[hackerspaces] An interesting point of view : "On Feminism and Microcontrollers"

[Serendipity Seraph]

On Oct 3, 2010, at 3:22 PM, Ron Bean wrote:

> Serendipity Seraph <sseraph at me.com> writes:
> 
>> But when I tell a male co-worker that the system is just "prettier" that
>> way (aesthetic sense) their heads spin around.  When "pretty" translates
>> to better performance, more maintainable and easy to modify they have a
>> bit more respect but still bristle at the word.  But for me aesthetics
>> are a big piece of how I do what I do even if I have to translate it or
>> rationalize it in other ways for a a lot of colleagues.
> 
> What if you call it "elegant" instead of "pretty"?
> (They're not quite the same thing, but they do overlap quite a bit) 
> 

Because I mean something a bit different than elegant.  Elegant can be part of pretty but it just looks, feels, moves through state and configuration changes in a more aesthetically pleasing way.  It is more alive or honest as a part of a software ecology.  So to me "pretty" sums it up.    Of course I have some suspicion I use it at this point in part just because of some of the reactions.  :)

- s