I mean pls also attracts a TON of rad trad Catholics. It turns out being unable to follow social cues makes you more amenable to following niche fields as well as a bit esoteric in your philosophers and lifestyle. I count myself as one of these as well lol.
That being said, this is also problematic. Because if the field is dominated by queer people as you point out, then shouldn't you try to balance it out and add straight cis people? I mean, you will correctly point out that the average person wouldn't fit in.
> the Curtis Yarvin / dark enlightenment nexus is big enough and really weird, but also not a topic for HN (not because it's political but because it's stupidly gross and dark).
It has high overlap with the rad trad Catholic wing, believe me. I am a fairly traditional Catholic. I had heard of Yarvin via the Haskell world, and was floored when a parishioner at my parish brought him up. Such a strange crossing of worlds.
I imagine by LGBTQ colleagues must have the same feelings at whatever it is they do on Sundays
Honestly I sometimes think I'm the most normal person in the field, but we all probably think that. I think if my colleagues found out that I only go to a traditional Novus Ordo on Sundays where we use a lot of Latin and not a full-fledged Tridentine Mass, all of them would be angry at me. The LGBTQ crowd for being Catholic and the rad-trad crowd fro not being the right kind lol.
But anyway, I guess what I meant with my last point is: where are the diversity initiatives to get 'normal' people into this field? Everyone agrees it attracts the neuro-diverse? Then doesn't it stand to reason that we ought to encourage the neuro typical? Imagine how great PLs would be if they were actually eloquent haha.
All you have to do to encourage nuerotypical white males from elite schools is to have high remuneration. They see highly paid jobs as the best jobs. This is not discrimination. If a job is too hard for the pay offered then this class will choose something else.
They are also not excluded from working in sewers, even though they are underrepresented!
> where are the diversity initiatives to get 'normal' people into this field?
I won't say they are particularly effective, but the group behind the LIVE workshop is at least self-aware enough to try and build things that neurotypical people might use. There binding force in that group is best expressed by Jonathan Edwards (author of subtext) when he said something along the lines of "most programming languages are built by high functioning autists for high functioning autists", the upshot being if we want more people to be able to use programming languages they will probably have to pay more attention to usability and alternative representations.
I think Bret Victor does a good job with this "seeing spaces" in the form of Dynamics Land: https://dynamicland.org
Also the Logo programming language was a good example of designing a language for where the users are, where in that case the users were gradeschool children. Obviously children can't build programming languages for themselves, so they used cognitive development principles to design a language which was approachable given their cognitive abilities as 7 year olds.
That being said, this is also problematic. Because if the field is dominated by queer people as you point out, then shouldn't you try to balance it out and add straight cis people? I mean, you will correctly point out that the average person wouldn't fit in.
Well welcome to the club..