Python is an Equal Opportunity Programming Language

beliavsky at aol.com beliavsky at aol.com
Fri May 6 16:35:20 EDT 2016


On Thursday, May 5, 2016 at 3:00:01 PM UTC-4, Terry Reedy wrote:
> https://motherboard.vice.com/blog/python-is-an-equal-opportunity-programming-language
> 
> from an 'Intel(R) Software Evangelist'
> -- 
> Terry Jan Reedy

>From the link:

MB: What is it about Python that makes it friendly to women? Is it something about the actual language itself? Or is it more of a subcultural thing within the community?

DS: One thing that I think causes this is the founder of the Python project, a guy named Guido van Rossum. He's referred to as the "BDFL"--the Benevolent Dictator for Life. The way to think of him is like Linus Torvalds of Linux.

Most of his keynote at that conference was answering questions from the people who had attended. And he actually said, "Let's alternate between men and women asking questions."On the second day of the conference, he was wearing a shirt from PyLadies, another nonprofit like Django Girls that helps women learn how to program on Python.

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This not "equal opportunity". It is a quota system. It's my 
impression that in the U.S., Asians are over-represented among programmers
relative to their share of the population and that whites and especially blacks are under-represented. Should we impose racial quotas on questions
at conferences and call that "equal opportunity" as well?



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