To my daughter's high school programming teacher
The entitled and largely unconscious male privilege in most of these HN comments is pretty hard to stomach against the large and steadily-accumulating picture of just how very <i>different</i> this industry presents itself to men and to women. Just because you don't directly experience or see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Just because you haven't been (consciously) chauvinistic to a woman doesn't mean women don't experience deep and pervasive chauvinism.<p>It's not a fucking "free choice" that women are making when they steer away from programming in the face of the grotesque pastiche of misogyny and bullying that underlies our vocation, in which most of the people who aren't actually bullying women are falling over themselves to deny its existence or make excuses for it.<p>Male programmers need to stop congratulating ourselves on how "libertarian" and "meritocratic" we are and start taking responsibility for how profoundly hostile and off-putting we have allowed this field to remain for most women.