Comment by blahedo
11 years ago
> ...aren't thinking any of that ... funny play on words
That might well be true; my point is that at some point their individual thoughts don't matter, because they're referencing a larger meme.
I'll add that if it were just a funny play on words, we might expect to see a name like "boy" or "guy" or "son" or "person" or any number of other names that are, ha-ha, kind of like "man". The fact that "bro" was picked was pretty obviously a reference to the whole "brogramming" thing.
"man" pages were never really a problem in this vein, because everybody knew that despite the surface similarity (which gave rise to a variety of jokes), "man" was short for "manual", and "fsck" (which also gives rise to some funny jokes) is really short for "file system check" or something like that. "bro" is short for "brogramm(er|ing)". Your attempt to reduce my argument to absurdity in your second paragraph falls completely short because of the total lack of actual parallel to the situation we're really discussing.
Is it so obvious? I live far from the west coast, and the only reason I know the term "brogramming" at all is because I read HN and some other Silicon Valley-oriented blogs.
I am the only programmer I know at work or in my personal life that does so. The entire thing is a completely alien concept to me given what I've seen in real life. I hasten to say I absolutely do believe it's a real thing, just something I assume is centered around Silicon Valley.
The first thing I thought when I saw it was not "brogrammer." It is entirely plausible in my mind that the creator wasn't thinking of brogramming. Indeed, I could see myself or someone I know naming the tool that without any idea that brogramming was a thing.
So you glazed over the point in the original post:
the problem is not with what you are thinking when you read the word "bro", but with what other people, especially newcomers, are thinking.
If you are unaware that "bro" would connote "brogrammer" to some people, you can't have predicted that's what those people would think.
And anyway, how far should we take that? It is really difficult for me to conceive that many people would find this meaning in it. If I find out the name of my project is offensive to 50% of my audience, should I change it? What about 25%? 10%? 1%? One person?
Except that your argument has the same flaws has res0nat0r's argument: neither of you know what the author was thinking when he named it. Was the creator thinking of brogramming? Was the creator thinking of it being the "bro"ther of the man pages? None of us know, so it is useless to argue about it.
No.
1) A big part of my point is that it doesn't matter what an author is thinking when it comes to discussing how others will react to it. I won't restate here my arguments on that topic.
2) We can safely say that the creator was thinking of brogramming. Aside from the fact it would be an astonishing coincidence, the original page uses as one of its examples "curl --header "X-GirlsAreBrosToo: 1" www.bropages.org". Calling this "bro" was not some sort of innocent accident.
I saw the name, and thought it was web pages for "bros". Right off the bat, that seemed like an idiotic idea. It's right up there with "let's make tv shows about white people."
Then when I read the short description, I wasn't impressed.
I read the page anyway. Again, interesting idea, but the joke was carried on in the example, and that pretty much killed it for me.
> A big part of my point is that it doesn't matter what an author is thinking when it comes to discussing how others will react to it.
The problem with that idea is that humans have this pesky thing called "free will" or "agency." We are capable of choosing how we react to things we hear others say. That makes speaking incredibly difficult if your primary concern is whether any human in the world will react by taking offense.
> We can safely say that the creator was thinking of brogramming.
Even if that's the case, is it possible that the idea is to mock the concept of "brogramming"?
you havent explained how this is related to 'brogramming' yet. the word bro in a programming context does not automatically mean it has some kind of conspiratorial relationship with the concept of brogrammers. the author even blatantly suggests reclaiming the word for both genders.
2 replies →
1) Catering to every person's sensibilities is impractical. The whole argument about it being offensive comes from ignorance of word play, anyway. In that regard it is unjustified.
2) Of course it wasn't an accident. `man` is a shorthand for manual that led to plenty of jokes. `bro` serves a complementary function to `man`, and thus it humorously references its inspiration and sibling program using a diminutive.
Yet you also show ignorance of etymology. The term "bro" didn't originate with "brogramming", which is a very recent neologism and not widely known outside of hipster tech communities and feminist circles. "Bro" and "bromance" have been around for a long time. How does having a fake "X-GirlsAreBrosToo" header imply "brogramming"?
2 replies →
The author's intention matters when assigning blame. It doesn't matter if we're debating whether this is a good name to use from a marketing perspective.
My first guess upon seeing it was that it was poking fun at self-identified "brogrammer" hip trendy automation tools that just show you a few examples of a slick simple demo usage, and then leave you to dig through the source code to figure out the rest of the syntax and side effects, rather than even attempt to provide a comprehensive reference of any sort. "We're iterating too faaast for docs, man!"
>Was the creator thinking of brogramming? Was the creator thinking of it being the "bro"ther of the man pages?
What does intent matter? If the discussion on a tool is overtaken by the discussion on the gender trolling in the name, then feedback that the name is off putting to a portion of the potential audience is valid.
If I was marketing a product in a foreign language, I would be open to feedback that the name has some bad connations even though obviously I had none in mind.
(Incidentally, based on the single example being 'bro curl' as in "Do you even lift bro?" curls, I think brogrammer was in fact the origin of the name)
> What does intent matter?
I would argue that intent is all that matters. If people want to foist their interpretation onto the word, that's their issue, not mine or the author's (if he wasn't relating it to "brogrammer" that is, I can't speak to his thought process).
The vast majority of people would consider "bro" a substitute colloquialism for "dude", and such. And, I would be willing to bet that that is how most in IT would take it, too.
2 replies →
(Incidentally, based on the single example being 'bro curl' as in "Do you even lift bro?" curls, I think brogrammer was in fact the origin of the name)
"Do you even lift, bro?" and "brogrammer" are two completely different things, despite both sharing the root "bro". One's a meme that originated from /fit/ (IIRC) and the other is a neologism that describes a frat boy subculture that is allegedly overtaking programming, and as an insult to one who is deemed to be a part of this subculture.
What the fuck is up with you people and seeing "brogrammer" in every word that contains "bro"? Is your understanding of language and etymology that narrow that it does not extend beyond tech circles?
We're so used to the "man" command that I think it's hard to judge how it would sound if someone invented it today. There might very well be calls to rename it.
We're okay with it because we're used to it, it's from a different time, and it's far too late to change it now. Those aren't good excuses for a new project.
The 'man' command is named that because its short for 'manual', it has nothing to do with 'men'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manual_pages
The etymology is inoffensive, but the term itself is still exclusionary by way of "man" also being a gendered term. We are (and should be) more cognisant of these issues these days.
4 replies →