blacks are thinking, "Who needs to join the club and have all these racist assholes resenting the fact that we're in their club and tiptoeing around us in case the N-word slips out in our presence. How fucking uncomfortable."

p.s. Did I say 1965? What's the deal with Agusta National and Blacks and/or Women?

<comment><USER12> I will protect Augusta's right to have just male members (not true anymore), just as I will protect the rights of every female-only gym. I will further bet that the female-only gyms have larger benefits than Augusta opening up to female members.

It is an unfair comparison between a profession and a club. They do not hold even close to the same place in society.

<comment><USER11> Who said Augusta shouldn't have male-only members? The point is that IT departments shouldn't behave like private clubs. The industry behaves like a private club, but it isn't a private club.

<comment><USER12> Well, I interpreted you p.s. to mean that. A lot of industries in the US (cannot speak for outside the US) need to be more receptive to members of the opposite gender. I am hoping both CompSci and pre-K education both make strides in the coming years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I had a similar experience when I (a gent) took my grown daughter to a NKOTB reunion concert as a nostalgia trip. The audience was at least 95% female, and the arena restrooms were re-purposed accordingly. I asked an usher and he told me it was common practice to adapt to the gender mix of the audience. I observed many groups of women noting this reallocation with loud triumphant braying laughter. I doubt the Strange Loop men had a triumphal reaction to the bathroom allotment.

<comment><USER14> That is not a similar experience _at all_. Even if we ignore that you completely missed the point of the article (she's not complaining about the bathroom situation at all, as seventy trillion other commenters have already pointed out - presumably you didn't read them either?) we still have:

First, you wouldn't have gone to a NKOTB (New Kids on the Block) concert if you weren't going with your daughter. You didn't actively want to be there. The author of the article was going to a programming conference of her own will.

Second, I don't think that NKOTB are important enough that it matters what the gender composition of their audiences are. Programming, on the other hand, is very important, and will only get more important in the future. Such a huge gender imbalance at the most important PL conference will be problematic for women in the future (and for men as well, if you can believe it).

Third, you "doubt" that there was a similar reaction at the PL conference. I presume you weren't actually there, then? I wasn't there either, so I wouldn't even begin to think about making up random suppositions and using them to support my argument.

<comment><USER15> No he is right.

The issue is something like this. Most people have a tough time realizing that 99% of the times their net condition on any day is result of their own doing.

You see the problem manifest here.

       1. Notice non equal participation of women.
       2. Blame men.
       3. Shift the onus of change on men not women.
       4. Wash your hands off the situation, and claim high moral high ground.

Now notice what women did when there was a non equal participation of men. They treat it as it is supposed to be. Which is that men didn't take the initiative to be there and hence laughter.

The first step to change the world is basically start by changing oneself first. Now if you do all this and still get limited by the environment around you, then you can start by blaming the other things.

But even before starting, trying and doing something. You have 100 people to blame you are not likely to see any improvement soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "That day in the Family Restroom I threw a fit. Hurled my water bottle at the wall and screamed, "This is not OK!""

How exactly after this do you expect anyone to take you seriously?

Gender equality isn't about having just as many women programmers, and it certainly isn't well servered by having tantrums over the bathroom arrangements.

<comment><USER17> You have just used the "Tone Argument" which derails the argument. It's a common response (it's in Derailing for Dummies <http://www.derailingfordummies.com/complete.html#angry> ). Please try to stay on topic.

<comment><USER18> You're right, but for the wrong reasons.

There's no such thing as a "tone" argument. Recall your freshman year Greek rhetoric course -- what are the three main elements of argumentation? _Logos_ (logic), _pathos_ (appeal to emotion), and _ethos_ (morality or "greatness" of character).

If you start yelling at someone, chances are you're going to destroy your pathos and ethos. Being persuasive involves more than just logos, it involves convincing your audience that you are on the right side.

This, by the way, is why many technical people are awful at arguing. They don't understand that argumentation is about convincing _people_ , not having a bullet point list that you haughtily defend to the last.

The real reason you're right is that the author was clearly adding a bit of dramatization and flair to the piece, rather than blowing up and insulting their opponent.

<comment><USER17> The "Tone argument" doesn't apply to the person who's being annoyed (they are not making a tone argument), but to someone who 'replies' to them.

Think of "tone argument" like "ad hominem", it's a reply to what someone says, but you don't actually respond or address _what_ they said, instead you address how they said it in a very angry manner ("tone argument"), or based on what sort of person they are ("ad hominem")

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It is actually pretty interesting that so many commenters here short circuited into thinking she was complaining about the bathroom situation.

<comment><USER20> It really comes across that way at first. My first reaction was to close the tab at the "throw my water bottle" statement, but after reading the comments here, I read on and saw the author had more to say than just "someone move my bathroom." It's just poorly written, that's all.

<comment><USER21> Nope, the level of reader comprehension here is too low. She said that there was no line at the family restroom before she said she threw her water bottle. If that isn't enough to clue readers in about the real source of her anguish as opposed to the thing that first tipped her off, there's the whole rest of the article.

<comment><USER22> It's also poor writing. It was a third of the way through the article before she clued us in about what she was actually mad about. It very much read as if she were angry about the restroom situation.

However, this isn't especially relevant to the real point of the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think she isn't complaining about the toilets, she is saying that she didn't realize how few women were in attendance until that point.

</comment><comment><USER24> >That day in the Family Restroom I threw a fit. Hurled my water bottle at the wall and screamed, "This is not OK!"

Oh please, calm down. Closed the tab.

<comment><USER25> Then you missed the point of the article - she was upset when she realised that they had to convert toilets as there were so few women. Her upset was about the lack of women at the event, not at the toilet arrangements.

It could have been more clearly explained, and closer to the start of the article, but if you read the rest of the article you would have seen this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Meta-question for both men and women. If you were a woman considering a career in IT and you were to read the comments on a thread like this, would you be more likely to join, less likely, or unaffected by reading the thread?

<comment><USER21> Certainly less likely to join (unless it made me want to get in and change things, which I hope is what women reading this will do). What that gets me is the criticism of her writing, which seems harsher and less constructive than the average on HN. The thing is that it isn't completely false, and the people who post it think we won't notice they're being mean, because there's some truth to what they're saying. But it's only bad writing if you raise the bar of what makes good writing much higher than it normally is for a blog post on HN.

<comment><USER11> John Gruber calls this "Grading on a curve." For example, if we make a big fuss over her throwing a water bottle in private but celebrate Steve Jobs for throwing temper tantrums over software quality, we're grading on a curve.

(Not that anybody is doing that, it's just an example).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> At first I thought she got angry about an relabeling of the women's room, which would be ridiculous, but I think what she means is that it is not OK that there are only so few women. Could be worded clearer...

</comment><comment><USER27> It is sort of a followup to the previous post: [http://blog.jessitron.com/2012/09/confessions-of-woman-in- te...](http://blog.jessitron.com/2012/09/confessions-of-woman-in-tech.html)

</comment><comment><USER28> At first I thought she was complaining about the fact they took away the girl's bathroom... But I think the article evolved into a critic of the lack of women in the field in general - saying it's Not OK that so few women are in the industry...

She probably could have been more clear of what she was not okay with. But a decline in women in the tech field is a deep and complicated topic, and the solutions weren't probed in this article. This article was more of how things are today - and we all already know that there's an extremely small percentage of women in the field. What would have been more provoking of an article would have been discussions of the root causes and reasons of why there are so few women in the industry, and why their career paths tend to differ than their male counterparts. Contributions to this topic by someone like her would be enlightening for sure.

</comment><comment><USER29> I definitely agree with your view that there aren't enough women in the field, but starting an article, where most of your readers are going to be men, by saying you threw a temper tantrum because a venue swapped the bathrooms to benefit men is inviting readers to disagree with you before you even started making your point.

I read the first part and immediately thought how immature you were, then I read more, and being more open-minded I read over your point, swallowed my previous thought and agree. Not everyone will do that.

I agree we need more women representation, I disagree with the manner the article was written.

</comment><comment><USER29> I definitely agree with your view that there aren't enough women in the field, but starting an article, where most of your readers are going to be men, by saying you threw a temper tantrum because a venue swapped the bathrooms to benefit men is inviting readers to disagree with you before you even started making your point.

I read the first part and immediately thought how immature you were, then I read more, and being more open-minded I read over your point, swallowed my previous thought and agreed. Not everyone will do that.

I agree we need more women representation, I disagree with the manner the article was written.

<comment><USER17> Even without the "temper tantrum" sentances, people would find something else to disagree with.

These debates are often not logical or rational.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Empathy, noun: the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

I think this is our[1] problem. Or a generalization of it: the ability to share another's viewpoint. To step into their perspective and say "oh. I see." And to accept that maybe, just maybe, their viewpoint is valid. This isn't always true, by the way. But it is sometimes true, even often true. And even if it is valid, you may not agree with it.

But here's the thing. There's this idea that maybe women aren't in tech because they aren't interested. That's cool. I'm not interested in nursing, right?

Well it turns out, I've never done nursing. I haven't even looked into it. I haven't talked to anyone about it. Because I just assumed hey, I'm a guy, nurses aren't guys. Not even worth thinking about. That's the mindset. It's not that you know you're not interested, it's that you don't even give it a second thought! [2]

The funny thing is, people here have generally found their passion—be it startups or tech. And when you have your passion and it fell into your lap, it's easy to say "well these people who aren't interested shouldn't be doing this anyway, because they're not passionate". Even if they had no chance to develop that passion? Even if there was no exposure? Maybe we're being a tad too dismissive here, no? Perhaps we should give people a chance to explore a subject before assuming they'll never be passionate about it. Just a though.

What about those who did reach that passion? Those who entered the tech world, found a minefield of sexism (of which that's-what-she-said jokes are just the very very tip of the iceberg, but more on that in a second), and said "screw it, I'm out of here".[3] Usually those stories lead to another set of excuses, because the first set of excuses just weren't effective enough to deal with the full scope of the people being shut out of technology, willingly or not.

Let's talk about that's-what-she-said jokes. There are men who say "psh, seriously? Come on, it's just a joke! Why would you have a problem with that?" And there are women who say "well, I can take them. Not only that, I dish them out! Why would you have a problem with that?" Why would you have a problem with that? The trouble with that question is it's so often rhetorical. Not only do you not _reaaally_ want to hear the answer to it, but you don't stop to think about the answer before asking. That kind of question _should_ lead to more understanding.

So I propose, without further ado, that instead of trying to understand why something (anything!) is a problem from _your_ point of view, you consider trying to understand why it's a problem from the _other person's_ point of view, and if, with a little effort, you still can't figure it out, then you ask and look for a real answer. And read the answer. And try to understand then. Because I see far more effort devoted in most of these threads to defending one's own point of view than to understanding the other person's. And these questions, the question of women in tech, the question of social awkwardness, the question of sexism in tech, they are not math problems. There is not necessarily a single correct answer. One person being right doesn't mean the other person is wrong. And right vs wrong is not always immediately obvious.

[1] - when I say our, I mean the tech industry.

[2] - I can't speak to whether or not this is considered a problem in the nursing industry. It's irrelevant to the point at hand.

[3] - <http://therealkatie.net/blog/2012/mar/21/lighten-up/>

<comment><USER30> It depends on whether you believe women are trying to enter the tech field and are being scared away, or whether they are not interested in the first place.

I would suggest it is mainly the latter, look at any IT/CS type course at a college and you will see mainly men and these are people who haven't even entered the field yet to get a chance to be scared off.

The point regards passion is an interesting one, I imagine that there are a fair number of people here who got an interest in tech at an early age long before they had to worry about starting a career.

The question for these people would be, if you were at that age and were instead a born a woman but had the same interests would there have likely been anything that would hold them back? If so what would it most likely have been?

<comment><USER31> We bring up nursing: well, doctors used to be 100% men. Maybe doctors or biologists used to say, "Women are not interested in medicine or biology." Would any person say that now? Poets probably used to say, "Women aren't interested in writing at all." When women became poets, writers probably used to say, "Women aren't interested in serious literature." Artists probably used to say, "Women aren't interested in art- they prefer to pose as our nude models." Would anyone claim women aren't interested in these fields now? I've never taken a woman's studies class or anything but I imagine many of these arguments have occurred in the past regarding industries that used to be male dominated but aren't anymore.

I think we are generally wrong when we try to presume what a group of people would be interested in. Like who knew Japanese people would get so good at baseball? Whoever said, "Japanese people aren't interested in baseball in the first place bc they like samurai swords, not projectiles," would've been totally wrong, as wrong as whoever said, "Women aren't interested in being doctors. They get hysterical and like to sit quietly in drawing rooms," or as wrong as people who say, "Women don't like math or science or computers. They prefer art and writing and medicine and biology." Maybe one day people will be saying, "Women don't like intergalactic war travel, they prefer math and science and computers and tesseracts."

I don't feel any desire to downvote you. Here's my take as a woman who studied math at MIT and was always one of few if not the only woman in her classes/ nerd camps/ jobs throughout my entire life:

If you're the type of person who always knew what you were passionate about, you should realize this focus and passion is not common. There are some people who can explode out of some small town where everyone's main interest is football and still become a tech mogul. Most people are not like this- people do what their peers do and what they perceive as normal for whatever group they identify with. I think this might actually be especially true for children. Very few children see a scientist doing science or see something cool like a machine and then say, "Mom and Dad, I want to learn to do/make this thing," or then go online and research it. Most of the time, someone is showing the kid what they think this kid should learn or the kid is looking at stuff other people are giving to them, including their peers. Based on this, many girls who aren't deliberately introduced to tech/science as a possible interest don't realize they are interested in tech.

Most kids are friends with kids of the same gender. In middle school, when I went into a classroom to learn QBASIC as the only girl, it was less fun in every way except 1 than being in a classroom filled with girls who were my friends. I didn't make any friends in any of my middle/high school programming classes and generally kept quiet because boys made me shy, and vice versa- I also made them shy when I spoke to them. They weren't doing it on purpose- I think it's just human nature for us all to behave the way we did.

If I were less interested in programming and more motivated to have a fun classroom experience or to fit in (being a girl with my interests made me weird, which bothered me slightly but I was also interested in art so that kind of evened it out. I can imagine it bothering other people much more than it bothered me, sufficient to make them avoid this feeling of strangeness by avoiding atypical (for their peer group) activities), I easily could've not gone to those CS classes or to any of my nerd camps. When I went to a Theoretical CS nerd camp called Andrew's Leap at CMU, out of the other 30 kids, only 3 others were girls. We 4 girls were all Chinese and we became great friends. We also befriended the boys but it wasn't as easy because both boys and girls interested in Theoretical CS don't tend to have PhD's in male- female interaction or even human-human interaction.

Most kids do whatever their friends do. Most people do whatever they perceive people of their type to do. I think having a woman scientist in a popular movie does a lot more for planting that possibility in the popular imagination than many types of affirmative action programs. If anyone is saying, "Black people don't like hockey bc they prefer basketball," I think it just takes a great movie about a famous black hockey player to get more black kids to start saying, "I want to play hockey."

If I have a thesis, it's this:

1) Most people do whatever they perceive the group they self-identify with as doing. If you're a person who self identifies as an intelligent male, maybe you're more likely to think, "I should become a businessman," than, "I should become a nurse." In contrast, a person who self identifies as an intelligent female might be more likely to think, "I should become a doctor," instead of "I should become a programmer." If you're a person who self identifies as an athletic, white male, you might be more likely to think, "I should play basketball," than "I should play pingpong." People don't tend to want to be "weird" because of complex cognitive stuff to do with identity.

2) Most kids do whatever their friends do, and most kids are friends with people their own gender, and most people prefer being with their friends than not. So if you're a girl walking into a classroom full of nerdy, Starcraft- playing boys or a man walking into a yoga studio full of giggling females, you might think, "I should find another room where I fit in better," instead of discovering whether you have an interest in this strange field. Hence the chicken and egg thing. It's less fun for kids to be "weird" because being weird is lonely.

<comment><USER15> You have some very interesting points.

My mom always says(Who had a working career of almost 30 years), that working women live in a world of their own. Her sisters never went to work. She always found that amazing, that a few individuals can spend their whole life doing nothing. Yet now when you talk to my aunts they live in their own world where they have every reason in the world why not working is right. When they both talk about it, men and their influences rarely pop up. Its always discussions about work life balance, stress, affects on kids and own physical and biological selves.

In my opinion the bigger struggle in empowering women will not be to counsel men, but women themselves. Most women who don't go to work do for their own reasons, and not because men don't want them to work. If you can convince women to come out of their comfort zones, take risks, try and even taste failure at times. Let me tell you women will be far well off.

But there are always going to jobs which are going to very demanding for women. There are also security issues with respect to working and traveling late nights, pushing very tough long work hour schedules. Most of those clots will dissolve slowly with time.

Remember in ancient times, women used to work in fields with men all the time and that generally used to do a lot of work more physically demanding than what most women have today. If it worked fine then, it can now. But the transformation will be slow.

<comment><USER31> You're right that fear of failure prevents many people from reaching anywhere near their full potential.

The working mom thing is a separate issue from representation of women in various industries such as tech. For me, I'm hoping to band together with friends so we can all watch each others' kids and cooperate more and have the whole childrearing thing be more "village"-centered and less of an individual burden.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> First, I didn't read it as she was mad about the bathrooms other than what that implied about the ratio of attendance between men and women[1].

I'm not real fond of the ratio, mainly because lack of female programmers means we get a lack of female managers with programming experience. Women who came up through the ranks and get the gig. I have encountered too many men and women who have no clue how to manage technical projects.

I should point out that at least female programmers are not subjected to the crap that happens to male ECE (early childhood education) instructors. Many places will say to an applicant's face that, because of potential lawsuits, they will not hire males.

[1] There are actually a lot of facilities that have sliding partitions that allow the number of stalls to be changed between events. I cannot find it right now, but there is a video explaining research done into average time using the stalls - male vs female and percentage of people doing #1 vs #2.

</comment><comment><USER32> Everyone who rushed in here to say "calm down, dear" in a patronisingly male tone of voice, YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.

Stop being sexist.

<comment><USER33> How does one type in a patronizingly male tone of voice? I hope you don't mean "calm down, dear" is characteristically male.

<comment><USER32> Yes, I absolutely do. The concept of women as "emotional" AKA "hysterical" is an old, untrue, patronizing and dismissive stereotype, with a long history of being used to oppress women (sometimes in the most horrific of ways). "Calm down dear" and its close paraphrases are a way of asserting male privilege to ignore a woman's reasoned argument, because she got angry.

<comment><USER33> "calm down dear" has been said frequently to men, women, and children by both men and women. Also, there is nothing uniquely male about using that phrase in a patronizing tone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I think she forgot Ada Byron when she said there were no important women in computers this millenium.

EDIT: No "keynoters, the language designers, the authors of seminal texts" in this millenium. And there was Grace Hopper too.

Double edit: Admittedly, anything in 1xxx is technically the "last millenium". My mistake.

<comment><USER35> Err. Both of them lived and died in the last millennium.

<comment><USER34> Fair point. I was thinking the last 1000 years as opposed to 1000, 2000, etc. In that state the same could be said about the last century or even the last decade really.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> In short, it comes down to that she wants more women in the industry. Maybe she seemed a bit lonely among so many men, or maybe something else—I don't know and she didn't tell.

All right. Now what?

</comment><comment><USER37> People always complain that there aren't enough women in tech fields, yet no one ever complains about there not being enough men in, say, fashion. I've always found this odd.

<comment><USER38> How many fashion publications and forums do you read a day?

<comment><USER37> Two. The consensus among fashion industry veterans seems to be that if a guy wants to work in the fashion industry, he must be gay or at least bisexual.

<comment><USER39> Or affect being gay. I understand that's quite commonplace.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> It's not ok that only 3% of people present liked peanut butter! I'm going to make it my mission to get more people that like peanut butter into conferences.

</comment><comment><USER41> If she would have just used the "new" men's room nobody would have cared and she wouldn't have had to write this blog post.

People do this all the time if one room is full.

<comment><USER25> I'm guessing you didn't read the article? It wasn't about the queue (or lack of) it was about the lack of women at these events.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> > That day in the Family Restroom I threw a fit. Hurled my water bottle at the > wall and screamed, "This is not OK!"

What? I can understand being frustrated but that reaction doesn't seem constructive at all.

<comment><USER43> It was constructive because she then to do something constructive about it.

Compare and contrast to the story about John Orwant throwing his mug at a wall at a Perl conference - and single handedly inspiring the start of the Perl 6 project.

But then that's ok. He's a guy.

<comment><USER42> > _But then that's ok. He's a guy._

Yeah that was _obviously_ the implication. A guy tossing a fit in the bathroom would be just as randomly nonconstructive.</comment></comment></comment>


Xerox Alto Source Code - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerhistory.org/_static/atchm/xerox-alto-source-code/

<comment><USER2> I've used and programmed an Alto, but only with the Mesa/Bravo environment, not the Smalltalk environment. For some political reason, the Smalltalk environment wasn't made available to Stanford.

The computer itself was a 16-bit word addressed microcoded minicomputer with the microcode in ROM, driving a Signetics ALU. (Most minicomputers of the era were 16-bit word addressed machines.) The portrait-oriented page sized display was pure Xerox PARC; they even made the CRT. There was a mouse, of course, and the original Ethernet interface.

Mesa is a relatively straightforward language. The most unusual feature is that the input to and output from each function call is a tuple of arguments. This input/output symmetry was useful, and has seldom been seen in other languages.

The Bravo text editor was the first WYSIWYG editor with fonts. Amusingly, this was also the programmer's editor. So Mesa programs were written with proportional spacing and boldface where desired. The compiler didn't see any of the formatting. The Bravo file representation was plain text, followed by a control-Z as an EOF, followed by the formatting information. The compiler just stopped at the control-Z.

<comment><USER3> How has Mesa as systems programming language? Did you also used Cedar?

From my own experience with Oberon derived systems, and all the Xerox PARC documentation that I have from Mesa/Cedar, I became convinced that we really lost with UNIX model becoming widespread into the industry instead of what Xerox was researching.

<comment><USER2> I only wrote one graphics application in Mesa, as a student at Stanford. I never used Cedar or SafeMesa or any of the Alto successors, although I visited PARC a few times and saw them used.

Xerox had to invent Mesa because they were previously stuck writing BCPL, a predecessor to C sometimes known as the British Cruddy Programming Language.

Xerox's world model was closed systems with a few beautiful applications written by experts. End users were not to be allowed access to the guts of the software. The realization of this was the Xerox Star, which was a nice, and very expensive, world processor with a few additional applications. (Visualize a system that runs Microsoft Office and nothing else.) The idea that ordinary people would write application programs was completely alien to Xerox. Their market was secretaries.

<comment><USER4> _Visualize a system that runs Microsoft Office and nothing else_

So 95% of corportate desktops? (I guess if you include Outlook and IE in a wider definition of "Office")

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I had access to either an Alto or a Dorado during my co-op terms at Environment Canada (the weather service) back in the late 80s. I had a keen interest in OO at the time, but I can't remember this machine having a Smalltalk. Whenever I was able to access it, I spent time amusing myself hacking LOOPS (pre-cursor to CLOS - OO Lisp).

I also had access to a Mac, had an HP-9000 unix workstation (running X Windows) sitting on/under my desk, and had some exposure to Smalltalk-80 at the time. What blew me away was how mature and strange the Alto was; it was so obviously advanced, but was so difficult to understand. At that time, it was an 'old' machine, but somehow seemed like it was sent from the future.

<comment><USER3> > At that time, it was an 'old' machine, but somehow seemed like it was sent > from the future.

This is why when I combine my own experience with Smalltalk and Oberon, coupled with all the Xerox PARC documentation that I can get my hands on, I feel sad that the industry didn't adopt any of the Xerox PARC paradigms.

So here we are, jumping of joy for something like Swift Playground or Bret Victor's demos, when everyone could have had something like that for years now.

<comment><USER4> This was how I felt about NeXT computers, even after they were obsolete in pure hardware terms they were still YEARS ahead in software.

<comment><USER3> My first close contact with Objective-C was in 1998, as I had to port an particle visualization framework from NeXT to Windows 95/C++, as my final project.

The teacher had a dead Cube on his office and NeXT was considered dead by the department.

I tried long to replicate some of the experience with WindowMaker/AfterStep and GNUStep but it never felt like what I could see from the NeXT manuals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love the fact the Computer History Museum is keeping this source alive. But without an Alto Emulator, it's almost worthless. Kinda sad how much technology is dead simply because the hardware is gone to run it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not an emulator but: [http://toastytech.com/guis/salto.html](http://toastytech.com/guis/salto.html)

Honestly, the release of this might stir somebody to get one going. It would be a weird beast to emulate though.

<comment><USER7> Probably not as much as a Setun? This is the only ternary computer emulator I could find: [http://tunguska.sourceforge.net/](http://tunguska.sourceforge.net/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Direct link: [http://xeroxalto.computerhistory.org/index.html](http://xeroxalto.computerhistory.org/index.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Anybody interested in emulating this system might be interested in this [http://bitsavers.informatik.uni- stuttgart.de/pdf/xerox/alto/...](http://bitsavers.informatik.uni- stuttgart.de/pdf/xerox/alto/Alto_Hardware_Manual_Aug76.pdf)</comment>


Disrupting the roaming mobile data market - <AUTHOR> http://blog.deconcept.com/2012/01/30/disrupting-the-roaming-mobile-data-market/

<comment><AUTHOR> Dreamhost is having a "major network outage" right now. If you can't get to it, try again later.</comment>


The story of Australia's wild camel - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180410-the-strange-story-of-australias-wild-camel <comment><USER2> NB: I live in Darwin, Northern Australia, and camels are a way of life in these parts and are accepted as quite normal, despite being an introduced species.

I've heard it said that there are actually _more_ camels in the Australian outback than there are in the Arabian desert, and in fact I recall that we had to send a bunch of camels back to the Middle East some time ago to make up for a shortage they were facing there.

NB: Our main railway system here is called "The Ghan" after the nickname given to the Afghan camel herders of old.

<comment><USER3> It make sense, the outback is absolutely vast and not densely populated, and while SA is big, it's a speck by comparison. The camels must be pretty happy there, for whatever values ofmhappy apply to um, camels.

<comment><USER4> To prevent other Australians getting confused, I don't think "SA" here means "South Australia" (the state just under NT). Probably means "Saudi Arabia".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> These animals are a menace when you are driving at speed down the highway. Cows, and kangaroos too. They are tall, so if you hit one at speed the 500kg carcass comes through the windscreen and wipe you out.

<comment><USER6> Same thing with Moose up here in Sweden. One just has to be careful while driving unfortunately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The book _Tracks_ by Robyn Davidson[1] documents her journey across the Australian desert using camels. There is also a movie adaptation [2].

I have watched the movie and found it very enjoyable.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robyn_Davidson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robyn_Davidson)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracks_(2013_film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracks_\(2013_film\))

</comment><comment> King-Aaron I grew up in the northern end of Western Australia, and honestly I always thought it was stranger seeing wild donkeys walking around in the middle of nowhere than camels.

</comment><comment><USER8> Brings back the memory of this story form a few months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15167479](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15167479)

</comment><comment><USER9> > the animals themselves may come across as gentle, lackadaisical beasts

er, no?

<comment><USER10> the ones I've encountered have been.

They're damned docile and friendly beasts... if not terribly pretty or fragrant.

<comment><USER11> > not terribly pretty ..

People have tried to fix that...

Camels injected with Botox for Beauty Pageant.

[https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2018/01/24/580228837...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2018/01/24/580228837/a-dozen-camels-disqualified-from-saudi-beauty- pageant-over-botox-injections)</comment></comment></comment>


Zuckerberg has agreed to testify before Congress on the data breach scandal - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/19/17138784/zuckerberg-facebook-testify-congress-cambridge-analytica <comment><USER2> That was fast. Despite all his somewhat shady practices, at least he's willing to be held accountable. It's too bad we probably won't see the president own up to half the problems he's created.

<comment><USER3> > at least he's willing to be held accountable

Not really. He refused to testify before UK Parliament. I guess he didn't feel that he has any real choice in the case of his own country of origin.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: When did you lose control of your inbox? - <AUTHOR> Was it a certain year, a certain age, a certain job, a change in life situation? <comment><USER2> I didn't.

Or rather I took back control. I have now 2 email addresses - one for humans, one for the rest.

And I systematically unsubscribe from every email I don't want to receive (gosh I miss Europe for that), I delete everything that I have no reason to keep, and I archive anything that needs to be kept.

It demands a lot of effort at the beginning. But now my inbox is useful again.

<comment><USER3> Is there an automated way of unsubscribing?

<comment><USER4> [https://unroll.me/](https://unroll.me/)

<comment><USER2> Unroll.me is owned by Rakuten, and they clearly state that they extract stats and trends from your transactional and commercial emails.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Year 2000. Ended in a support role (think SRE 20 years ago).

Whe had a shared email account for the whole support group.

We received about 100-150 emails daily from people and automates processes...

... And nobody was allowed to archive or move mails to folders.

Almost 20 years later I simply don't trust email for important stuff. If I have to email something important I want to talk with the person, too.

</comment><comment><USER6> When they wrestled that mail-server from under my desk in my apartment.

(No they didn't; it's an imaginary future doomsday scenario).

</comment><comment><USER7> When I stopped using a combined inbox for life and work.

</comment><comment><USER8> When subscribed on different mailing lists...</comment>


Infosec ethics in zero days, exploits and attribution - <AUTHOR> https://anvilventures.com/blog/zerodays_exploits_attribution.html <comment><USER2> I was working for a tech support/student financial aid support center for a couple months and was fired for finding and using an exploit.

It was getting close to Thanksgiving and all the employees had to do state mandated online ethics training (this was a Connecticut state job).

The online ethics training was honestly bullshit, it was poorly designed and even more poorly implemented. Some slides wouldn't load fully and others would be buggy. I had to restart it about 3 times.

In my frustration I looked into the source code for shortcuts and found a javascript file which included a function called SetScore(min,max,val).

After opening Chrome dev console and trying the function, I exited the training and refreshed to see a score of 100!

I immediately emailed my managers, and the admin of the site where the training was being hosted. 2 weeks later I got a call that I was terminated.</comment>


Codemasters hack sees customer details leaked - <AUTHOR> http://www.thinq.co.uk/2011/6/10/codemasters-sees-customer-details-leaked/

<comment><USER2> Fortunately this isn't as bad as the PSN fiasco. Its still not good to have your personal information leaked like that. That could lead to further security breaches for the people who's data was stolen.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just received their e-mail and my first reaction was that it was spam, but on further reading I was convinced it's genuine. At least they're transparent about what happened.</comment>


Visualizing wifi signal strength with a lightstick and long exposure photography - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/20412632

<comment><USER2> Previous submission with several comments: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2270878>

Also here, but no comments: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2694292>

Not the same story, but related: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1286510></comment>


2600 Magazine to start selling new issues in PDF - <AUTHOR> https://www.2600.com/content/message-our-readers <comment><USER2> Nice, I'll be purchasing the pdfs. The only time I see physical copies is if I time going to Barnes and Noble right, and that almost never happens since those trips happen once in a blue moon anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did a lifetime subscription in the mid-late 90s. Still getting paper copies now.

This is a good deal: [https://store.2600.com/collections/pdf- downloads/products/th...](https://store.2600.com/collections/pdf- downloads/products/the-hacker-digest-double-lifetime-pdf)

The digests they're putting out are a remarkable effort, getting all the old issues out in a decent digital format.</comment></comment>


Marc Andreessen denies existence of middle class - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2012/12/marc-andreessen-and-the-middle-class.html <comment><USER2> Whenever I've discussed class with my friends, it's always the case that the people who were born upper-middle class, and have stayed there, are completely oblivious to notions of class. They don't see the class society, and they often don't even know which class they belong to themselves.

Whereas the friends that are working class or lower-middle class, or have made a class journey, they know perfectly well which class they belong to, and they acknowledge the class society. Likewise, members of the upper class are also aware of the class society and their place in it.

It's just the upper-middle that are clueless, because the values that are characteristic for them, the optimism and the trust, is what causes them to be blind to it. And since Marc Andreesen belongs to that class, he might suffer from the same blindness. (I skimmed the original article, and it was very light on context as to why he said that...)

(As a sidenote, I'm talking about social class from a European perspective, which is different from the US perspective in that here, your values and network are more important factors for your class than your income bracket.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Although I think the headline "gotcha" statement is pretty ridiculous, his point about the 50s is not. For a combination of reasons, it was possible at that time to get a job straight out of high school at a place like Ford and make a very comfortable living. The circumstances that enabled this were

1) High domestic consumer demand for goods as a result of the baby boom and following the low-demand period of the Depression and the constrained-supply period of the war.

2) Negligible competition from imports, in part because most of the likely suspects were still a long way from recovering from the war.

3) A tight labor market resulting from the high level of growth. Growth -- particularly population growth -- as a driver of wages was noted way back in the 18th century by Adam Smith.

None of these are true in the United States today.

<comment><USER4> Another perspective on this is that it's all relative. It's hard to compare wages across different times, but a lot of things that were considered part of a "very comfortable living" are still pretty easy to obtain: kitchen appliances, cars, televisions, frozen vegetables, a family meal out.

The reason the 50s in the US have such an association is that they were a lot better than the 30s & 40s, everyone's frame of reference. Also, cars enabled suburbs, supermarkets and other efficiencies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well, everyone knows Marc Andreessen has extreme Randist views. I'd say it borders on a Machiavellian worldview, especially considering he's apart of the class which has the most influence, so it's not an evil view, but rather a pragmatic view that would benefit him.

Unfortunately for him, the idea that the middle class doesn't exist is incorrect. I know because according to some sources, almost half of the world now fits in this class. Source: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_class#Recent_growth_of_t...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_class#Recent_growth_of_the_global_middle_class)

When you also factor in that more and more young people are viewing excess spending and wealth after meeting ones needs as excessive and look down upon it, then you could also point to a future where we actually shift from this purely capitalist view to a more social capital view point.

Regardless of what you think, it's all speculation.

<comment><USER6> Not that Marc Andreessen is necessarily /right/, but the argument that the middle class "definitely exists" is, like any statement in sociology, rather difficult to prove.

In fact, "middle class" means different things in different places. In Britain, "middle class" generally refers to doctors, lawyers, bankers, senior government officials and many entrepreneurs. The higher rank "upper class" is historically reserved for genuine aristocrats - if you're not a Lord, Viscount, Baronet etc. then you're not upper class, no matter how wealthy you are. Richard Branson is "middle class" by this definition. Essentially, British middle-classness is about values rather than economic status; even a poor person can be middle class if they listen to Radio 4. (I simplify, but not by much).

Marxists (again, simplifying) generally describe the "middle class" as being a fairly narrow band of people who benefit from capitalism by virtue of occupying privileged positions - bankers, CEOs and so on - without actually being capitalists (owners of capital) themselves. In Marxist analysis, this middle class is effectively bribed to support capitalism by being rewarded with power over their fellow workers, but this power is always exercised on behalf of the capitalists. Weirdly, this idea of a narrow middle class of functionaries acting in close concert with [venture] capitalists is pretty close to the Andreessen world view as described in the OP!

If we accept the mainstream American definition of middle class as being about income levels, then Andreessen can still be correct if we read him as saying that the middle class does not /inevitably/ exist, or is not /inevitably/ as large as it is now. Falling median income in the US could, if continued, result in the eventual shrinkage of the middle class, or the redefinition of 'middle class' to include poorer people.

<comment><USER7> "even a poor person can be middle class if they listen to Radio 4."

If I understand the British system correctly, a poor person can even be upper class if he happens to be a Viscount whose family has fallen on hard times. Is that right?

<comment><USER8> Yes. A substantial fraction of the upper classes are quite poor, for many reasons, not least the rising costs of maintaining a family home. Some even turn to TV to help defray the costs, such as Francis Fulford in the series 'The F __*ing Fulfords' (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fucking_Fulfords>). You can probably find clips on Youtube.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think phrasing this in terms of "middle class" is off. It sounds like he's got the seed of something, but it isn't fully thought out.

It's true that the world of the 50s-80s is done. It's true that there are fewer jobs where employees above a minimum standard of competence are interchangeable. Factory workers with decent aptitude that arrives on time & doesn't steal does not vary much from another one. I think these kinds of jobs is what he is defining as middle class.

But, the more common definition of middle class is bigger than ever. Most engineers would generally be considered some flavour of middle class by most people.

BTW, I recently heard an interesting argument that suggests it's too late to compete based on cheaper less regulated labour markets at this point, even for low wage countries. Unskilled labour is decreasing as a percentage of total manufacturing costs and is unlikely to draw in manufacturers.

</comment><comment><USER9> Lowering the minimum wage is often suggested by people who are not competing for jobs on minimum wage in order to support themselves.

Do they really believe wages will go up if companies can pay people less? Absurd.

<comment><USER10> I believe that the argument supporting lowering or eliminating minimum wages is that doing so will increase employment, not wages.

<comment><USER9> So there's lots of people who can barely get by if at all?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wouldn't lowering the minimum wage require raising taxes to pay for social services? The minimum wage is not a living wage in many parts of the US.

<comment><USER12> So what if it does?</comment></comment>


WebScaleSQL: A collaboration to build upon the MySQL upstream - <AUTHOR> https://code.facebook.com/posts/1474977139392436/webscalesql-a-collaboration-to-build-upon-the-mysql-upstream/ <comment><USER2> From Twitter:

[https://twitter.com/TwitterOSS/status/449202984786739200](https://twitter.com/TwitterOSS/status/449202984786739200) [https://github.com/twitter/mysql/wiki/WebScaleSQL-and- Twitte...](https://github.com/twitter/mysql/wiki/WebScaleSQL-and-Twitter- MySQL)

</comment><comment><USER3> Doesn't Percona's MySQL "fork" already include most of the Twitter, Google and Facebook patches?

<comment><USER4> They've included only one of the Twitter patches that I know of -- Jeremy Cole's NUMA pre-allocation and interleaving work. Percona contributes a lot of great stuff to the MySQL community, but their focus has always been supporting their paying customers.

</comment></comment><comment> josh-wrale I wonder how Google's broad adoption of MariaDB figures into this news.

</comment><comment><USER5> Isn't the mysql test suite no longer open source/available ?I thought oracle decided to hide them ?

<comment><USER6> The test suite is still there. I have had questions about the number of new tests that are not getting published -- [http://mysqlha.blogspot.com/2013/11/where-are- tests.html](http://mysqlha.blogspot.com/2013/11/where-are-tests.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if it is because of the new pending comments system that 15 comments in, no one has said, "why don't they just use PostgreSQL?" :-). Not that I am MySQL fanatic but I think it gets more hate on HN than it deserves. It has its quirks but is a good lightweight DB.

Funny enough I think all the hate for MySQL provides good documentation of what to watch out for.

</comment><comment><USER8> MariaDB, webscale, Percona... it's really annoying all those forks, why can't they choose one solution to work on together.

<comment><USER9> WebScale is supposed to be a branch, not a fork but since you asked:

Percona built a business on 'their' version and operate on the RedHat business model. As such they need a blessed copy for their business model to function.

MariaDB is basically a bid to take control of MySQL back by one of the original MySQL developers.

Etc.

Tbh, the main problem is Oracle has been a terrible steward of MySQL which has led to this mess.

<comment><USER3> Percona is no more a fork than Webscale is, it's supposed to be a drop-in replacement for Oracle MySQL and it tracks releases pretty closely.

MariaDB was supposed to be a drop-in replacement, but they always had much grander designs than Percona or Webscale do, so they found it was no longer in their interests to track upstream so closely. So after 5.5, MariaDB was going to jump straight to version 10.0. 5.5 is still the last stable release of MariaDB, though, even though Oracle MySQL hit 5.6 over a year ago.

I think "terrible steward" is way off base. 5.5 and 5.6 have both been good releases with some pretty significant improvements for real users, and there's even more stuff coming in 5.7. My general impression is that MariaDB doesn't have the resources to keep up with what Oracle is doing technically, and I'm betting that technical merits will win out.

<comment><USER10> [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/12/google_mariadb_mysql...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/12/google_mariadb_mysql_migration/)

Also, I read somewhere that Google is contributing engineers to work on Maria. Although how many and for how long (compared to the GOOG's internal databases) remains to be seen.

<comment><USER3> Google is contributing code to WebscaleDB too, I don't know that their support of MariaDB means anything in this context. If you want MySQL+Google enhancements, WebscaleDB seems to give you that, plus the efforts of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and (since Webscale is not a fork) Oracle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> But is it web scale?!

<comment><USER12> it's only web scale if you join tables directly in the PHP code!

<comment><USER13> You must be talking about RethinkDB then, that's their selling point!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's interesting that the development is not really designed for public contributions; only contributions originating in the "webscale" companies.

<comment><USER15> There is nothing that precludes public contributions to the project. The important part is that the change be useful to 'webscale' type applications.

Prior to this announcement, the only people involved have been these companies to get it bootstrapped, so the work so far looks a bit slanted to these companies.

Taken from the FAQ:

[http://webscalesql.org/faq.html](http://webscalesql.org/faq.html)

"We'll be doing everything in the open, so everyone in the MySQL community will be able to take what they want from what we do and contribute however they like."

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is the project committed to being 100% compatible with oracle mysql?

</comment><comment><USER16> /dev/null</comment>