An interview with Barbara Liskov
Back in the day, I treasured my copy of Liskov and Guttag&#x27;s &quot;Program Development in Java&quot;. I enjoyed its discussion of a disciplined programming style centered around maintaining invariants in your data structures. It was also the only book I&#x27;ve seen which talked about modeling the state of your design using a graphical notation inspired from Alloy. I wanted more exposure to this material so I even purchased a copy of their earlier work (which is also excellent). Point being, I have a lot of respect for her.<p>Like some of the other comments, I loved how she expresses her thoughts about computing in this article, e.g: &quot;In my version of computational thinking, I imagine an abstract machine with just the data types and operations that I want...&quot; (reminds me of Norvig&#x2F;Graham talking about Lisp). But I don&#x27;t like this article overall because I think it takes cheap shots at men in computing.<p>&quot;I’m worried about the divorced couple in which the husband publishes slander about the wife, including information about where she lives.&quot; When I first encountered this statement, I thought it was being unnecessarily specific but didn&#x27;t think anything else of it. After finishing the rest of the article, I think it was a purposeful choice, and in the current environment, I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s a fair statement to make. A male making the opposite statement would likely be called out, so I&#x27;m calling her out here.<p>&quot;At Berkeley, I was one of one or two women in classes of 100. No one ever said, “Gee, you’re doing well, why don’t you work with me?” I didn’t know such things went on. I went to graduate school at Stanford. When I graduated, nobody talked to me about jobs. I did notice that male colleagues, like Raj Reddy, who was a friend of mine, were recruited for academic positions. Nobody recruited me.&quot; She didn&#x27;t say this explicitly, but my interpretation is that she&#x27;s using this as evidence of a gender bias in recruiting. Clearly, gender bias is one possibility, but what about giving people the benefit of the doubt? There are other more charitable explanations (somebody who understands conditional probability better than me could comment on this situation from a probabilistic perspective).<p>&quot;Back then, advisers placed graduates through deals with departments around the country.<p>Yes, but nobody made deals for me. In the ’90s, I went back to Stanford for a department celebration. A panel of the old professors, without knowing what they were doing, described the old boy network. They said, “Oh, my friend over there told me that I’ve got this nice young guy you should hire.” It was just how it was. They were clueless. They talked about a young woman who did so well because she married a professor! Clueless. Another colleague had a pinup in his office. I asked him, “What’s that pinup in your office?” Clueless.&quot; I love her directness here, but on the other hand her choice of words suggests to me that she has a chip on her shoulder, something I wasn&#x27;t expecting from somebody so accomplished!<p>This reminds me of how greatly our beliefs affect our perception of the world, like in the beginning of a relationship when everything seems perfect, but after a fight, suddenly even the smallest things about your partner start to annoy you. The quirkyness of their laugh, or the way they chew their food – how did I miss how annoying that was before? But in reality they didn&#x27;t change at all – only my perceptions did, because I no longer liked them.<p>&quot;Even so, is it correct that there were approximately 1,000 faculty members when you started at MIT, only 10 of whom were women?<p>That was my recollection.<p>So there was progress, but …&quot; I don&#x27;t like the use of the word &quot;progress&quot; here, but I realize that is potentially another highly flammatory discussion. Here, it&#x27;s just more evidence that this discussion is politically charged.<p>&quot;My sense is that all scientific fields have failed to recognize some foundational contributions by women.<p>In the 10 years before I was head of computer science at MIT, the department identified only one woman worth hiring. When I was the head [from 2001 to 2004], I hired seven women. We didn’t scrape the bottom of the barrel. All three junior women I hired are outstanding. There was a long period of time where women were not considered at all.&quot; Is that last sentence meant to be taken literally? I would be surprised if it were true. I&#x27;m ignorant of the goings-on at these levels, but I have faith that the majority of people involved in these decisions (around the time that she&#x27;s referring to) were not sexist (the mere fact that she became the department head is evidence of this). I would also be interested in more details about why she was successful in hiring women compared to the previous head.<p>The big tech companies are making an effort to hire more women. One way they do this is by recruiting heavily at events where there are a preponderance of women. Somehow, this is seen as not being discriminatory, but I disagree. It&#x27;s like there&#x27;s two separate lines of applicants, and by choosing to focus on one, the people in the other line are hurt (and to be clear, my position is that I&#x27;d rather gender not be part of the equation at all, at least for tech jobs).<p>I could go on about the article, but I think I&#x27;ve made my basic point.<p>I also realize that I&#x27;m subject to the same biases that I allude to above. I too have a chip on my shoulder because I believe I was unfairly accused of being a sexist at work. As a result, I&#x27;ve become highly sensitive around this topic (e.g. I followed the James Damore events very closely) and I too view things through an (even more) distorted lens.