Comment by belorn
11 years ago
I type on a regular basis the word "woman" in emacs.
Do I take a tiny but not quite negligible emotional hit of feeling excluded every single time for doing that? what about people who program ada and type the name each day? Do you think most people even will notice that the 3 letter actually represent a name, a person, a woman, each time?
Context matters. I take it from your comment that you're a man. If you were in a female-dominated profession like nursing or elementary school teaching then yes, I think things like that would wear on you pretty quickly after a while. Every time, it would be a tiny little reminder that no matter how hard you try or how successful you are, you'll still be a bit of an outsider.[0]
Some people would probably be more consciously aware than others of the fact that the 3 letters "bro" are a reference to "bro culture". Here are a few groups of people whom I think would be most likely to notice: People new to tech; women who've had bad experience with "brogrammer" types; "brogrammer" types themselves. It seems like a bad idea to adopt any policy likely to make the first two of those groups uncomfortable while signaling approval toward the third.
[0] Side notes: 1. Those professions are making a real effort to change these patterns to be more inclusive, too. And 2. Gender inequality in tech is nevertheless a more pressing problem than gender inequality in nursing, because tech is considered a higher status career.
Is it a fact that the 3 letter "bro" reference bro culture and not brother?
Man, woman, brother... next command should be sister. Its a themed naming scheme.
But my point is that very few people will even think about a command they type in, especially if its just 3 letters. There are only so many 3 letter combinations, and even fewer that represent words.