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In The Doom of Multiple Storage Engines, Peter talks about how the storage engine concept of MySQL is usually spoken of in positive terms, but there are many negatives.

I have a hard time trying to figure out the deeper meaning behind Peter’s post, given that Percona writes a storage engine for MySQL, XtraDB. Does this mean that Percona will stop developing XtraDB? Does this mean that the Percona Server will diverge farther and farther away from MySQL so that they’re not compatible any more and migrating from MySQL to Percona Server is very difficult?

Or maybe it’s just that Peter is saying one thing and doing the opposite; which just seems wrong because that would be blatant hypocrisy on Percona’s part.

(This idea was a comment on the blog post but seems to be trapped in the spam filter, so I’m posting it; apologies if the comment comes through eventually….)

My own opinion of the issue: Peter is factually correct with what he says. However, it’s nice to have the framework and be allowed to use more than one storage engine, or use exclusively one storage engine that’s not MyISAM.

The Beacon Pattern:
- This is a “Get out of the business” pattern
- Identify an oft-occurring and annoying task
- Automate and document it to the point of being able to hand it off to someone far less technical

Example:
- System admins were being put in charge of scheduling rooms in the building
- They wrote a PHP web application to help them automate the task
- They refined the app, documented how to use it, and handed it off to a secretary
- They have to maintain the app, but it’s far less work.

The Community Pattern:

- Prior to launch of a new service, create user documentation for it.
- Point a few early adopters at the documentation and see if they can use the service with minimal support
- Use feedback to improve documentation, and the service
- Upon launch, create a mailing list, forum, IRC channel, or Jabber chat room and ask early adopters to help test it out.
- Upon launch, your early adopters are the community, and they’ll tell new users to use the tools you’ve provided instead of calling you.

Example:
- A beowulf cluster for an academic department
- Documented like crazy, early adopters were given early access to the cluster (demand was high)
- Crated a mailing list, early adopters were added to it with their consent, functionality was tested with them.
- Email announcing launch mentioned the early adopters in a ‘thank you’ secion, and linked them to their mailing list.

The DRY pattern
DRY = Don’t repeat yourself
Identify duplicate code in your automation scripts
Put subroutines that exist in an include file, and include them in your scripts.

Example:
- “sysadmin library”
- /var/lib/adm/.*pl
- Elapsed time and # of lines to script a task for which the library was useful plunged dramatically
– new tasks were thought up that were not considered before but were obvious now (ie, users that want to change their username)
– migrating to new services became much easier

The Chameleon Pattern
- Identify commonalities among your services
- Leverage those to create “Chameleon” servers that can be re-purposed on the fly
- Abstract as much of this away from the physical hardware
- Doesn’t need to involve virtualization, though it’s awfully handy if you can do it that way.
[this one is a bit harder to do with MySQL config files]

Example:
[puppet/cfengine were mentioned...]
ldapconfig.py – more than a script: a methodology

- But isn’t installing packages you don’t need bad? Depends on the package….ie, gcc is bad for enterprise

“Junior annoynances”

Terminal issues

Junior:
open terminal, login to machine1
think issue is with machine2, talks to machine1.
log out of machine1
log into machine2

Senior:
opens 2 terminals each of machine1 and machine2 to start

Junior:
networking issue ticket arrives
logs into server
runs tcpdump

Senior:
networking issue ticket arrives
logs into server
looks at logs

“Fix” vs. “Solution” ie “taking orders”
Junior will try fix a problem, senior will try to figure out what the problem is. ie, “I need a samba directory mounted under an NFS mount” a junior admin will try to do exactly that, a senior admin will ask “what are you trying to do with that?” because maybe all they need is a symlink.

Fanboyism
Signs you might be a fanboy:
- Disparaging users of latest stable release of $THING for not using the nightly (unstable) build which fixes more issues
- Creating false/invalid comparisons based on popular opinion instead of experience/facts
- Going against internal standards, breaking environmental consistency, to use $THING instead of $STANDARD (but this is also how disruptive technology works)
- Being in complete denial that most technology at some point or another stinks.
- Evaluating solutions based on “I like” instead of “we need” and “this does”.

The Beacon Pattern:
- This is a “Get out of the business” pattern
- Identify an oft-occurring and annoying task
- Automate and document it to the point of being able to hand it off to someone far less technical

Example:
- System admins were being put in charge of scheduling rooms in the building
- They wrote a PHP web application to help them automate the task
- They refined the app, documented how to use it, and handed it off to a secretary
- They have to maintain the app, but it’s far less work.

The Community Pattern:

- Prior to launch of a new service, create user documentation for it.
- Point a few early adopters at the documentation and see if they can use the service with minimal support
- Use feedback to improve documentation, and the service
- Upon launch, create a mailing list, forum, IRC channel, or Jabber chat room and ask early adopters to help test it out.
- Upon launch, your early adopters are the community, and they’ll tell new users to use the tools you’ve provided instead of calling you.

Example:
- A beowulf cluster for an academic department
- Documented like crazy, early adopters were given early access to the cluster (demand was high)
- Crated a mailing list, early adopters were added to it with their consent, functionality was tested with them.
- Email announcing launch mentioned the early adopters in a ‘thank you’ secion, and linked them to their mailing list.

The DRY pattern
DRY = Don’t repeat yourself
Identify duplicate code in your automation scripts
Put subroutines that exist in an include file, and include them in your scripts.

Example:
- “sysadmin library”
- /var/lib/adm/.*pl
- Elapsed time and # of lines to script a task for which the library was useful plunged dramatically
– new tasks were thought up that were not considered before but were obvious now (ie, users that want to change their username)
– migrating to new services became much easier

The Chameleon Pattern
- Identify commonalities among your services
- Leverage those to create “Chameleon” servers that can be re-purposed on the fly
- Abstract as much of this away from the physical hardware
- Doesn’t need to involve virtualization, though it’s awfully handy if you can do it that way.
[this one is a bit harder to do with MySQL config files]

Example:
[puppet/cfengine were mentioned...]
ldapconfig.py – more than a script: a methodology

- But isn’t installing packages you don’t need bad? Depends on the package….ie, gcc is bad for enterprise

“Junior annoynances”

Terminal issues

Junior:
open terminal, login to machine1
think issue is with machine2, talks to machine1.
log out of machine1
log into machine2

Senior:
opens 2 terminals each of machine1 and machine2 to start

Junior:
networking issue ticket arrives
logs into server
runs tcpdump

Senior:
networking issue ticket arrives
logs into server
looks at logs

“Fix” vs. “Solution” ie “taking orders”
Junior will try fix a problem, senior will try to figure out what the problem is. ie, “I need a samba directory mounted under an NFS mount” a junior admin will try to do exactly that, a senior admin will ask “what are you trying to do with that?” because maybe all they need is a symlink.

Fanboyism
Signs you might be a fanboy:
- Disparaging users of latest stable release of $THING for not using the nightly (unstable) build which fixes more issues
- Creating false/invalid comparisons based on popular opinion instead of experience/facts
- Going against internal standards, breaking environmental consistency, to use $THING instead of $STANDARD (but this is also how disruptive technology works)
- Being in complete denial that most technology at some point or another stinks.
- Evaluating solutions based on “I like” instead of “we need” and “this does”.

I am attending the Professional IT Community Conference – it is put on by the League of Professional System Administrators (LOPSA), and is a 2-day community conference. There are technical and “soft” topics — the audience is system administrators. While technical topics such as Essential IPv6 for Linux Administrators are not essential for my job, many of the “soft” topics are directly applicable and relevant to DBAs too. (I am speaking on How to Stop Hating MySQL tomorrow.)

So I am in Seeking Senior and Beyond: The Tech Skills That Get You Promoted. The first part talks about the definition of what it means to be senior, and it completely relates to DBA work:
works and plays well with other
understands “ability”
leads by example
lives to share knowledge
understands “Service”
thoughtful of the consequences of their actions
understands projects
cool under pressure

Good Qualities:
confident
empathetic
humane
personal
forthright
respectful
thorough

Bad Qualities:
disrespective
insensitive
incompetent
[my own addition - no follow through, lack of attention to detail]

The Dice/Monster Factor – what do job sites see as important for a senior position?

They back up the SAGE 5-year experience requirement
Ability to code in newer languages (Ruby/Python) is more prevalent (perhaps cloud-induced?)

The cloud allows sysadmin tasks to be done by anyone…..so developers can do sysadmin work, and you end up seeing schizophrenic job descriptions such as

About the 5-year requirement:
- Senior after 5 years? What happens after 10 years?
- Most electricians, by comparison, haven’t even completed an *apprenticeship* in 5 years.

Senior Administrators Code
- not just 20-line shell scripts
- coding skills are part of a sysadmin skill
- ability to code competently *is* a factor that separates juniors from seniors
- hiring managers expect senior admins to be competent coders.

If you are not a coder
- pick a language, any language
- do not listen to fans, find one that fits how you think, they all work…..
- …that being said, some languages are more practical than others (ie, .NET probably is not the best language to learn if you are a Unix sysadmin).

Popular admin languages:
- Perl: classic admin scripting language. Learn at least the basics, because you will see it in any environment that has been around for more than 5 years.

- Ruby: object-oriented language for people who mostly like Perl (except for its OO implementation)

- Python: object-oriented language for people who mostly hate Perl, objects or no objects. For example, you don’t have to create a String object to send an output.

But what if you do not have time to learn how to program?

- senior admins are better at managing their time than junior admins, so perhaps managing time
- time management means you’ll have more time to do things, it doesn’t mean all work work work.
- Read Time Management for System Administrators – there is Google Video of a presentation by the author, Tom Limoncelli.

Consider “The Cloud”
- starting to use developer APIs to perform sysadmin tasks, so learning programming is good.
- still growing, could supplant large portions of datacenter real estate
- a coder with sysadmin knowledge: Good
- a sysadmin with coding knowledge: Good
- a coder without sysadmin knowledge: OK
- a sysadmin with no coding interest/experience: Tough place to be in

Senior Admins Have Problems Too
Many don’t document or share knowledge
Maany don’t do a good job keeping up with their craft
Cannot always be highlighted as an example of how to deal with clients
Often reinvent the wheel – also usually there is no repository
Often don’t progress beyond the “senior admin” role

….on the other hand…..
cynicism can be good…..

Advice:
learn from the good traits
observe how others respond to their bad traits
think about how you might improve upon that
strive to work and play well with others, even if you don’t have a mentor for good/bad examples.

Now he’s going into talking about Patterns in System Administration….

I am attending the Professional IT Community Conference – it is put on by the League of Professional System Administrators (LOPSA), and is a 2-day community conference. There are technical and “soft” topics — the audience is system administrators. While technical topics such as Essential IPv6 for Linux Administrators are not essential for my job, many of the “soft” topics are directly applicable and relevant to DBAs too. (I am speaking on How to Stop Hating MySQL tomorrow.)

So I am in Seeking Senior and Beyond: The Tech Skills That Get You Promoted. The first part talks about the definition of what it means to be senior, and it completely relates to DBA work:
works and plays well with other
understands “ability”
leads by example
lives to share knowledge
understands “Service”
thoughtful of the consequences of their actions
understands projects
cool under pressure

Good Qualities:
confident
empathetic
humane
personal
forthright
respectful
thorough

Bad Qualities:
disrespective
insensitive
incompetent
[my own addition - no follow through, lack of attention to detail]

The Dice/Monster Factor – what do job sites see as important for a senior position?

They back up the SAGE 5-year experience requirement
Ability to code in newer languages (Ruby/Python) is more prevalent (perhaps cloud-induced?)

The cloud allows sysadmin tasks to be done by anyone…..so developers can do sysadmin work, and you end up seeing schizophrenic job descriptions such as

About the 5-year requirement:
- Senior after 5 years? What happens after 10 years?
- Most electricians, by comparison, haven’t even completed an *apprenticeship* in 5 years.

Senior Administrators Code
- not just 20-line shell scripts
- coding skills are part of a sysadmin skill
- ability to code competently *is* a factor that separates juniors from seniors
- hiring managers expect senior admins to be competent coders.

If you are not a coder
- pick a language, any language
- do not listen to fans, find one that fits how you think, they all work…..
- …that being said, some languages are more practical than others (ie, .NET probably is not the best language to learn if you are a Unix sysadmin).

Popular admin languages:
- Perl: classic admin scripting language. Learn at least the basics, because you will see it in any environment that has been around for more than 5 years.

- Ruby: object-oriented language for people who mostly like Perl (except for its OO implementation)

- Python: object-oriented language for people who mostly hate Perl, objects or no objects. For example, you don’t have to create a String object to send an output.

But what if you do not have time to learn how to program?

- senior admins are better at managing their time than junior admins, so perhaps managing time
- time management means you’ll have more time to do things, it doesn’t mean all work work work.
- Read Time Management for System Administrators – there is Google Video of a presentation by the author, Tom Limoncelli.

Consider “The Cloud”
- starting to use developer APIs to perform sysadmin tasks, so learning programming is good.
- still growing, could supplant large portions of datacenter real estate
- a coder with sysadmin knowledge: Good
- a sysadmin with coding knowledge: Good
- a coder without sysadmin knowledge: OK
- a sysadmin with no coding interest/experience: Tough place to be in

Senior Admins Have Problems Too
Many don’t document or share knowledge
Maany don’t do a good job keeping up with their craft
Cannot always be highlighted as an example of how to deal with clients
Often reinvent the wheel – also usually there is no repository
Often don’t progress beyond the “senior admin” role

….on the other hand…..
cynicism can be good…..

Advice:
learn from the good traits
observe how others respond to their bad traits
think about how you might improve upon that
strive to work and play well with others, even if you don’t have a mentor for good/bad examples.

Now he’s going into talking about Patterns in System Administration….

On Monday, Ronald Bradford posted that the independent Oracle Developer Tools User Group had opened up their Kaleidoscope Conference, well-known throughout the Oracle community for in-depth technical sessions for developers, to the MySQL community. Giuseppe Maxia posted his thoughts on Tuesday.

We have confirmed that there will be an entire MySQL track at Kaleidoscope! Because Kaleidoscope is less than 8 weeks away, we could not go through a standard call for papers. Ronald and I have been working to come up with appropriate topics and speakers for an audience that uses MySQL but is probably more familiar with Oracle. We contacted folks we thought would be interested, and who we thought could make it logistically, as the conference is in Washington, D.C.

We have (almost) finalized the list of speakers; the session abstracts will be finalized in the next few days. You can see the speakers at Kaleidoscope’s MySQL page, but I’ve also listed them below (alpha by last name):

Philip Antoniades, Sun/MySQL
Ronald Bradford, 42SQL
Sheeri K. Cabral, The Pythian Group
Laine Campbell, PalominoDB
Patrick Galbraith, Northscale
Sarah Novotny, Blue Gecko
Padraig O’Sullivan, Akiba Technologies Inc.
Jay Pipes, Rackspace Cloud
Dossy Shiobara, Panoptic.com
Matt Yonkovic, Percona

There are one or two more speakers we are waiting to hear back from. There will be 19 sessions, so some speakers will have more than one session.

I am very excited that MySQL has its own track at Kaleidoscope. In addition, Ronald and I will be able to attend our very first event as Oracle ACE Directors – the Sundown Sessions are a Birds-of-a-Feather-type discussion, with the Oracle ACE Directors being the panelists and the community asking questions. Immediately after the Sundown Sessions is a “Meet the Oracle ACE” event, the only part of the conference officially sponsored by Oracle.

Here’s a sneak peek at a video matrix — this is all the videos that include Pythian Group employees at the MySQL conference. I hope to have all the rest of the videos processed and uploaded within 24 hours, with a matrix similar to the one below (but of course with many more sessions).

This is not my notes about the MySQL conference that just occurred. These are my thoughts about MySQL conferences in general. Baron wrote in The History of OpenSQL Camp:

After O’Reilly/MySQL co-hosted MySQL Conference and Expo (a large commercial event) that year, there was a bit of dissatisfaction amongst a few people about the increasingly commercial and marketing-oriented nature of that conference. Some people refused to call the conference by its new name (Conference and Expo) and wanted to put pressure on MySQL to keep it a MySQL User’s Conference.

During the conference, I heard a lot of concern about whether or not O’Reilly would have a MySQL conference, and whether or not Oracle would decide to sponsor. I heard all of the following (in no particular order):

* If O’Reilly does not have a conference, what will we do?
* Maybe [http://www.opensqlcamp.org OpenSQLCamp] can be bigger instead of having an O’Reilly conference, because the O’Reilly conference is more commercial.
* If Oracle does not sponsor the O’Reilly conference, it means they don’t care about MySQL/the MySQL community.
* If Oracle sponsors the O’Reilly conference, they’ll ruin it by making it even more commercial.
* Oracle shouldn’t sponsor the O’Reilly conference, they should make a different technical conference, in a different hotel/location and bigger (6,000 people instead of 2,000).
* Oracle shouldn’t make their own technical conference for MySQL, they should let user groups get together and then sponsor it, like they do with Collaborate.

Obviously there are mixed messages here — I don’t see any clear directive from the community. Plenty of people have a strong opinion. What I do see happening is that there will probably be plenty of options:

I know that OpenSQLCamp is not dead — there will be 2 this year, check the website for details.

I also know know that there will be a *real* MySQL track at Oracle OpenWorld — there was a rumor that the number of sessions would be fewer than 5, but sources on the inside have said that will not be the case.

I also know that we will hear from O’Reilly in the next few months about next year’s MySQL conference.

So, regardless of what happens, the nay-sayers will say how awful it is, and the pollyannas will say how great it is. There are plenty of reasons that each scenario is good and bad; so keep that in mind.

Chief Corporate Architect at Oracle, been at Oracle since 1986, technology and architecture decisions, responsible for all open source at Oracle. Company-wide initiatives on standards management and security — http://en.oreilly.com/mysql2010/public/schedule/detail/12440.

Where MySQL fits within Oracle’s structure.

Oracle’s Strategy: Complete. Open. Integrated. (compare with MySQL’s strategy: Fast, Reliable, Easy to Use).

Most of the $$ spent by companies is not on software, but on integration. So Oracle makes software based on open standards that integrates well.

Most of the components talk to each other through open standards, so that customers can use other products, and standardize on the technology, which makes it much more likely that customers will continue to use Oracle.

Oracle invested heavily in open source even before the acquisition. Linux (Oracle Unbreakable Linux = Oracle Enterprise Linux = OEL). Clustering, data integrity, storage validation, asynchronous I/O, virtualiation technology that has been accepted back into the Linux kernel. They have enhanced Xen, in order to make a good Oracle VM server for x86. With Sun, they now have VirtualBox. In the 3 years of OEL, they have over 4,500 companies.

Oracle never settles for being second best at any level of the stack.
“Complete” means we meet most customer requirements at every level.
That’s why Oracle matters to Oracle and Oracle customers.

MySQL is small, lightweight, easy to install and easy to manage. These are different from Oracle, so MySQL is the RIGHT choice for many applications, so by adding MySQL to Oracle’s database offerings, it makes the Oracle solution more complete.

Investing in MySQL means:
making MySQL a better MySQL. Keep MySQL the #1 db for web apps.
improve enginnering consulting and support
24×7, world-class oracle support

MySQL community edition: “If we stop investing in the community edition, MySQL will stop being ubiquitous”.

They want to focus even more effort on:
web
embedded
telecom
integration with other products in the LAMP stack
Windows — #1 download platform is Windows, but it’s not the #1 *deployment* platform.

They want to invest more money in allowing Oracle tools to work with MySQL too. For example, Oracle Enterprise Manager for monitoring, Oracle Secure Backup for backups, and Oracle Audit Vault for auditing. (Pythian already has a free Oracle Grid Control plugin to monitor MySQL).

Oracle will keep pluggable storage engine API, they are starting a Storage Engine Advisory Board to talk about their requirements and experiences and future plans and product direction.

MySQL 5.5 is beta, that’s the big news. InnoDB is the default storage engine there.

5.5 is much faster….including more than 10x improvement in recovery times. There’s a 200% read-only 200% performance gain. Read/Write performance gain is 364% faster than MySQL 5.1.40. These are for large # of concurrent connections, like 1024 connections.

Better object/connection management, database administration, data modelling in MySQL workbench.

MySQL Cluster 7.1, improved administration, higher performance, java connectors, carrier grade availability and performance. “Extreme availability”.

They’re also making support better — MySQL Enterprise — bettter.

MySQL Enterprise Backup – formerly InnoDB hot backup. This is now included in MySQL Enterprise, not a separately paid for feature.

(Demo of MySQL enterprise manager)

In conclusion:
MySQL is important to Oracle and our customers — it’s part of Oracle’s complete, open, integrated strategy. Oracle is making MySQL better TODAY. A “come to Oracle OpenWorld pitch (I’ve been, it certainly is a great conference.)

I had an interesting conversation with Sheeri yesterday. She had pointed out that today was Ada Lovelace Day, a day devoted to highlight and thank the many women in the Information Technology industry for their contributions. She suggested that if I wanted to blog about it she would find that appropriate, given what we’ve achieved here at Pythian.

First, I consider that a huge compliment. And then, a distant second, I told Sheeri – no I don’t think I’ll blog about it, that’s not my thing.

This is the IM conversation that came out of that email exchange when Sheeri and I connected about an hour later. You may or may not find it interesting, but ultimately I thought it was interesting enough to share.

tl;dr: Happy Ada Lovelace Day.

expanded version:

Paul Vallee:
hey sheeri!
Sheeri K. Cabral:
heya!
Paul Vallee:
so a couple quick notes about ada lovelace then i’ll drop it ok :)
i want to keep the blog as much as possible as a personal voice
that means you get to maintain your voice
and i, mine
i want to avoid overusing it as “corporate message speak”
Sheeri K. Cabral:
that’s fair, the day is to draw attention to the achievements of women in tech.
Paul Vallee:
we have the news release section of the site for that
Sheeri K. Cabral:
yeah, I don’t quite think this is news-release-worthy
Paul Vallee:
personally, it makes me intensely queasy to single out any group
the reason it’s comfortable here is because your sex DOESN’T matter
i don’t want to post on any [insert minority here] IT day
I’m done with all that
my contribution is to make a place where diversity and tolerance are cultural imperatives of the first order
Sheeri K. Cabral:
so then post that :)
because you have made that place at Pythian
Paul Vallee:
and the goal of that is to … make it appropriately irrelevant as a subject for discussion or highlighting
without listing how much of a % of the company is female, etc.
sheeri, it’s just not my subject, it’s not my voice, for my blog
i won’t be posting about it :)
i hope you’ll forgive me
Sheeri K. Cabral:
I’ll forgive you.
Paul Vallee:
the closest i’ve ever come was on carl sagan’s anniversary of his death
Sheeri K. Cabral:
I just hope that your kids and partner don’t feel the same about Father’s Day
because you don’t need Father’s Day
you’re a great father every day, and your kids and partner should appreciate you every day
Paul Vallee:
http://www.pythian.com/news/341/the-fine-art-of-baloney-detection-in-honour-of-dr-carl-sagan/
Sheeri K. Cabral:
but sometimes it’s nice to have a special day.
Paul Vallee:
sheeri :)
Sheeri K. Cabral:
like when someone brings in cookies because your mother gave birth to you.
Paul Vallee:
that’s not forgiving me heh
Sheeri K. Cabral:
I’m giving you my perspective
there’s nothing to forgive, because you aren’t doing anything wrong.
Paul Vallee:
i struggle with this, i do
but ultimately, i rely on this principle
when folks wanted you to go public with your opinion on the mysql merger
you decided to do it with no pressure from me to write or not either way
and i didn’t interfere with your opinion one way or another
and as a result, it came out as pure you, in your voice
that’s how the blog should be
for all of my failings, i can’t go there
Sheeri K. Cabral:
I understand. I made a suggestion and you said “nope, not my thing”
Sheeri K. Cabral:
that’s why there’s nothing to forgive
Paul Vallee:
but that’s not me
Sheeri K. Cabral:
look, I struggle with this because I’m a success regardless of my gender.
Paul Vallee:
EXACTLY
Sheeri K. Cabral:
and if I was bad at my job it would also be regardless of my gender.
Paul Vallee:
EXACTLY
so don’t you think this day is misguided, somehow?
Sheeri K. Cabral:
it’s like affirmative action.
well, almost like it
Paul Vallee:
i mean it’s not like secretary’s day
it’s about “men who are secretaries” day
that’s just … not going to help
Sheeri K. Cabral:
it’s giving a boost to a minority, because they come from a disadvantaged place.
Paul Vallee:
yeah that’s right, it’s not like father’s day at all is it
Sheeri K. Cabral:
well
here’s the thing
the day itself is to blog to draw attention to women in tech and science
so in that way, the actions you take are a celebration
Paul Vallee:
but don’t you see the condescension that i see?
Sheeri K. Cabral:
in the day itself? I see how one can read condescension there.
but you could do a great blog post that says “screw this gender crap. Women at Pythian get paid the same and treated the same as men. Period.”
Paul Vallee:
LOL
Sheeri K. Cabral:
Here’s the thing — the message is “women have a hard time in IT”
the very message of the day is that
and I hate people asking me what it’s like to be a woman in IT, because it’s a stupid question to me.
what’s it like being a man in IT?
I can type without my boobs getting in the way. That’s the only thing I can think of to say.
Paul Vallee:
LOL
ok
here’s my point of view
i think the question “what’s it like to be a woman in IT” is itself problematic
we can’t move on from this until we make it disappear
canadians and americans have a different approach to racism/sexism/etc. by the way
also to religion
here, it is socially unacceptable to voice a sexist or racist thought or comment, or to single people out specifically. there, it comes up a lot.
i’m not sure why that is, but it goes really deep
like, i know our prime minister is a religious man, it’s not a secret
but you’ll never, ever, ever hear him refer to his religion publically
these are things that are in the private sphere
we force them to disappear from our process specifically by not mentioning them. that is how we make everybody comfortable, for the most part.
if the PM were to mention his religion, he would by the very statement make others feel excluded or certain people singled out for special treatment or affection
Sheeri K. Cabral:
or it becomes the elephant in the room.
Paul Vallee:
yeah, maybe so, maybe so. who am i to say which approach is most successful.
Sheeri K. Cabral:
there’s a difference between “god wants me to rule this way” and saying “I went to church yesterday” though.
Paul Vallee:
India is trying something new politically directly related to this by the way. they are assigning a third of the seats in their congress (I think) to women.
Sheeri K. Cabral:
yeah, I saw that.
Paul Vallee:
I wonder why a third (it should be half for purely technical biological reasons)
I think if they made it half, I would be OK with it.
Sheeri K. Cabral:
and to be more of a tangent…..my question is also “how many women is equal”? Honestly, I don’t think women *in general* like to geek out as much. *in general* we’re not as competitive. we don’t care about a lot of the stuff that drives geeks (females and males) to success…again, in general. so one can argue that 10% isn’t “enough” but I don’t think the “right” gender balance is 50/50 anyway.
Paul Vallee:
Well, I think women and men have different thought processes, sure
but some of that would tilt the scales towards women as DBAs, you know
women rate better for recovering from sleep inertia for instance
Sheeri K. Cabral:
just the other day I realized that when playing games, especially video games, I like games you can actually win, not merely competitive stuff. ie, you don’t win or lose at Tetris, or Ms. Pac Man, you just keep going.
card games, for instance, you win or lose at.
Paul Vallee:
True – tie this back in for me?
Sheeri K. Cabral:
and indeed I wondered if there was a gender tie-in there.
so “geeking” out – -finding the fastest disk speed, what’s the best filesystem for an ssd drive, etc.
that is similar to “dick sizing” which is more of a guy thing. women (in general) are more apt to say “is it good enough?” not “is it the best!” because we don’t want to rathole forever.
(I guess my point is I think there are strengths and weaknesses each gender brings to the table.)
but overall
if that blog post isn’t your cup of tea
then that’s fine.
:)
Paul Vallee:
I’m thinking of posting this IM transcript :)

… and so, with the lightest of edits and with Sheeri’s permission, I have! Happy Ada Lovelace Day, everyone.