I mean pls also attracts a TON of rad trad Catholics. It turns out being unable to follow social cues makes you more amenable to following niche fields as well as a bit esoteric in your philosophers and lifestyle. I count myself as one of these as well lol.
That being said, this is also problematic. Because if the field is dominated by queer people as you point out, then shouldn't you try to balance it out and add straight cis people? I mean, you will correctly point out that the average person wouldn't fit in.
> the Curtis Yarvin / dark enlightenment nexus is big enough and really weird, but also not a topic for HN (not because it's political but because it's stupidly gross and dark).
It has high overlap with the rad trad Catholic wing, believe me. I am a fairly traditional Catholic. I had heard of Yarvin via the Haskell world, and was floored when a parishioner at my parish brought him up. Such a strange crossing of worlds.
I imagine by LGBTQ colleagues must have the same feelings at whatever it is they do on Sundays
Honestly I sometimes think I'm the most normal person in the field, but we all probably think that. I think if my colleagues found out that I only go to a traditional Novus Ordo on Sundays where we use a lot of Latin and not a full-fledged Tridentine Mass, all of them would be angry at me. The LGBTQ crowd for being Catholic and the rad-trad crowd fro not being the right kind lol.
But anyway, I guess what I meant with my last point is: where are the diversity initiatives to get 'normal' people into this field? Everyone agrees it attracts the neuro-diverse? Then doesn't it stand to reason that we ought to encourage the neuro typical? Imagine how great PLs would be if they were actually eloquent haha.
> where are the diversity initiatives to get 'normal' people into this field?
I won't say they are particularly effective, but the group behind the LIVE workshop is at least self-aware enough to try and build things that neurotypical people might use. There binding force in that group is best expressed by Jonathan Edwards (author of subtext) when he said something along the lines of "most programming languages are built by high functioning autists for high functioning autists", the upshot being if we want more people to be able to use programming languages they will probably have to pay more attention to usability and alternative representations.
I think Bret Victor does a good job with this "seeing spaces" in the form of Dynamics Land: https://dynamicland.org
Also the Logo programming language was a good example of designing a language for where the users are, where in that case the users were gradeschool children. Obviously children can't build programming languages for themselves, so they used cognitive development principles to design a language which was approachable given their cognitive abilities as 7 year olds.
All you have to do to encourage nuerotypical white males from elite schools is to have high remuneration. They see highly paid jobs as the best jobs. This is not discrimination. If a job is too hard for the pay offered then this class will choose something else.
They are also not excluded from working in sewers, even though they are underrepresented!
Do you understand, intellectually, that quite a few of your colleagues find gestures like juxtaposing the Rust logo and the LGBTQ* flag off-putting and resent being unable articulate our discomfort while all your specious complaints get addressed instantly?
We don't bear you any ill will. We just don't want your sexuality shoved in our faces. I've been hearing claims of the necessity of doing so for over a decade. It wasn't true back then and it's not true now.
There is no law of nature requiring that technology communities become platforms for celebrating certain personal identities. That's an absurd claim.
Honestly, it doesn't matter whether you understand. For over a decade, we've just wanted to be left alone. You have refused.
We won the last election. We can and will, with sadness but determination power, turn the power of the state against you and make you leave us the hell alone.
> We just don't want your sexuality shoved in our faces.
The flag simply acknowledges that certain people have the right to exist. Extrapolating anything else out of that is you being weird.
> I've been hearing claims of the necessity of doing so for over a decade.
It seems to be necessary because you want to "turn the power of the state against you". All because of a rainbow?
> We won the last election.
Did the whole of humanity have an election that I missed? Just because an election at one time and in one place went one way or the other doesn't mean much to something that is global. If you're speaking of the US Election, a certain person didn't even get 50% of the vote. So, I don't see how you act like this is some mandate that means you get to silence other people.
> We can and will, with sadness but determination power, turn the power of the state against you and make you leave us the hell alone.
You don't seem sad about this at all.
My small site now sports a flag because it is clear it is needed. Are you going to come after me too?
Let me put it this way: computing as a field, and programming languages in particular would not be where they are today without the hard work and dedication of LGBTQ people in particular. I mean, we have to look no further than Alan Turing to understand this at a visceral level. In his tradition, LGBTQ people flock toward this field.
The reason the flag is in the Rust discord logo isn't because people are throwing their sexuality in your face. They put that flag up as a signal that the community is safe for other like-minded people. The flag stays up because the people who built the community want it up and keep it up. So the logo isn't juxtaposed with the LGBTQ flag -- juxtaposition implies contrast. Rust is intrinsically LGBTQ because it's built by LGBTQ people. That's the essence of community and languages if anything are communities.
This is what happens when someone's mere existence in public life is considered dangerous or "your sexuality being shoved in our faces" -- they stay inside, they find community in secret places where few people go, and they put up signs to signal to others similarly situated that they are welcome.
So of course we're not gonna take the flag down, it's up for a reason! Won't come down until that reason it's up goes away.
Non sequitur and false. The US constitution only guarantees that the government won't ban your speech. Non-government entities are allowed to ban speech.
