[Haskell-cafe] Are there any female Haskellers?

[Jason Dusek]

2010/03/27 Alberto G. Corona <agocorona at gmail.com>:
> To say this in scientific headline jargon, it's a matter of
> division of work, time, and dimorphic fixation of abilities in
> the brain by natural selection trough dimorphic development of
> the brain of men and women by different genetic sequences. I
> don't know any kind of tool more flexible and powerful than a
> computer language. Men are good at making tools and using
> them. They invested more in engineering because this activity
> were more critical for their success than in the case of
> women. Sociological or cultural explanations don't explain the
> universal tendencies and habilities across cultures and time.

  In this passage, you seem to attribute to men a relatively
  great adaptation for making & using tools, relative to women.
  You suggest this applies to computer languages -- excellent
  tools -- and this explains the relative absence of women in
  computing.

  It's hard to take your remarks seriously; consider:

 .  There is no single adaptation for "tool using". Men differ
    greatly in their aptitude for working with different kinds
    of tools.

 .  The relevance of tools in women's lives is well known; there
    are few cultures that have not allocated some essential
    domain of work -- fabric arts, tanning, cooking, picking
    certain plants -- to women. It's hard to see any support for
    the notion that tools are more (or less) critical for the
    evolutionary success of men.

  Though this may be your "honest theory", you don't offer much
  support for it. When offering a theory as to the relative
  success of one movie over another, I suppose there is not a
  great burden of proof; but carelessness in the matter of which
  kind of person can do which kind of work has hurt too many
  people for too long.

--
Jason Dusek