Great idea; shame about the name.

Here's the problem with using words like "bro" (however jokingly): the problem is not with what you[0] are thinking when you read the word "bro", but with what other people, especially newcomers, are thinking. The locker-room atmosphere that stuff like this creates is a huge barrier to entry for a lot of people, women especially, who infer that on top of all the technically difficult stuff that everyone has to learn to be CS types, they'll also have to deal with a constant barrage of "you're not our kind" flung at them by the in-group. You personally may not be intending that as your message, but I assure you that your personal intent does not matter when you are using language that has been associated with exclusion and discrimination.[1]

The problem here, if this program is actually intended to be used, is that just typing in the command would be a constant reminder of an entire subculture that is widely seen as[2] putting up walls and doors that say "NO GIЯLS ALOUD" around the programming profession, an attempt to preserve privilege. Those of you suggesting an alias are either being disingenuous or missing the point entirely.

[0] Meaning individuals, of whatever gender/race/class/whatever, that are likely to be reading HN.

[1] If you don't believe me, ponder for a moment sentences like, "But I like Negroes just fine!" Language matters.

[2] Again, you might not mean to reference that when you use words like "brogrammer". But it's how an awful lot of us read it.

EDIT: Rereading other posts on this page, I should add that I almost certainly got the phrase "shame about the name" stuck in my head from reading dewitt's post. Four words, such a concise summary of my attitude! :)

EDIT 2: "they'll have" -> "that everyone has" to clarify argument. Thx vezzy-fnord.

As a co-founder of Picnik, I was surprised by this article. It contained several errors which is pretty astonishing given its brevity. Here are a few corrections:

1) Sposato was not a founder of Picnik. He was hired by the two founders, myself and Darrin Massena. 2) Sposato did not decide to sell Picnik. Naturally he was very involved in the process, but the decision was ultimately made by the board (which Sposato was not on). I can tell you that it was not an easy choice. 3) Picnik was not a "photo-sharing" site, it was a photo editing site with very limited photo sharing. 4) "One-third of our 25-person team, including my two business partners, quit right off the bat”. Both co-founders worked at Google for slightly more than a year. Sposato was there for about two years. Most of the people who left were marketing support or office management. We did lose our lead designer to Apple, but I don't recall any other product related departures in the first year.

Picnik was amazing. Great team, we had a lot of fun and millions of amazing customers. It was very rewarding to work on a product that your customers love. Selling was a tough choice. Picnik was very healthy, profitable and growing. We felt like we were able to capture much of that value in the sale price and also have the opportunity to work on a product at Google that we felt would have a huge impact.

Unfortunately for us, within our first six months Google decided to focus on Google+ and there wasn't room for any other photo product outside of Google+. I completely understood at the time why Google+ was important to Google, it just wasn't important to me. So I left. I don't know how we could have been able to predict the shift in focus to Google+ even with perfect visibility into Google. From what I gather, such a large shift in focus and investment was a unprecedented in Google before Google+.

I think Google is a great company, I have a super high opinion of the people that I met there. Perhaps this wasn't the optimal exit for the Picnik team, but it was pretty damn good.

-mike harrington

Absolutely, lets throw away our sense of humor and wordplay because there are theoretically people that might be offended (maybe, kindof. You know. In theory.).

(N.B. the people that seem to be offended so far are offended on other peoples behalf..)

Isn't it way more offensive to assume that women are such dainty delicate creatures that like, they won't get the joke?

Awesome idea. Shame about the humorless nature of this community.

To me, a "bro" is a dumb, fratboy version of a man, which makes the name hilariously perfect. If you're feeling oppressed and excluded by a command name, your real problems lie elsewhere.

It's not about offending people. It's never about offending people.

Plenty of people could have delightfully off-color senses of humor, love playing Cards Against Humanity, and still find this name highly problematic. It's actually about the signals that we send by using language closely associated with groups or attitudes that have long histories of excluding women or others from our culture and community.

And just to throw an anecdote or two into the mix, I have at least two female friends in tech fitting that exact description who very explicitly avoid Hacker News for these reasons. Every time they see a woman speak up about being uncomfortable with some aspect of tech culture, their impression is that the community here closes ranks to shout her down rather than accepting the legitimacy of her experience. These are brilliant, fun, unflappable women, and they don't feel any need to subject themselves to that sort of crap. But that means that Hacker News (and to some degree, tech in general) doesn't get the benefit of their participation.

This is great. I'm really just looking for examples most of the time I'm looking through a man page anyways.

As for the "bro"trevorsy that is brewing in these comments. Lighten up for crying out loud.

Is the "bro" intended to be ironic, or are the creators actually not aware that the term is used to represent the worst (most misogynistic, most crass, least mature, least dependable) people currently flocking to the industry? It is by its very definition exclusionary.

I suppose "brogrammers" might be a target audience, but the concept of the tool itself is pretty good for just about anyone. Shame about the name.

Point.

It's such a shame that gender politics have created so many thorny issues in our industry, but you can't bury your head in the sand and pretend they're not there. If we had good female representation in the industry and we didn't have a small cluster of vocal misogynists, we'd be able to make cute jokes that play on gender. But sadly, we don't live in that world.

Yes, we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard, and yes it sucks. There is no firewall around the industry - we live our professional lives online so everybody can see the messy internals of software development world... and software development has a serious gender-issues image problem. Now, depending who you talk to, that might be just an image problem, or it might be a really large slice of our industry who are sexist. But the the truth of the issue doesn't matter for this case, the perception does.

And we all need to work together to change that perception.

It's a funny joke, I love the name.

Change it.

In what way is this sexist? There is not a single word of disparagement on that site. Nobody in their right mind would say that the word "bro" is sexist unless they're explicitly looking to be offended. (IE: picking a fight)

A few years ago I got testicular cancer. The information about the disease came in pieces: first all I knew was that there was a lump; then came the ultrasound, the CT scan, then biopsy of the testicle, then a second surgery to sample lymph nodes to which the cancer might have spread. At every step I would obsessively query my doctors for conditional probabilities: given what we'd just found out, what were the chances of dying? Of relapse? Of chemo? Of sterility? I was always incredibly frustrated at how vague their responses would be - they'd say, e.g. "we don't like to give probabilities because you just never know what will happen!". And I would think, "That's exactly the point of a probability! Please just tell me a number!"

One doctor eventually showed me a paper on outcomes for the lymph node surgery I had, with a relapse rate curve going out five years so. I found this incredibly helpful for managing my emotions because it let me track my progress in a very precise way: every monthly checkup that would go by uneventfully, I knew exactly what my chance of relapse had dropped to. The goal was to get to zero. More importantly, having actual numbers gave me something on which I could focus my optimism. It's so much worse to hear "you might become sterile" than "there's a 5% chance of becoming sterile". With the 5% number in mind, I'd do things like imagine myself in a room full of 20 people and think "wow, it would be incredibly unlikely to be randomly chosen from this group". Having spent a lot of time in a cancer hospital now -- around people who were much worse off than I was -- I believe that almost everyone has incredible reserves of optimism. I think it's better when the hopeful possibility is concretely defined - it makes it easier to imagine a path forward while you're stuck waiting for more information.

Mine is obviously a completely different situation from the terminal cancer described by the author, where the question isn't, "when will I be free of this cancer", but rather "when will I die from it". Testicular cancer is very treatable, and I never faced a significant chance of death. I'm sure I would have been in a much different psychological state if I had.

Also, PSA: testicular cancer is REALLY common for young males (if you're male you have a 1 in 500 chance of getting it between 20 and 34). Given HN user demographics, there are almost certainly some of you reading this who've gotten it already, or who will. You can save yourself a ton of trouble if you do a self-examination every once in a while. That's actually how I found out, and is a big reason that I avoided chemotherapy.