Re: [Gendispatch] Diversity and Inclusiveness in the IETF

[Phillip Hallam-Baker <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, Feb 24, 2021 at 11:37 AM Christian Huitema <[e-mail]>
wrote:

>
> On 2/24/2021 1:39 AM, Vittorio Bertola wrote:
>
>
> Il 24/02/2021 08:22 Hannes Tschofenig <[e-mail]>
> <[e-mail]> ha scritto:
>
> The culture of hands-on work needs to be more than a responsibility of the
> document authors. It is a culture that has to cut across the organization,
> from working group chairs to the IESG. Currently, there are disincentives
> to work on code as a document author.
>
> I want people with hands-on experience in the leadership of an engineering
> organization. For me this is a form of diversity.
>
> The question is whether you *only* (mostly) want coders in the leadership,
> or whether you *also* want coders in the leadership. This makes a lot of
> difference in evaluating your position.
>
> Vittorio,
>
> The word "coder" is a somewhat insulting way to refer to software
> developers. Please stop. This vocabulary implies a hierarchy in which the
> specifications are developed by superior specification writers, then handed
> down to subservient "coders" who merely translate it into computer code.
> This is a very reductive way of considering software development. For
> example, it completely discards the interaction between implementation,
> deployment, testing, and user feedback. In the IETF, the writing of good
> specifications has always benefited from such interactions, and we want
> that to continue.
>
+1

I don't write much protocol code, I write synthesizers that write the code
for me. I try to work at the highest level of abstraction possible.