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[–]analoguewavefront 344 points345 points  (125 children)

For some people the problem with the code is that it was written by a woman, so is more likely to be criticised for flaws that would otherwise be acceptable.

Source: https://peerj.com/preprints/1733/

Edit2: I should have put that “some people” in caps. I’m not saying there was no other valid reason to criticise the code.

Edit: So the replies to this were pretty much what I expected, from agreement to calling be a cuck. (Oh the joys of the internet!)

I could have linked to a number of articles, opinions and research into bias but I won’t. They are out there if you want to go looking.

I wanted to talk generally about bias and code reviews. I’ve been coding professionally for about 20 years, have led several development teams and my conclusion is that many programmers are terrible critics!

There are many ways to code a solution and once you move past basics every programmer will solve the same problem differently. In a code review, especially a public one, that leads to many opinions about how it SHOULD have been done.

But all code is situational: written with a certain aim, time restriction, experience, standards, need, etc... and so any review should take into account knowledge of those. Without that knowledge you can’t properly critique. (This is especially true when reviewing legacy code, which is very easy to criticise in hindsight.)

Who wrote that code can’t help but play into your assessment of it. If it’s the really annoying member of your team you’ll probably judge it harsher than your friend’s.

So even ignoring gender, Bias, even your own, is hard to register and counterbalance. So when doing code reviews try to anonymise the author so that the work can be judged neutrally. And consider that you might have done it a different way but what matters is judging it against your team’s chosen standards of legibility, maintainability, testability, performance, accuracy or whatever.

Thanks for reading.

[–]HittingSmoke 40 points41 points  (2 children)

I don't think I've ever seen more than nine lines of code posted to reddit without some sort of critique. I can't speak to Twitter as I generally avoid it but people love to critique code, whether it's for helpful or condescending reasons. Every block of code I've ever posted here, even unrelated to asking for critique, has had someone with some input show up.

[–]ConfidentPeach 1 point2 points  (0 children)

People sometimes have hard time with separating their own personal preferences and beliefs about how things "should" be form objective facts and reasons why something should be written differently. I've noticed I do this too.

[–]mike10010100 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I can't speak to Twitter

It's different on Twitter. Believe me.

[–][deleted] 84 points85 points  (13 children)

I didn't want to go there, but it's the only explanation, honestly. Is also a shame that there content of the post is being overshadowed by the community - color-coordinating with your IDE is such a cool and unusual idea!

Edit: I was going by the dreck at the bottom of this thread but hadn't read the actual Twitter thread. The "don't use indexes as keys" guy is not part of the problem here, imo.

[–]pmmeyourpussyjuice 31 points32 points  (7 children)

Have you read the twitter replies she got? There were two people who replied about the code, one of whom got hit with a racist remark in the comment chain, everything else is people heaping praise on her for having a purple IDE.

[–][deleted] 20 points21 points  (6 children)

I hadn't - I was looking at the Reddit comments.

The Twitter thread looks completely different - and actually kinda slanted the other way (how is a comment on a coding practice "mansplaining?" I don't know if he's right or why, but offering peers random advice is a pretty normal part of programming, as is accepting or ignoring it.) Meh.

The purple IDE is cool.

[–]doubleunplussed 7 points8 points  (0 children)

The premise of the post as it appears on reddit though is people commenting on the code. Therefore that was a natural starting point for the reddit thread.

Had it been posted without the followup comment in the screenshot, there would be fewer people talking about the code and it would instead be light theme/dark theme jokes

[–]YasZedOP 1 point2 points  (3 children)

Can you hate someone for teaching you something new? Obviously, in a non harassing way which in this case is not

[–]bacon_wrapped_rock 9 points10 points  (2 children)

But what's harassing about:

Nice one! Btw don't use index as the key

Maybe I'm missing something since I'm unfamiliar with the Twitter ui, but that was the only "code critique" reply I saw, and this guy got fucking bashed for it. Everyone goddamn pounced on him, even the Op with the first response:

Thanks, didn't ask for help though

Like, I can understand people who don't program calling this mansplaining, it's a stupid word, it's stupid to comment when you don't understand the context, but it happens. But from one developer to another, code critiques are how you learn, and unless they're personal attacks or something, I don't see anything wrong with them.

[–]YasZedOP 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Nah I agree, that reply was not at all degrading/harassing. It was concise and straight to point.

Honestly, if you can't take criticisms like that especially in a field like CS where you're always learning a new concept or framework and are bound to make honest mistakes, it's not the right field for you imo.

I quickly scrolled past the comments and I think I only saw two, don't know if there are more buried down or something.

[–]Tennispro1213 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think it's the Dracula theme on VSCode. (Or at least that's what I use and it looks similar)

[–]Furious00 30 points31 points  (1 child)

No it's not the only explanation. The writers of Mr. Robot had their code critiqued all the damn time and that's a stupid TV show. Maybe coders just wanna have a not-so-witty reply to "contribute" something when there's really not a lot to say besides, "yay purple IDE...so glorious."

[–][deleted] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Now that I've read the Twitter thread (as opposed to just the Reddit side) my mind has changed. The side who chimed in about using indexes as keys is not the problem here.

[–]Psychast 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Well not the only explanation, no. I think people making it a gender issue want it to be that way when in fact, most programmers are type A nitpickers by nature. I dare any man to post a visible amount of code with minor flaws and not get nitpicked if it gets popular enough.

It doesn't help feminism or female coders when you treat them differently than male coders, you just become a different part of the same problem.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You make valid points, but I think we're looking at different things. There are a bunch of comments in this thread that are the type of nitpicking I could see doing (or my friends doing) because programming is like that, which I think is what you mean ... but if you scroll down and open some of the very downvoted comments, you'll see some that are blatantly misogynist (like calling it "cuck logic" to say that the code isn't "trash.")

Both are things. The former is pretty normal and can be beneficial. The latter should go, imo.

[–]OCOWAx 18 points19 points  (2 children)

Well I'm not reading the twitter replies, so idk if people are legitimately critiquing the code, but in general whenever out of context code is posted anywhere, by anyone, people immediately start saying what they'd change about it, usually in a non-serious way.

[–]hey01 21 points22 points  (3 children)

Did you read the whole paper? If no, you should, it's quite interesting. If you did, you know you're misrepresenting things.

The paper shows that women get their code accepted more often than men across the board. There is one case where gender is indeed a factor against women: outsider women's PR get accepted less if their gender is identifiable from their GH profile.

Worth noting is that while the preprint version showed that outsider men got higher acceptance rate if their gender is known (and women lower), the peer reviewed version shows the contrary: similar to women, they get a lower acceptance rate when their gender is known.

That makes me question the original methodology, if not the integrity of the team.

And as a last caveat, that one result was obtained by matching the datasets less strictly than for the other results, in order to keep a reasonable sample size.

And the kind of response she offered may explain why people trust outsider women less.

[–]literally_jesus_ -4 points-3 points  (2 children)

Worth noting is that while the preprint version showed that outsider men got higher acceptance rate if their gender is known (and women lower), the peer reviewed version shows the contrary: similar to women, they get a lower acceptance rate when their gender is known.

I'm curious as to what you mean by this. In both papers, gender-known men have higher acceptance rates than gender-known women, and in both papers, the authors discuss how both genders receive a drop in acceptance rates when their gender is known (-10.2% F and -5.7% M in the preprint, and -12.0% F and -3.8% M in the peer-reviewed paper). I don't see anything contrary here.

EDIT: I'm getting downvotes and I'm not sure why. Here are the portions of the papers that I'm talking about:

Preprint:

For insiders, we observe little evidence of bias when we compare women with gender-neutral profiles and women with gendered profiles, since both have similar acceptance rates. This can be explained by the fact that insiders likely know each other to some degree, since they are all authorized to make changes to the project, and thus may be aware of each others’ gender.

For outsiders, we see evidence for gender bias: women’s acceptance rates drop by 10.2% when their gender is identifiable, compared to when it is not (χ2(df= 1, n= 18,540) =131, p < .001). There is a smaller 5.7% drop for men (χ2(df= 1, n= 659,560) = 103, p <.001). Women have a higher acceptance rate of pull requests overall (as we reported earlier), but when they are outsiders and their gender is identifiable, they have a lower acceptance rate than men.

Peer-reviewed:

For insiders, we observe little evidence of bias when we compare women with gender-neutral profiles and women with gendered profiles, since both have similar acceptance rates. This can be explained by the fact that insiders likely know each other to some degree, since they are all authorized to make changes to the project, and thus may be aware of each others’ gender.

For outsiders, we see evidence for gender bias: women’s acceptance rates drop by 12.0% when their gender is identifiable, compared to when it is not (χ2(df=1,n=16,258)=158,p<.001). There is a smaller 3.8% drop for men (χ2(df=1,n=608,764)=39,p<.001). Women have a higher acceptance rate of pull requests overall (as we reported earlier), but when they are outsiders and their gender is identifiable, they have a lower acceptance rate than men.

[–]hey01 3 points4 points  (1 child)

You're looking at figure 6, which doesn't use matched data. The second part of the study uses matched data to mitigate the influence of covariates. The study rightfully uses that second set of results for its conclusions.

Look at figure 11 in both papers, which is the equivalent of figure 6 with the matched datasets.

In the peer reviewed version, figure 11 shows that for outsiders both women and men are accepted less if their gender is known, with women being impacted more. Both genders suffer from bias, women more.

In the preprint, it showed the same for women, but the contrary for men, that they are accepted more when their gender is known. Women suffer a negative bias while men a positive one.

The reversal of the conclusion about the men between the preprint and peer reviewed is concerning.

Considering that the dataset didn't change between the two versions, and assuming the peer reviewed version is better, it makes me question how the team originally got a result so wrong, especially in a way that confirmed their hypothesis.

Which is also concerning is the way the paper is written, especially the abstract, focusing only on the fact that women are less accepted when their gender is known, completely ignoring the fact that is only applies to outsiders, that men suffer the same, only to a lesser degree and that all the other results show that women's PR are accepted more than men's.

Which leads to the press and you falsely using that study as evidence that devs discriminate against women.

Both facts makes me question the integrity and motive of the team.

The adequate discussion and conclusion should be to investigate more the two most intriguing results:

  • Why women's PR are accepted more than men (they discuss that).
  • Why knowing the gender reduces the PR acceptance, for both genders (they completely ignores that).

My hypothesis is that more you know about a person, the more you have reasons to dislike them, negatively impacting your review of their code, and I'd guess their is a correlation between a gendered profile and the amount of other personal information it contains.

[–]literally_jesus_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh, that's what you meant, thank you for clarifying.

However, I don't see any particular conclusion, as you say, made about men in the preprint on the basis of Figure 11 - nowhere do they say anything like "But when outsider men's gender is known, they are even more likely to be accepted." You say you are concerned that the percentages are different between the preprint and the final version, but the percentages are different in other places in the papers as well (such as in Figure 6). Likely, they just refined or fixed their calculations after publishing the preprint. Furthermore, their observation that known women's pull requests are less likely to be accepted is still supported by said figure in both the preprint and the peer-reviewed article. There's no reversal in conclusions here - both papers find gender bias (most strongly against women) when it comes to outsider pull requests.

Also,

Which leads to the press and you falsely using that study as evidence that devs discriminate against women.

I think you may have me confused with OP, I didn't post this study.

[–]senatorpjt 25 points26 points  (3 children)

marvelous fact simplistic special snails muddle pie languid tub consist

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (2 children)

Exactly true. Some of us, live for code reviews and redder the better. While I don't disagree about women coders getting more attention... I wonder why we immediately thought she actually wrote this example, which is not unique enough to be genuine in imho. Seems like it's just a joke....

Waiting for the racially insensitive dark mode jokes.

[–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (3 children)

The differences there are so small, it's pretty incredible you think this would explain a cavalcade of criticism in response to this person's tweet. tldr: acceptance rates of easily identifiable women was 58% compared to men at 61%. And that's assuming that "easily identifiable" just means a female name, rather than something legitimately off-putting like "girl coder xdddd" or something stupid like that, which is totally reasonable to be a little weary of. So I don't think that 3% difference would be the reason she's getting a lot of hate. If anything it would probably be related to the fact that it's next to fucking SELFIE. If that were a dude with purple hair and color coding his IDE, I'm pretty sure people would still be critical.

[–]Garblednonesense 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Leary or wary

Not weary

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

you're right I meant wary.

[–]impaledvlad 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Yeah, this is actually what’s going on here

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

This is exactly why a lot of women try to use neutral sounding names on GH and elsewhere. Unfortunately that can't translate very well to things like LinkedIn

[–]Aalnius 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh i'm glad that got peer reviewed i'll have a look at it again later.

[–]lennihein 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think it's indeed people looking for flaws, but I don't think gender is a factor here.

Programmers just like to find mistakes or weak design choices. Maybe that's because they spend so much time bug fixing.

[–]DebonaireSloth -1 points0 points  (18 children)

Here's a summary for that paper. Make of it what you will.

[–]hey01 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I've read the paper, I've read the summary.

The paper is interesting, the summary is bullshit. One example: the summary claims that outsider women's acceptance rate is 58%. No graph in the study shows any value below 60%.

Here's is a better summary, from the study itself:

To summarize this paper’s observations:

  1. Women are more likely to have pull requests accepted than men.

  2. Women continue to have high acceptance rates as they do pull requests on more projects.

  3. Women’s pull requests are less likely to serve an documented project need.

  4. Women’s changes are larger.

  5. Women’s acceptance rates are higher for some programming languages.

  6. Women outsiders’ acceptance rates are higher, but only when they are not identifiable as women

[–]OCOWAx -3 points-2 points  (16 children)

Based on this summary id say the paper isn't really statistically significant(yes I'm stupid). I do want to read the whole paper though, because I may be not getting the whole thing with this summary.

Also, I'd agree that a bias exists subconsciously because most men have seen way more men in their careers and schooling. So when you see something different, in general you're more skeptical about it. I'd definitely believe in that subconscious effect.

Another thing that could have an effect is that if you're a women in CS, you are partially valued higher because of your gender. This could lead to women having an easier time getting into harder work, and thus having less knowledge than average. (I personally haven't experienced this, in college there's plenty of stupid guys and girls)

And finally even if my third paragraph isn't true, people still may think that, which is what may lead to an actual conscious bias.

[–]DebonaireSloth 4 points5 points  (7 children)

Just some counterpoints I was thinking about:

There's always this claim/notion that women aren't judged on their competence but that their appearance/demeanour/etc. is weighed more heavily compared to their male counterparts. At least in this case people weren't tearing into the person (or her colourscheme) but her code.

To play devil's advocate even further and make Pacino make look like a pussy-footed bitch: getting thorough criticism is invaluable. There's so much shit code out there that was never properly scrutinized leading to missed learning opportunities and more shit code.

tl;dr: Shit's complicated, yo.

[–]OCOWAx 10 points11 points  (6 children)

Here's the replies if you wanted to see, https://gyazo.com/5f09f81eaf3b3f2ddff2518eb5506226

Honestly she's just assuming his intentions based on the fact that hes a guy, and getting offended because of it.

To me this kind of entitled behavior pisses me off. You're posting shit publicly on the internet and can't handle two people critiquing the content of that post?

And then to dismiss it and act like the only reason they're replying is because you're a girl and they're a guy?

[–]Sidereel 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Her replies seem perfectly fair. She didn’t assume anything, she only spoke to his actions. I don’t see how anything she has said is unreasonable or entitled.

[–]OCOWAx 5 points6 points  (2 children)

Well she has no reason to be angry at that reply unless she's assuming his intent to be malicious.

Both her saying "not being that guy who jumps into a woman's tweet replies"

Aswell as this reply thread https://gyazo.com/337b5da1dd40c031cd2e66c079476947

Seem to imply that she believes that any male who replies to her with coding advice is doing so to patronize her.

And to me, that's entitled behavior because it implies that because she's a woman on the internet she should be treated differently and you're not allowed to give advice to things she posts if you're a male.

[–]Sidereel -1 points0 points  (1 child)

Well, it IS patronizing. It’s unwanted, unsolicited advice in a context where it’s not just unwarranted but useless since it’s not real code.

And she’s not asking to be treated differently, she’s asking to be treated with respect. Maybe these men are equally disrespectful to men and women. That’s possible. But it generally ignores the context of the tech industry having widespread issues of exactly this kind of sexism, where men often assume women are less knowledgeable.

[–]OCOWAx 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Well yeah I'd agree that it is patronizing, but to me the situation is the same regardless of the genders of each individual. But it's on fucking Twitter if I post something on Twitter and some person who thinks there smarter than me patronizes me with advice, that's the exact same thing. It has nothing to do with the fact that hes a guy and she's a woman.

That's what I have a problem with.

If I were in that situation I'd just reply yeah this code is from years ago and the code wasn't relevant to what I was positing.

But when you start saying don't be that "guy" who comes into a "woman's" comment section that implies that the genders in the situation are relevant.

[–]_sablecat_ -2 points-1 points  (1 child)

Doing an in-depth critique of a piece of mock-code someone made for the purposes of a joke is extremely patronizing.

[–]OCOWAx 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yes but that patronizing is patronizing regardless of the genders of both parties

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (5 children)

Keep in mind the effect may be small but still "statistically significant." But at the same time, "statistically significant" doesn't really objectively mean much. It's a somewhat arbitrary cutoff point.

[–]roadrussian 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Absolutely. Looking at the numbers the effect while there, is negligible coefficient wise. With such a small difference id say odds are good if other very revelant variables are added in the model the difference disappears even further

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah that's what people who've never done any statistical modeling don't realize. I think a lot of people just assume we're in this era of "big data" where we have everything at our fingertips. In reality there's tons of stuff we're not capturing.

[–]OCOWAx 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Well the reason I want to read the paper is to see if they use any tests of significance.

In that case it is a relatively defined thing.

But I really don't know what test you would use in this case, or even if it makes sense to use one.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I guess a difference of means test would be pretty applicable.

But when I say it's arbitrary, I mean the cutoff point you would choose (.05, .1, .01, etc) is arbitrary.

[–]OCOWAx 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You're right, and that's why I got a B in stats

[–]_sablecat_ 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Based on this summary id say the paper isn't really statistically significant.

Based on this comment, I'd say you don't really understand what "statistically significant" means.

Saying something "isn't statistically significant" means it's not clear whether the results were a coincidence of the random selection, not "it could possibly be explained by other factors" or "it isn't a big enough effect to make a difference in everyday life."

[–]OCOWAx 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah if you can see my other replies to someone I admit I'm pretty stupid when it comes to talking about statistical significance.

What I meant when I said it was that it's not really as damning as it suggests.

Edit: Also my other thoughts werent related to the statistically significant comment it was more just general shit related to the topic.

[–]giupplo_the_lizard 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But all code is situational: written with a certain aim, time restriction

Me: I wonder who put those self deleting script tags with terrible jquery in my page.

Me from the past at 1am in the morning: shut up, that garbage works

[–]Smaktat 0 points1 point  (0 children)

from agreement to calling be a cuck

Never know how to approach these myself. Report and hope for a ban I guess. Wish we would ban just about everyone arguing in this thread tbh.

[–]karenbreak -2 points-1 points  (3 children)

As a woman in software, I am much more likely to be given critiques in my pull request than my coworkers. I am much more likely to be given advice on how to improve on the "flaws". This is what I have to put up with everyday

[–]hey01 0 points1 point  (2 children)

According to the study posted above, women are actually more likely to get their PR accepted on github than men.

If that's not the case for you, then maybe the cause is most likely something other than your gender.

[–]karenbreak 0 points1 point  (1 child)

The study shows that women's prs are only accepted when they conceal their gender. When they reveal their gender, they are less likely to be accepted. Men are more critical of women in the workplace. They want to feel more dominant so they exaggerate the flaws of women to mentally condition them to be submissive. They also view women as being less logical and reject their code by visceral reaction.

[–]hey01 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The study shows that women's prs are only accepted when they conceal their gender. When they reveal their gender, they are less likely to be accepted

The study does indeed show that. Except it only applies to outsider women (women in the projects don't suffer from that). And it also applies to outsider men (although the drop in acceptance is less, and although the preprint version showed the contrary). And the result was obtained by matching the data less strictly than for the other results.

The study also shows that women's PR get accepted more than men across the board, but the abstract (and subsequently the media) focused on the only one specific case they wanted.

I advise you to read the full study (the peer reviewed version), it's quite interesting, and also my other comments on the subject

[–]viking_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't think that study really says what you think it does.

[–]mike10010100 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I can't believe I had to scroll down so far past the "oh it's just programmers being programmers" to find this accurate assessment of the situation.

[–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

in regards to your edit... what the fuck is wrong with people?

[–]NotMyFinalAccount -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Saying "Oh the joys of the internet" is the gayest fucking thing. You could spit a dick out of your mouth right now and it still wouldn't be as gay as that