I'm so glad you posted this -- "contempt culture" is a really good term for this that I wish I'd had on hand in previous discussions about why I loathe people who talk about how "HTML isn't a real...
I'm so glad you posted this -- "contempt culture" is a really good term for this that I wish I'd had on hand in previous discussions about why I loathe people who talk about how "HTML isn't a real programming language." Ultimately the discussion very rarely happens in a context where that distinction matters for anything other than this "I'm better than you" contempt culture nonsense. I particularly value how the author here is willing to point out that in their example with PHP, this contempt culture is frequently deployed against women in particular. This is a pattern I've definitely noticed in tech (and I doubt it's limited to tech).
I don't think it is limited to tech, I can think of several instances of it in psych for example, and even "what foreign language you took in school" had some currency to it at one point in my...
I don't think it is limited to tech, I can think of several instances of it in psych for example, and even "what foreign language you took in school" had some currency to it at one point in my life. And when tech is one of the spaces it pushes out women, there are a lot of spaces where it pushes out other groups.
For future reference: HTML together with CSS (and user interaction) is Turing-complete, which is a definition of “real” programming language this type of person will most likely have to accept as...
"HTML isn't a real programming language."
For future reference: HTML together with CSS (and user interaction) is Turing-complete, which is a definition of “real” programming language this type of person will most likely have to accept as defeat. :P
If you ever say something this to someone who says they program in HTML or who calls themselves a programmer, you're being an asshole no matter how technically correct you believe you are.
If you ever say something this to someone who says they program in HTML or who calls themselves a programmer, you're being an asshole no matter how technically correct you believe you are.
Yup. I wasn’t commenting on it being a sensible/“meaningful” thing to argue about… just a possible rebuttal for when some shmuck feels like attacking one’s career.
Yup. I wasn’t commenting on it being a sensible/“meaningful” thing to argue about… just a possible rebuttal for when some shmuck feels like attacking one’s career.
The "HTML isn't a real programming language." crap started before CSS existed, and I sadly participated in it and the PHP hate back then. I did actually write PHP as part of my job at the time, so...
The "HTML isn't a real programming language." crap started before CSS existed, and I sadly participated in it and the PHP hate back then. I did actually write PHP as part of my job at the time, so that hate was at least somewhat justified, but it became clear that to me that that sort of behavior is nothing but a net negative and should be avoided. It is very easy to fall into that faux superiority/gatekeeping mentality, especially if your friends or coworkers also do it.
yeah I think a lot of people (myself included) will often conflate “Fuck PHP, it’s a shit language” with “Fuck PHP, I hate using it”. I am forever on the “fuck PHP” train because of my experiences...
yeah I think a lot of people (myself included) will often conflate “Fuck PHP, it’s a shit language” with “Fuck PHP, I hate using it”. I am forever on the “fuck PHP” train because of my experiences working with it in college and for a few years at my current job; I just find it extremely frustrating to work with every time I am asked to. But that doesn’t mean it’s inherently a bad language or that people should feel bad for liking/using it. So usually I just keep my thoughts on it to myself unless directly asked.
You would think so, but unfortunately the types of guys making these types of comments are frequently much more resistant to such arguments than you'd expect if they actually only cared about...
You would think so, but unfortunately the types of guys making these types of comments are frequently much more resistant to such arguments than you'd expect if they actually only cared about definitions and such.
I think it's a fairly low-effort yet effective tactic to "otherize" a similar out-group so that you feel more belonging into your in-group, to the point of forgetting you are essentially making...
I doubt it's limited to tech
I think it's a fairly low-effort yet effective tactic to "otherize" a similar out-group so that you feel more belonging into your in-group, to the point of forgetting you are essentially making the same thing as the out-group. See: aikido vs BJJ/MMA, non-stick pans vs carbon steel / cast-iron, US vs Euro urbanism, pull-through sharpener vs stone, smartphone camera vs dedicated camera,
I'm not super familiar with most of your examples (other than urbanism/transit, where in my experience Americans are actually the strongest critics of how North American cities are designed). But...
I'm not super familiar with most of your examples (other than urbanism/transit, where in my experience Americans are actually the strongest critics of how North American cities are designed). But yeah ultimately I think we humans can make anything an in-group/out-group think, and it's up to us to resist that urge when we want to be welcoming.
But HTML is categorically not a programming language. It's a markup language, with no built in mechanisms for control flow or any of the other features that make a programming language able to do...
But HTML is categorically not a programming language. It's a markup language, with no built in mechanisms for control flow or any of the other features that make a programming language able to do stuff. If you only know HTML, you're not a programmer. I don't think that's gatekeeping any more than saying someone who has never performed surgery isn't a surgeon.
Where I see real gatekeeping is when my fellow engineers look down on those who primarily work in HTML+CSS+Javascript, or some other stack they view as inferior to their own. I don't approve of that one bit, it's a perfectly valid stack that has its issues just like every other stack. It's also a stack that has the most demand right now, so it has been a lot of people's entry point into the industry over the last 10-15 years.
Ultimately the discussion very rarely happens in a context where that distinction matters for anything other than this "I'm better than you" contempt culture nonsense.
I didn't ignore it, I disagree with it. I'm sure there are people who use the argument just to be crappy to others, but the vast majority of conversations I've had about it in my professional...
I didn't ignore it, I disagree with it. I'm sure there are people who use the argument just to be crappy to others, but the vast majority of conversations I've had about it in my professional career have been in the context of teaching interns the difference between HTML and Javascript.
The only people I've known who know HTML but not any programming language are designers. Maybe some of my peers view designers as being beneath them, but I view designers as wizards capable of doing things I know I can't and are equally vital for shipping a quality product.
I think that context would have been useful in your comment, because by not including it in your response, it did look quite a bit like ignoring or disregarding how much the person you replied to...
I think that context would have been useful in your comment, because by not including it in your response, it did look quite a bit like ignoring or disregarding how much the person you replied to doesn't like the discourse that you started to engage in.
The point is that the shit talking is bad. If you're not doing that, you're probably not "the problem" but idk that jumping off that to share otherwise valid criticisms is quite the time.
This came across my Bluesky and despite having zero programming experience* I could understand it and found it relevant to my experiences in other areas. Whether it's "PC gaming vs Console gaming"...
This came across my Bluesky and despite having zero programming experience* I could understand it and found it relevant to my experiences in other areas. Whether it's "PC gaming vs Console gaming" or "reading genre fiction vs reading non-fiction or literary fiction" the currency of contempt culture is a real thing.
I've seen other discussion here about programming languages and the hierarchies within that and thought others might appreciate it from either my outsider angle or the author's insider angle.
*I built a few websites back in the day, both on geocities and later with Dreamweaver, and did one of those "solve the puzzle by writing a program" books that looked like choose your own adventure but weren't, so I guess that's not true but that was over 25 years ago and I was on Windows 3.0 for the latter, so I'm not gonna count it.
I found your comment to be more insightful than the actual article. Details matter, and the repeated claims of “intent is not magic” made it clear the author is disinterested in those. Who cares...
I found your comment to be more insightful than the actual article.
Details matter, and the repeated claims of “intent is not magic” made it clear the author is disinterested in those. Who cares if the criticisms are valid, outdated, or never were true in the first place? Their existence scares the women.
The people who already are concerned with gender inequality in the industry don’t need the article. I can’t imagine someone who wasn’t already concerned with that having any reaction other than “fuck you, there is no ‘we’: I’m going to criticize PHP extra-hard.”
Also, if the focus is on how PHP hate is powering sexism, why the calls to stop hating on the PublicAbstractStringBeanFactory?
Some better arguments against blind PHP hate:
Comparison of PHP with similarly janky contemporaries and why it’s PHP that was uniquely despised
Discussions of how the most widely-mocked footguns haven’t been relevant since Obama’s first term—modern PHP is legitimately good
A contrarian argument of Bush-era PHP being good, actually
A history of why it was PHP that became popular enough to attract widespread vitriol: why wasn’t some other language the default for self-taught web programmers?
It’s an ecosystem problem: those Bush-era footguns stick around due to SEO spam tutorials remaining highly ranked despite massive improvements to the language and core ecosystem.
The examples in your comment, however, did spark higher-level thoughts. In addition to the two you provided, there are also the Randroid vs. iToddler and Crapple v. M$ flamewars (not to mention endless Linux distro debates or music genres as substitutes for personality). The commonality they have is that they all burn most intensely among teens through entry-level employees. They have not made anything, so they compare their toolchests to brag that when they do, it will be so much better than things made the normie way.
The author of the article explicitly cited PHP as an example where they participated in this behavior unthinkingly until they were called out on it. They themselves serve as a counterexample to...
The people who already are concerned with gender inequality in the industry don’t need the article. I can’t imagine someone who wasn’t already concerned with that having any reaction other than “fuck you, there is no ‘we’: I’m going to criticize PHP extra-hard.
The author of the article explicitly cited PHP as an example where they participated in this behavior unthinkingly until they were called out on it. They themselves serve as a counterexample to your claim here. There are absolutely people who aren't proud bigots who still do things that unintentionally make people who aren't part of the cis white male majority in tech feel unwelcome in their spaces, and a larger subset than you think are willing to try to do better when they're made aware of particular behavior that's causing harm. Just because you don't think arguments that this is making a community an unwelcome place for women (or some other minority in tech) are strong doesn't mean that no one else could possibly find them convincing.
You've also majorly missed the point of the article if you think it's about anything specific or unique to PHP -- PHP hate is being used as one example of a pattern of behavior that's extremely pervasive throughout tech more generally, and it's being used as the example because it's where the author of the article had to confront this behavior in themselves.
So I know nothing about programming and can't speak to most of what you wrote but I found "Their existence scares the women" to be really dismissive. The author's focus on "intent" is honestly...
So I know nothing about programming and can't speak to most of what you wrote but I found "Their existence scares the women" to be really dismissive. The author's focus on "intent" is honestly kinder than I would be. I think people do intent to push, in this case, PHP programmers away, they just didn't intend that push to have discriminatory side effects.
The point isn't genuine criticism of anything, it's the mocking and the superiority. The "well anyone who does X is clearly not a REAL Y". There are genuine criticisms of PC gaming and console gaming, genuine criticisms of Android vs iOS, but having watched people be excluded from group texts because they use an Android phone instead of their "friends" using a different app, there's absolutely contempt culture around all of those things.
And if someone's response is "fuck you I'll do it more" then they're just an asshole. There's no difference between that mentality and being pissed you "can't" say a slur. If that many people in tech are going to double down, it rather proves the point.
This is something I’ve been familiar with for a long time, having been a Mac user for the better part of three decades now. Dunking on Macs and their users has been an internet pastime for as long...
This is something I’ve been familiar with for a long time, having been a Mac user for the better part of three decades now. Dunking on Macs and their users has been an internet pastime for as long as I’ve been on the internet and has at points been so common that it has managed to leak out of nerd circles into more mainstream culture.
It’s not fun the be the subject of, and like other types of negativity it tends to fuel a cycle. For example, after the Mac operating system switched over to being a *nixlike and became popular with software devs, particularly during the rise of Ruby on Rails, many Mac (and Linux) users displayed this attitude towards Windows users looking to learn and build with Rails (which at the time, was badly supported on Windows) in a sort of schadenfreude — after years of being made fun of for not having any software to run, it felt good to have the situation reversed for once (“How’s it feel now that the shoe’s on the other foot?”). Of course, that didn’t make it right, but that’s how that played out.
Where I really saw contempt culture explode, though, was Reddit and later Twitter. Both platforms are built to reward dunks/takedowns, which are both mainstays of that culture. It existed on old school forums that preceded those of course, but it was relatively mild in comparison without upvotes and post burying to amplify it.
All that said, I would be cautious of efforts to address contempt culture being taken to extremes, making for “exclusively positive” spaces where it's difficult or impossible to pose constructive criticism. An environment like this brings high risk of stagnation and stunting of growth… being entirely uncritical makes it impossible to acknowledge problems and fix them.
I used to be one of those internet users that dunked on the Mac and iPhone people. Well I was always mostly a lurker, but I mentally agreed with the dunking. Now I use a Mac and iPhone. I try not...
I used to be one of those internet users that dunked on the Mac and iPhone people. Well I was always mostly a lurker, but I mentally agreed with the dunking. Now I use a Mac and iPhone.
I try not to criticize products I haven’t used. And when I do criticize things, I try to make sure it is accurate. There are so many good reasons to criticize Apple and Mac. We don’t need to make up reasons that they are bad. The same is true for all platforms. Take a look at the products you like. If you can’t find a flaw, you are a fanboy and need to reevaluate your relationship with that soulless corporation. Everything is flawed and can be criticized. The people who use the product usually are the best situated to criticize it. I wish we could convince everyone to stop trying to prove that their product is better than the alternative.
I disliked Apple since shortly after iTunes first came out, but it was fine and rarely an issue. After iPhones became incredibly popular I definitely joined the "fuck apple" team though it was...
I disliked Apple since shortly after iTunes first came out, but it was fine and rarely an issue. After iPhones became incredibly popular I definitely joined the "fuck apple" team though it was mostly in response to the same behavior from iPhone users. You shit on me for not having iMessage, I'll shit on you back.
But mostly i wanted the shit talk to stop, it just felt like I was stuck in it. I've since had to use an iPhone and iPad for work and... I still hate them, frankly.
But I've at least been able to break out of the "contempt" cycle. If they work for someone, great, and if our messages don't work, then let's download an app that makes them work. There's actual bad stuff in the world, which phone someone uses isn't one of them.
I like this a lot. Good on you for breaking that contempt cycle. I don’t think I have made it there yet. I am past the contempt for the sake of contempt, but I still have some self improvement to...
I like this a lot. Good on you for breaking that contempt cycle. I don’t think I have made it there yet. I am past the contempt for the sake of contempt, but I still have some self improvement to do. I still harbor some contempt for what I think are good reasons, but contempt, even if for good reasons, doesn’t improve the world. I think, recently, I have started thinking that I have improved myself all I can. Thanks for reminding me that there are still improvements I can make.
I think the author's suggestion of criticisms coming from within is a good balance here. They pick JavaScript as an example, and it's definitely true that JavaScript devs criticize the language...
An environment like this brings high risk of stagnation and stunting of growth… being entirely uncritical makes it impossible to acknowledge problems and fix them.
I think the author's suggestion of criticisms coming from within is a good balance here. They pick JavaScript as an example, and it's definitely true that JavaScript devs criticize the language itself a lot, but without the contempt culture nonsense because it's done in the context of people working with the language. I reckon that PHP improved so significantly over time in large part because of this type of internal criticism, rather than the scorn from those who don't use it. Similarly, I work mostly with Python, and my (many) criticisms of it are probably going to be more relevant to actually improving things for others who use it regularly than those from someone who hates Python on principle and is complaining about how it sucks because it has meaningful whitespace.
I would agree that criticism from within is most relevant, but that’s something that’s more or less acceptable depending on the community. Taking the example of JavaScript, as something of an...
I would agree that criticism from within is most relevant, but that’s something that’s more or less acceptable depending on the community. Taking the example of JavaScript, as something of an outsider (I write it sometimes, but don’t actively participate in the surrounding community), my impression is that its level of internal self-criticality is considerably lower than that of other languages like PHP. This might’ve played a role in some of its longstanding weaknesses (such as its unusually thin stdlib, which makes for the crazy dependency trees it’s famous for) having persisted.
Another community that might fall into this bucket is that of Kotlin. There’s several times when I’ve been writing it and wondered why some bit of it feels awkward, searched and found discussions about that particular awkwardness posted by language users, and seen an overall dismissive attitude towards that criticism.
My long experience in the JS community been a pervasive culture of people making jokes at the language's expense, and using it anyway because it's what runs in websites. The most popular image...
My long experience in the JS community been a pervasive culture of people making jokes at the language's expense, and using it anyway because it's what runs in websites.
The most popular image meme I can think of is this one about JavasScript: The Good Parts, where the joke is that the language is mostly bad parts.
Probably the most-heavily memed video ever made about the language, Wat, is about how baffling the language can be. The subtitle on that page is "This talk does not represent anyone's actual opinion." - it's not mean spirited, but it's shining the light exactly where it deserves.
Criticism has always been abundant, and it's part of why TypeScript is so loved - an excellent type system combined with the modern changes to the language (the bulk of which landed in 2015) make for (finally) a language that doesn't make you lose your hair.
This might’ve played a role in some of its longstanding weaknesses (such as its unusually thin stdlib, which makes for the crazy dependency trees it’s famous for) having persisted.
Far more influential is the fact that each of the dominant players on the web has to agree before anything changes on the platform, and backwards compatibility has been guaranteed since 1995, a situation few languages have to deal with. This conservatism has been a boon in some ways because it means the ideas that do tend to make it in are more fully baked and accepted across the industry - but up until 2015 the situation was dire and the people working with it were painfully aware, and the self-deprecating culture continues.
Certainly this is a major factor, but from my perspective it looks like the majority of the available energy and resources are being occupied by work on “sexy” browser APIs, which tend to get...
Far more influential is the fact that each of the dominant players on the web has to agree before anything changes on the platform, and backwards compatibility has been guaranteed since 1995, a situation few languages have to deal with.
Certainly this is a major factor, but from my perspective it looks like the majority of the available energy and resources are being occupied by work on “sexy” browser APIs, which tend to get favored over more “boring” work of putting language/ecosystem fundamentals like stdlib in a better place. Google in particular seems to have a penchant for this.
I think it's definitely possible there's varying levels of criticism within these communities, but I think it's hard to really assess how accurate one's impression is of a given community when...
I think it's definitely possible there's varying levels of criticism within these communities, but I think it's hard to really assess how accurate one's impression is of a given community when you're not part of it. I'm even less familiar with the specific communities you discuss than you are, so I can't really weigh in on those. I think advocating for more internal discussion and criticism within that kind of community is something that can coexist with pushing against the contempt culture criticism from outside that the author talks about here.
Totally agree, but I do think it’s important to be mindful of keeping the two stances separate, because with the natural flow of members in and out of communities, it’s easy for the group’s stance...
Totally agree, but I do think it’s important to be mindful of keeping the two stances separate, because with the natural flow of members in and out of communities, it’s easy for the group’s stance towards external criticism to become its stance towards internal criticism as well.
There's an underdog thing going on with nerd culture. Unfortunately, people who are underdogs in some respects will sometimes think it excuses nasty behavior. It's in the literature - there are...
There's an underdog thing going on with nerd culture. Unfortunately, people who are underdogs in some respects will sometimes think it excuses nasty behavior. It's in the literature - there are nasty stories in books like Steven Levy's Hackers and the Jargon File, which are old enough that I read them as an undergrad.
A modern example of contempt culture is Nikhil Suresh's writing. He's a good writer with a lot to say and brings a lot of passion to it, but the contempt is pretty extreme, as you can tell from the titles alone. (Would we have heard of him if he blogged like a reasonable person?)
Whether are not people really are the underdogs depends on the situation. Tech workers, like other workers, sometimes feel like the underdogs when they aren't listened to by management. The cultural divide depends on the company. At some companies, the managers are very technical. Others, not so much, though they might have other skills.
People who are undeniably leaders in the tech community and have done great things often aren't role models in all respects. Sometimes they do things that shouldn't be imitated.
I think it's useful, you may not, do a Find/Replace with elitism if you want before reading it, but I certainly can't answer your question without reading the author's mind. However, I think many...
I think it's useful, you may not, do a Find/Replace with elitism if you want before reading it, but I certainly can't answer your question without reading the author's mind.
However, I think many of the people who engage in it don't consider themselves elites.
But you're right. Why have another word like "elitist" when we have snob, arrogant, condescending, egotistical, pompous, smart-ass and asshole right there? Can't possibly think of a reason. /s
I'm so glad you posted this -- "contempt culture" is a really good term for this that I wish I'd had on hand in previous discussions about why I loathe people who talk about how "HTML isn't a real programming language." Ultimately the discussion very rarely happens in a context where that distinction matters for anything other than this "I'm better than you" contempt culture nonsense. I particularly value how the author here is willing to point out that in their example with PHP, this contempt culture is frequently deployed against women in particular. This is a pattern I've definitely noticed in tech (and I doubt it's limited to tech).
I don't think it is limited to tech, I can think of several instances of it in psych for example, and even "what foreign language you took in school" had some currency to it at one point in my life. And when tech is one of the spaces it pushes out women, there are a lot of spaces where it pushes out other groups.
For future reference: HTML together with CSS (and user interaction) is Turing-complete, which is a definition of “real” programming language this type of person will most likely have to accept as defeat. :P
It's about as meaningful as saying Magic the Gathering is a programming language.
If you ever say something this to someone who says they program in HTML or who calls themselves a programmer, you're being an asshole no matter how technically correct you believe you are.
Yup. I wasn’t commenting on it being a sensible/“meaningful” thing to argue about… just a possible rebuttal for when some shmuck feels like attacking one’s career.
This really wants me to make my personal site have a MtG interface, but that would be a terrible UI experience
The "HTML isn't a real programming language." crap started before CSS existed, and I sadly participated in it and the PHP hate back then. I did actually write PHP as part of my job at the time, so that hate was at least somewhat justified, but it became clear that to me that that sort of behavior is nothing but a net negative and should be avoided. It is very easy to fall into that faux superiority/gatekeeping mentality, especially if your friends or coworkers also do it.
yeah I think a lot of people (myself included) will often conflate “Fuck PHP, it’s a shit language” with “Fuck PHP, I hate using it”. I am forever on the “fuck PHP” train because of my experiences working with it in college and for a few years at my current job; I just find it extremely frustrating to work with every time I am asked to. But that doesn’t mean it’s inherently a bad language or that people should feel bad for liking/using it. So usually I just keep my thoughts on it to myself unless directly asked.
You would think so, but unfortunately the types of guys making these types of comments are frequently much more resistant to such arguments than you'd expect if they actually only cared about definitions and such.
True, and so is Powerpoint
I think it's a fairly low-effort yet effective tactic to "otherize" a similar out-group so that you feel more belonging into your in-group, to the point of forgetting you are essentially making the same thing as the out-group. See: aikido vs BJJ/MMA, non-stick pans vs carbon steel / cast-iron, US vs Euro urbanism, pull-through sharpener vs stone, smartphone camera vs dedicated camera,
I'm not super familiar with most of your examples (other than urbanism/transit, where in my experience Americans are actually the strongest critics of how North American cities are designed). But yeah ultimately I think we humans can make anything an in-group/out-group think, and it's up to us to resist that urge when we want to be welcoming.
But HTML is categorically not a programming language. It's a markup language, with no built in mechanisms for control flow or any of the other features that make a programming language able to do stuff. If you only know HTML, you're not a programmer. I don't think that's gatekeeping any more than saying someone who has never performed surgery isn't a surgeon.
Where I see real gatekeeping is when my fellow engineers look down on those who primarily work in HTML+CSS+Javascript, or some other stack they view as inferior to their own. I don't approve of that one bit, it's a perfectly valid stack that has its issues just like every other stack. It's also a stack that has the most demand right now, so it has been a lot of people's entry point into the industry over the last 10-15 years.
You ignored this part.
I didn't ignore it, I disagree with it. I'm sure there are people who use the argument just to be crappy to others, but the vast majority of conversations I've had about it in my professional career have been in the context of teaching interns the difference between HTML and Javascript.
The only people I've known who know HTML but not any programming language are designers. Maybe some of my peers view designers as being beneath them, but I view designers as wizards capable of doing things I know I can't and are equally vital for shipping a quality product.
I think that context would have been useful in your comment, because by not including it in your response, it did look quite a bit like ignoring or disregarding how much the person you replied to doesn't like the discourse that you started to engage in.
The point is that the shit talking is bad. If you're not doing that, you're probably not "the problem" but idk that jumping off that to share otherwise valid criticisms is quite the time.
This came across my Bluesky and despite having zero programming experience* I could understand it and found it relevant to my experiences in other areas. Whether it's "PC gaming vs Console gaming" or "reading genre fiction vs reading non-fiction or literary fiction" the currency of contempt culture is a real thing.
I've seen other discussion here about programming languages and the hierarchies within that and thought others might appreciate it from either my outsider angle or the author's insider angle.
*I built a few websites back in the day, both on geocities and later with Dreamweaver, and did one of those "solve the puzzle by writing a program" books that looked like choose your own adventure but weren't, so I guess that's not true but that was over 25 years ago and I was on Windows 3.0 for the latter, so I'm not gonna count it.
I found your comment to be more insightful than the actual article.
Details matter, and the repeated claims of “intent is not magic” made it clear the author is disinterested in those. Who cares if the criticisms are valid, outdated, or never were true in the first place? Their existence scares the women.
The people who already are concerned with gender inequality in the industry don’t need the article. I can’t imagine someone who wasn’t already concerned with that having any reaction other than “fuck you, there is no ‘we’: I’m going to criticize PHP extra-hard.”
Also, if the focus is on how PHP hate is powering sexism, why the calls to stop hating on the PublicAbstractStringBeanFactory?
Some better arguments against blind PHP hate:
The examples in your comment, however, did spark higher-level thoughts. In addition to the two you provided, there are also the Randroid vs. iToddler and Crapple v. M$ flamewars (not to mention endless Linux distro debates or music genres as substitutes for personality). The commonality they have is that they all burn most intensely among teens through entry-level employees. They have not made anything, so they compare their toolchests to brag that when they do, it will be so much better than things made the normie way.
The author of the article explicitly cited PHP as an example where they participated in this behavior unthinkingly until they were called out on it. They themselves serve as a counterexample to your claim here. There are absolutely people who aren't proud bigots who still do things that unintentionally make people who aren't part of the cis white male majority in tech feel unwelcome in their spaces, and a larger subset than you think are willing to try to do better when they're made aware of particular behavior that's causing harm. Just because you don't think arguments that this is making a community an unwelcome place for women (or some other minority in tech) are strong doesn't mean that no one else could possibly find them convincing.
You've also majorly missed the point of the article if you think it's about anything specific or unique to PHP -- PHP hate is being used as one example of a pattern of behavior that's extremely pervasive throughout tech more generally, and it's being used as the example because it's where the author of the article had to confront this behavior in themselves.
So I know nothing about programming and can't speak to most of what you wrote but I found "Their existence scares the women" to be really dismissive. The author's focus on "intent" is honestly kinder than I would be. I think people do intent to push, in this case, PHP programmers away, they just didn't intend that push to have discriminatory side effects.
The point isn't genuine criticism of anything, it's the mocking and the superiority. The "well anyone who does X is clearly not a REAL Y". There are genuine criticisms of PC gaming and console gaming, genuine criticisms of Android vs iOS, but having watched people be excluded from group texts because they use an Android phone instead of their "friends" using a different app, there's absolutely contempt culture around all of those things.
And if someone's response is "fuck you I'll do it more" then they're just an asshole. There's no difference between that mentality and being pissed you "can't" say a slur. If that many people in tech are going to double down, it rather proves the point.
This is something I’ve been familiar with for a long time, having been a Mac user for the better part of three decades now. Dunking on Macs and their users has been an internet pastime for as long as I’ve been on the internet and has at points been so common that it has managed to leak out of nerd circles into more mainstream culture.
It’s not fun the be the subject of, and like other types of negativity it tends to fuel a cycle. For example, after the Mac operating system switched over to being a *nixlike and became popular with software devs, particularly during the rise of Ruby on Rails, many Mac (and Linux) users displayed this attitude towards Windows users looking to learn and build with Rails (which at the time, was badly supported on Windows) in a sort of schadenfreude — after years of being made fun of for not having any software to run, it felt good to have the situation reversed for once (“How’s it feel now that the shoe’s on the other foot?”). Of course, that didn’t make it right, but that’s how that played out.
Where I really saw contempt culture explode, though, was Reddit and later Twitter. Both platforms are built to reward dunks/takedowns, which are both mainstays of that culture. It existed on old school forums that preceded those of course, but it was relatively mild in comparison without upvotes and post burying to amplify it.
All that said, I would be cautious of efforts to address contempt culture being taken to extremes, making for “exclusively positive” spaces where it's difficult or impossible to pose constructive criticism. An environment like this brings high risk of stagnation and stunting of growth… being entirely uncritical makes it impossible to acknowledge problems and fix them.
I used to be one of those internet users that dunked on the Mac and iPhone people. Well I was always mostly a lurker, but I mentally agreed with the dunking. Now I use a Mac and iPhone.
I try not to criticize products I haven’t used. And when I do criticize things, I try to make sure it is accurate. There are so many good reasons to criticize Apple and Mac. We don’t need to make up reasons that they are bad. The same is true for all platforms. Take a look at the products you like. If you can’t find a flaw, you are a fanboy and need to reevaluate your relationship with that soulless corporation. Everything is flawed and can be criticized. The people who use the product usually are the best situated to criticize it. I wish we could convince everyone to stop trying to prove that their product is better than the alternative.
I disliked Apple since shortly after iTunes first came out, but it was fine and rarely an issue. After iPhones became incredibly popular I definitely joined the "fuck apple" team though it was mostly in response to the same behavior from iPhone users. You shit on me for not having iMessage, I'll shit on you back.
But mostly i wanted the shit talk to stop, it just felt like I was stuck in it. I've since had to use an iPhone and iPad for work and... I still hate them, frankly.
But I've at least been able to break out of the "contempt" cycle. If they work for someone, great, and if our messages don't work, then let's download an app that makes them work. There's actual bad stuff in the world, which phone someone uses isn't one of them.
I like this a lot. Good on you for breaking that contempt cycle. I don’t think I have made it there yet. I am past the contempt for the sake of contempt, but I still have some self improvement to do. I still harbor some contempt for what I think are good reasons, but contempt, even if for good reasons, doesn’t improve the world. I think, recently, I have started thinking that I have improved myself all I can. Thanks for reminding me that there are still improvements I can make.
I think the author's suggestion of criticisms coming from within is a good balance here. They pick JavaScript as an example, and it's definitely true that JavaScript devs criticize the language itself a lot, but without the contempt culture nonsense because it's done in the context of people working with the language. I reckon that PHP improved so significantly over time in large part because of this type of internal criticism, rather than the scorn from those who don't use it. Similarly, I work mostly with Python, and my (many) criticisms of it are probably going to be more relevant to actually improving things for others who use it regularly than those from someone who hates Python on principle and is complaining about how it sucks because it has meaningful whitespace.
I would agree that criticism from within is most relevant, but that’s something that’s more or less acceptable depending on the community. Taking the example of JavaScript, as something of an outsider (I write it sometimes, but don’t actively participate in the surrounding community), my impression is that its level of internal self-criticality is considerably lower than that of other languages like PHP. This might’ve played a role in some of its longstanding weaknesses (such as its unusually thin stdlib, which makes for the crazy dependency trees it’s famous for) having persisted.
Another community that might fall into this bucket is that of Kotlin. There’s several times when I’ve been writing it and wondered why some bit of it feels awkward, searched and found discussions about that particular awkwardness posted by language users, and seen an overall dismissive attitude towards that criticism.
My long experience in the JS community been a pervasive culture of people making jokes at the language's expense, and using it anyway because it's what runs in websites.
The most popular image meme I can think of is this one about JavasScript: The Good Parts, where the joke is that the language is mostly bad parts.
Probably the most-heavily memed video ever made about the language, Wat, is about how baffling the language can be. The subtitle on that page is "This talk does not represent anyone's actual opinion." - it's not mean spirited, but it's shining the light exactly where it deserves.
Criticism has always been abundant, and it's part of why TypeScript is so loved - an excellent type system combined with the modern changes to the language (the bulk of which landed in 2015) make for (finally) a language that doesn't make you lose your hair.
Far more influential is the fact that each of the dominant players on the web has to agree before anything changes on the platform, and backwards compatibility has been guaranteed since 1995, a situation few languages have to deal with. This conservatism has been a boon in some ways because it means the ideas that do tend to make it in are more fully baked and accepted across the industry - but up until 2015 the situation was dire and the people working with it were painfully aware, and the self-deprecating culture continues.
Certainly this is a major factor, but from my perspective it looks like the majority of the available energy and resources are being occupied by work on “sexy” browser APIs, which tend to get favored over more “boring” work of putting language/ecosystem fundamentals like stdlib in a better place. Google in particular seems to have a penchant for this.
This may be a misperception of my own, though.
I think it's definitely possible there's varying levels of criticism within these communities, but I think it's hard to really assess how accurate one's impression is of a given community when you're not part of it. I'm even less familiar with the specific communities you discuss than you are, so I can't really weigh in on those. I think advocating for more internal discussion and criticism within that kind of community is something that can coexist with pushing against the contempt culture criticism from outside that the author talks about here.
Totally agree, but I do think it’s important to be mindful of keeping the two stances separate, because with the natural flow of members in and out of communities, it’s easy for the group’s stance towards external criticism to become its stance towards internal criticism as well.
There's an underdog thing going on with nerd culture. Unfortunately, people who are underdogs in some respects will sometimes think it excuses nasty behavior. It's in the literature - there are nasty stories in books like Steven Levy's Hackers and the Jargon File, which are old enough that I read them as an undergrad.
A modern example of contempt culture is Nikhil Suresh's writing. He's a good writer with a lot to say and brings a lot of passion to it, but the contempt is pretty extreme, as you can tell from the titles alone. (Would we have heard of him if he blogged like a reasonable person?)
Whether are not people really are the underdogs depends on the situation. Tech workers, like other workers, sometimes feel like the underdogs when they aren't listened to by management. The cultural divide depends on the company. At some companies, the managers are very technical. Others, not so much, though they might have other skills.
People who are undeniably leaders in the tech community and have done great things often aren't role models in all respects. Sometimes they do things that shouldn't be imitated.
Why define a new term for what's elitist behaviour?
I think it's useful, you may not, do a Find/Replace with elitism if you want before reading it, but I certainly can't answer your question without reading the author's mind.
However, I think many of the people who engage in it don't consider themselves elites.
But you're right. Why have another word like "elitist" when we have snob, arrogant, condescending, egotistical, pompous, smart-ass and asshole right there? Can't possibly think of a reason. /s