I'm a teacher now, but I've been programming computers in one form or another since the early 1980's when I was first introduced to them in junior high school.
In all those years, I have yet to find a compiler switch, interpreter setting, debugging command, editor configuration, or library function which has ever asked:
- What gender are you?
- Who do you love?
- What bits of anatomy were you born with?
- In what country were you born?
- What colour is your skin/hair/eyes?
- What holidays do you celebrate?
- What language do you speak?
- How fast can you run?
I know there are people out there for whom the "correct answers" to these meaningless questions are, sadly, important. I also know that often, these people look a lot like me.
I left my job in tech to become a teacher a few years ago (face it, tech companies have enough straight white cismale engineers). Now my job is teaching new generations of excited skilled makers (who look a lot less like me) how to build the cool shit they imagine, then getting myself and others the hell out of their way while they reinvent the world.
Computers have never cared about the people who program them. That means we have to.
Top comments (0)