On Wednesday, 4 May 2016 at 05:45:39 UTC, ag0aep6g wrote:
> On 04.05.2016 07:27, tsbockman wrote:
>> Without any redundancy in the syntax, minor corruption of the code could
>> easily result in a program that still "works" - that is, compiles and
>> runs without producing an error message - but whose behaviour has subtly
>> changed. With redundant syntax, on the other hand, the compiler is more
>> likely to detect and pinpoint the problem immediately.
>
> D doesn't have that kind of redundancy either here.

Yes it does.

> For the compiler to catch errors, it would have to mind both punctuation and whitespace.

No it doesn't.

> But whitespace is purely cosmetic in D. Programmers might be alarmed when they see a mismatch, but the compiler doesn't care.

This is true, but D's grammar still has some redundancy in it, even when whitespace is collapsed.

In D, if a single curly brace goes missing, the braces will no longer balance and the lexer will complain. In Python, if a single tab goes missing, the result may well be a lexically and syntactically valid - but buggy - program.

On Wednesday, 4 May 2016 at 17:42:01 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> On 05/04/2016 12:16 PM, deadalnix wrote:
>> On Wednesday, 4 May 2016 at 15:46:13 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>>> Hard to tell for certain, but you ARE being sarcastic/joking about
>>> this, right?
>>>
>>
>> The concept of sarcasm plays a central role in understanding society's
>> inevitable development from bourgeois oppression, which, in turn,
>> amplify existing structures of exclusion. Please educate yourself.
>>
>
> That really doesn't answer the question, but that's ok, wasn't really that important of a question to me.

Poe's law strikes again!

Really though, deadalnix is being ultra-sarcastic. Check out his more serious comments from the last thread touching on this subject, if you want to know what he really thinks:
    http://forum.dlang.org/post/wongmdtjgsgsmxmyuqhi@forum.dlang.org

On 04.05.2016 20:11, tsbockman wrote:
> In D, if a single curly brace goes missing, the braces will no longer
> balance and the lexer will complain. In Python, if a single tab goes
> missing, the result may well be a lexically and syntactically valid -
> but buggy - program.

That makes a ton of sense, and didn't occur to me at all.

On Wednesday, 4 May 2016 at 15:46:13 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> It's touchy, because I've come across people who actually do genuinely believe the field has things in place deliberately to exclude women/ethnicities...even though...those VERY SAME people have never once been able to provide a SINGLE CONCRETE EXAMPLE of any of these alleged mechanisms they believe so strongly to exist.

Cognitive biases are a thing. People assume women are bad at math. People assume black people are violent thugs. People assume Asians are savant-level geniuses. People assume Native Americans are alcoholics. People assume Arabs are Muslims. People assume Muslims are terrorists. Those assumptions and biases dictate how we interact with the world. Sociology can describe systems and mechanisms that aren't controlled by people or even intentional. People do not even need to be aware of their biases. That doesn't make them not exist.

> Not only that, but I've yet to come across an anti-minority or anti-female programmer, and even if such creatures exist, they're undeniably var too much in the minority to have any real large-scale effect on "keeping people out".

Anti-<blank> is irrelevant, as it is fairly easy to deal with. Perceptions and biases are what matter. As I said above, people (in general) assume women are bad at math. That makes them less likely to trust any math a female coworker does than they would be to trust the same math done by a male coworker. Women get tired of dealing with others disregarding them based on these assumptions, and feel unwelcome in the field. Nobody needs to be intentionally excluding them for them to be excluded. I know I wouldn't keep working somewhere if nobody took me seriously.

> The vast majority that I've seen are far more likely to *dislike* the field's current gender imbalance.
>
> In much the same way programming is predominantly male (or "a goddamn sausage-fest" as I see it), nursing is predominantly female. So why did none of US pursue careers in nursing? Was it because we hit roadblocks with systems in place within the nursing field designed to exclude males? Or was it because we just plain weren't interested and had the freedom to choose a field we DID have interest in instead?

Actual answer: boys are raised to view nursing as a girl's job, and taught that they should not pursue "feminine" jobs. The same is true of girls being taught not to pursue "masculine" jobs. This is changing, thankfully, but the outdated views are still pervasive.

> Systems DO undeniably exist, for this very field, that are very plainly and deliberately sexist or racist though...but just not in the way some people believe. Unlike the others, I CAN provide a real concrete verifiable example: There are a lot of Computer Science grants and scholarships for students that list "female" or "non-caucasian" (or some specific non-caucasian race) as a mandatory requirement. I came across a bunch of those when I was trying to get financial aid for college. But there are NONE that require "male" or "caucasian" - it would never be permitted anyway, they'd get completely torn to shreds (and for good reason). The only ONE I did hear of was only a publicity stunt to point out the hypocrisy of all the sexist anti-male grants/scholarships.

And yet plenty of male-targeted outreach programs and scholarships do exist. In fields like nursing, for example. The point of such programs/scholarships is to create downward pressure on K-12 schooling to raise kids to not view *themselves* through these bias filters.

> Verifiable fact: My sister paid considerably less than I did for each year of college even though we came from EXACTLY the same economic background, exactly the same city/town, exactly the same ethnicity, nearly the same age (and yet she's slightly younger, so if anything, increasing tuition rates would have worked AGAINST her), and one of our respective colleges was even the exact same school. And her pay now is (considerably) higher than mine, and she works in a field that's known to pay LESS than my field.

Not enough information in this anecdote. Your sister could have had higher grades than you, granting her more scholarship money. Need-based grants/scholarships take in to account the number of kids parents are supporting and how many are in university, and the kids' incomes (if any). She may have also applied herself more and gotten promoted more which could reverse the expected pay gap.

> Anti-female systems in place? Bull fucking shit. Anyone who claims there are: put up REAL fucking examples instead of parroting vacuous rhetoric or shut the fuck up forever.

You are really starting to sound like the type of person who denies climate change because it was chilly in your city yesterday. Please don't be that person. Nobody likes that person. Nobody takes that person seriously.

> I've had far more than enough of the mother fucking baby-goddamn-boomers and GI-generation dragging THEIR bullshit war-of-the-sexes out the the goddamn 1950's where it belongs and forcing it onto MY 1980's+ generation. I literally grew up subjected to a constant barrage of "*GIRLS* can do/be ANYTHING they want", never a goddamn word about guys except to constantly villanize us and demand that we're always the enemy, even though *3* motherfucking decades separated me from all YOUR historic sexist crap, so, boomers, goddamn GI's, and the younger idiots they've infected with their "this is still 1950, and we must war against the oppressive males" propaganda, hurry up and die so we can finally be rid of YOUR legacy and the sexism you create and maintain. Fuck the pendulum, just stop the goddamn thing right in the middle already.

Since we are comparing anecdotes, I grew up constantly being told I was smart, as the girls I went to for help with math were told they were dumb. The baby boomers around me were constantly propagated the "girls must be stay at home mothers and are too dumb to have a STEM job" bullshit (despite my mom being the one to handle finances). Even through college, people took me more seriously than my smarter (sometimes female) peers, because their cognitive biases made me seem smarter than I am (mostly due to my physical appearance).

> People are morons.

On that, we agree. But disregarding others' life experiences (and sociological research) because they differ from your own benefits nobody.

On Wednesday, 4 May 2016 at 15:46:13 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

[snip]

>
> Verifiable fact: My sister paid considerably less than I did for each year of college even though we came from EXACTLY the same economic background, exactly the same city/town, exactly the same ethnicity, nearly the same age (and yet she's slightly younger, so if anything, increasing tuition rates would have worked AGAINST her), and one of our respective colleges was even the exact same school. And her pay now is (considerably) higher than mine, and she works in a field that's known to pay LESS than my field.

There are groups in Europe and the US (and elsewhere I'm sure) who try to draw attention to this issue, like these guys for example http://www.avoiceformen.com/.

> Anti-female systems in place? Bull fucking shit. Anyone who claims there are: put up REAL fucking examples instead of parroting vacuous rhetoric or shut the fuck up forever.

My experience with computer science and related fields is that a lot of young women are into computers, just not into programming. They are drawn to computers because of multi-media stuff, digital design, creating videos, creating games (often educational games for kids) with easy to use frameworks. The closer you get to the machine, the less women you will find (mind you, this does not mean "no women at all"), to give you a _rough_ scale of increasing complexity: multi-media and social networks (e.g. blogs) > app development > Python > Java > C/C++ > compiler programming / assembly ...

I know from my own experience that no matter how much you encourage and support women (who have a degree in CS or related) to code their own stuff, they often don't want to and prefer to use drag-and-drop frameworks and let the lads (for Americans: this means "the guys / men") do the nitty-gritty stuff.

Now, one can argue whether all this is down to biological (i.e. evolutionary) programming, which has in turn been perpetuated by social structures, or whether this is a purely social artifact. Either way,  we should provide everybody with equal opportunities. While women should not be discouraged from doing anything they want to do, they should not be pampered either, because this would be unfair to men and indeed sexist, perpetuating the view that women are delicate flowers that have to be protected and cannot stand up for themselves.

On Wednesday, 4 May 2016 at 15:46:13 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> Anti-female systems in place? Bull fucking shit. Anyone who claims there are: put up REAL fucking examples instead of parroting vacuous rhetoric or shut the fuck up forever.

Well, there's the Obama White House:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/male-female-pay-gap-remains-entrenched-at-white-house/2014/07/01/dbc6c088-0155-11e4-8fd0-3a663dfa68ac_story.html

Don't forget Hillary's Senate staff:

http://www.ijreview.com/2015/02/257200-hillary-clinton-paid-female-staff-28-percent-less-men/

If those paragons of virtue are underpaying their female staffers, imagine how much worse it is elsewhere? ;) Of course I'm joking, since you missed deadalnix's sarcasm.

If we want to close all gaps, we should also close the gender gap for occupational fatalities:

http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/09/occupational-male-female-death-gap-is.html

That means 4,000 more women will die on the job this year, make sure you mention that to any feminist pushing those bogus pay gap figures.

On 04.05.2016 21:38, Joakim wrote:
> If we want to close all gaps, we should also close the gender gap for
> occupational fatalities:
>
> http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/09/occupational-male-female-death-gap-is.html
>
>
> That means 4,000 more women will die on the job this year, make sure you
> mention that to any feminist pushing those bogus pay gap figures.

Or, you know, 4000 men less.

On Wednesday, 4 May 2016 at 19:47:41 UTC, ag0aep6g wrote:
> On 04.05.2016 21:38, Joakim wrote:
>> If we want to close all gaps, we should also close the gender gap for
>> occupational fatalities:
>>
>> http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/09/occupational-male-female-death-gap-is.html
>>
>>
>> That means 4,000 more women will die on the job this year, make sure you
>> mention that to any feminist pushing those bogus pay gap figures.
>
> Or, you know, 4000 men less.

Unrealistic, those jobs have real risks that cannot just be hand-waved away, which is why they often come with compensating high pay, as that blog post notes.  If we populate all job fields with 50% women, that means female deaths on the job would inevitably rise a lot.  Yet, you will never see that mentioned...

On Tue, 2016-05-03 at 03:48 +0000, Joe Duarte via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> […]

Joe,

Are you in touch with the PPIG and/or EACE people? There is almost certainly some prior literature on all this. I know this for a fact as I was involved with an experiment looking at this sort of thing back in the early 1990s.

http://www.ppig.org/
http://www.eace.net/

-- 
Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder@ekiga.net 41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel@winder.org.uk London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder

On Wednesday, 4 May 2016 at 18:17:57 UTC, tsbockman wrote:
> On Wednesday, 4 May 2016 at 17:42:01 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> On 05/04/2016 12:16 PM, deadalnix wrote:
>>> On Wednesday, 4 May 2016 at 15:46:13 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>>>> Hard to tell for certain, but you ARE being sarcastic/joking about
>>>> this, right?
>>>>
>>>
>>> The concept of sarcasm plays a central role in understanding society's
>>> inevitable development from bourgeois oppression, which, in turn,
>>> amplify existing structures of exclusion. Please educate yourself.
>>>
>>
>> That really doesn't answer the question, but that's ok, wasn't really that important of a question to me.
>
> Poe's law strikes again!
>
> Really though, deadalnix is being ultra-sarcastic. Check out his more serious comments from the last thread touching on this subject, if you want to know what he really thinks:
>     http://forum.dlang.org/post/wongmdtjgsgsmxmyuqhi@forum.dlang.org

Yup. How sad it is that gibberish nonsense can actually looks like it is being written seriously.