As A Man, I Can Be A Better Example Than I Have Been

There was a reason I couldn't share your blog with a lot of people, and now you've done what people do, and earned our respect. Keep up the good work, and keep the introspection going. I only hope you'll bring back the old posts but modified, so the young CFers can continue to benefit.

@Sami,

• what people rarely do *

I have mixed emotions. I love your code you have shown. I remember your first speeches at meetings. I think you were just fine but like a lot of us, we had a lot of fear. However, programmers without fear tended to bother me.

I always did wish you would stop using some language but figured that was something you would change as you grew. Otherwise, I would NOT worry.

You are putting your personal opinions out there and there will ALWAYS be plenty of people to criticize you. Don't take that personal. Just remember the more we know, the more we know that we don't know. I don't trust a programmer who says and acts like they know everything. No one knows everything. We all have our own opinions.

Ben,

I want to publically say, THANK YOU! I have been a CF programmer for over a decade, and while I really appreciate your blog's simple solutions, a lot of them have been hard for me to stomach. As a female in the CS world, I have been at best annoyed by the "man's" coding world and the sexist/harassment comments that somehow became a part of it. Often when I've come across yet another post of yours that turned women into objects (in the programming world - quite literally), I've commented about my disapproval to my co-worker. He has assured me you've grown up and don't make those kinds of posts anymore. He sent me the link to this article today. Keep up the good work! I believe in change and hope to continue to use your blog without having to roll my eyes and wish I was ready something else.

Someone had to point this out to me actually. I didn't see it myself at first.

I was recently watching a VHS tapes of my much younger twenty-something self and was horrified...at the crass, tasteless jokes I made...at my behavior in general. I guess I thought I was cool. I was deeply ashamed for my younger self.

I think it's natural that we grow, evolve, learn...and hopefully become better versions of ourselves along the way. I think they call it wisdom, life experience, etc.

You rock Ben! And we appreciate you and your journey

Life, much like coding is a never ending learning process.

Red. Green. Refactor.

If you aren't hitting the red you are doing something wrong. But you have to remember to refactor :)

Ben,

What you are doing right now is amazingly hard. Most people never face their flaws much less publicly admit them and take accountability for them. We all make bad choices. Few of us learn from them.

Before I met you in 2010, I had this image of you from your blog. I knew you worked out and were buff like a beast. Your company name "kinky solutions" and your code examples using women's butts, boobs, face etc.. was tasteless. I assumed you were a back slapping, hard drinking, womanizing jock bro who was crude, rude and would punch the first person who looked at you wrong.

When I met you in person, it was absolutely jarring different you were. You were so shy, kind, timid and sweet. When "the boys" and I would go out late, you went to bed. For such a muscular dude, you seemed very afraid of a lot of things. But most of all you are just very, very likable. I mean painfully likable. Like a teddy bear.

It is heart warming to see you distance yourself from the self-image you felt you should be and embrace the kindly, thoughtful person you truly are.

Ben,

Thank you for acknowledging this sensitive issue. I've read your posts since you first started and watched you grow as a developer. In the early years I brushed off the crassness as you trying to find your voice to a much smaller audience. But in the last few years when I'm searching for something and come across one of these from the old days, it makes me cringe.

I applaud you for not only removing the posts, but addressing it in a truly thoughtful apology. Rock on!!

As to your comments about StraightWhite Male Privilege, that is a phrase so loaded with baggage. Sci-Fi author John Scalzi put it in setting I could understand Roleplaying games:

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-the-lowest-difficulty-setting-there-is/

Well worth the read.

As a fellow introvert who often is in bed by 10, I also tend to be crass and out there. It is a wall I put up so people won't see the real me, which is most likely crying in the corner. I've also grown up quite a lot over the years and have learned what I say or do matters. I don't say anything about someone that I wouldn't be able to say to them while looking them in the eye. I know I've said things in the past that hurt others.

I've always adored you and was so proud when a junior developer had your blog up for Angular JS and I said I knew you. Not just knew who you were, but really knew you. He was impressed.

This is so interesting to read. I actually never saw this side of you, so I must have missed those particular posts, or it was so expected I thought nothing of it. I always had great respect for you... but even more so now.

But it is interesting how times have changed.

This reminds me of back in the day when I was co-authoring with Raymond Camden and Arman Danesh. I went on a bit of a book tour and ended up speaking at a users group in Ohio. It was one of the worst experiences of my life. New functionality had just been released and I had been in discussions with Ben Forta on the details in the background. I was adding commentary to the news version of Mastering ColdFusion. I gave a sneak peek to the users group. They dismissed me and treated me like I knew nothing. It had me doubting myself I was interrupted by the host, challenged, dismissed. Granted I was young, but had a man been presenting it would have been a different outcome. It became one of the greatest learning experiences of my life because it taught me to find my voice.

Now I look at current day. The tide is turning on the gender divide In STEM. I do not experience dismissals or challenges in a way that I can attribute to gender in my current place of work. Our CIO, CISO, & SVP of AppDev are all women. The landscape is changing. It's a different world. This is important for companies, countries, and the world to have a balanced representation to take advantage of the qualities that we all bring to the table. It will makes us all better.

Thank you to making it better!

And just to be clear, some of my greatest experiences back then were also due to some amazing men that I worked with: Ben Forta, Raymond Camden, Arman Danesh to name a few

Ben. I am actually quite shocked by this. But, maybe this is a reflection more about who I am. I cannot ever remember you writing anything offensive. Maybe, I just never came across such articles.

In fact, you are probably one of the politest, kindest and most aware people, I know. You are always trying to help others, so maybe because of this, I have glossed over anything offensive that you have written. I must say that I am now quite curious as to what you deem "offensive". I know you used to use women's names a lot in your object key references, so maybe this is part of what you mean? And I do remember there may have been some sexist connotations, in this regard? But, I must say, my memory isn't as sharp as it used to be, so I am probably grasping at straws here.

I'd like to say that this is a welcome relief. I've been in this community as long or longer than you have and your posts are always a point of reference for myself on difficult or complex problems. However, there were many a post I find cringy and just couldn't share with others because of the tacit approval of the content that sharing would lend. I'm sad for the loss of some of the earlier stuff (like using CFHTTP to convert CSV to a query, literally just today), but glad you made the difficult choices to cull stuff that's problematic, acknowledge your part as a role model in the community, and the reality of privilege not only in the world at large, but especially in CS.

This is a great post dude.

I've been reading your blog since the KS days and always took your examples with a pinch of salt; partially because I think the 'real you' that you allude to has always been evident in the tone of the posts themselves, but also because I too was young, male, privileged and utterly unable to appreciate how they may be damaging or offensive. I could see they were light-hearted, surely everyone could, right? The luxury of being un-phased by these things is indicative of privilege too of course.

You've grown, as we all do, and I think it's great you decided to go back and take down some of the stuff you're not proud of - but more than that I applaud you for taking the time to write about it. You could have simply removed these articles and carried on with your day, but it takes courage to hold yourself to account publically, thoughtfully and unprompted.

Bravo, sir.

40 and still coding ! It never ends.