Re: Make primnodes.h gender neutral

On 18/03/16 09:41, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> On 03/17/2016 01:36 PM, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
>
[...]
>
>>
>> (*) I'm probably going to be expelled from the project for saying this,
>> but I very much doubt that female coders stay away from PostgreSQL just
>> because some files say "he" in comments rather than "she" or "he or she"
>> or "one" or "they".  They probably have different reasons for staying
>> away from the project.
>
> Wanna bet? There is a very loud movement about this. We can either:
>
> A. Start fighting about it
>
> B. Just fix it, it doesn't matter anyway and it doesn't hurt the 
> quality of the code or the documentation
>
> JD

I strongly think that gender should not be mentioned unless it is 
relevant - as constructs like 'he or she' are clumsy and distract from 
what is being commented on, not to mention that some rare people are: 
neither, both, or ambiguous (from research I did when I read a rather 
curious article).

Other than 'one', 'their', 'they', &' them' - there are role specific 
references like 'user', 'developer', & 'DBA', ... that can be used where 
appropriate.

I tend to prefer the term 'Gender Appropriate' rather than 'Gender 
Neutral', as sometimes mentioning gender IS very relevant!



Cheers,
Gavin