Damnit. I was hoping to cut this off before it continued, but apparently the whiners about this got up-voted to being the highest answers here. The person asking what happened didn't need to know any of this, they just needed to know that there was some inconsequential brouhaha they could ignore.
Apparently the cliche is right: a large portion of programmers are sorta
insular and socially awkward white guys who embrace the concept of "nerd" as a
positive and so are a bit defensive and feel threatened about other views and
groups and people invading their social space. They may have legitimate
concerns here or in similar cases, but the level of energy about it is so
clearly defensive and of a magnitude that's wholly unwarrented.
It's not the nerd that's the problem per se, it's the reflexive rejection of other people's lived experience and the rush to label marginalized people asking not to be marginalized further as bullying that appalls me. You can disagree with the politics but when it comes to name calling the discussion is long over.
Indeed "nerd" isn't the problem, it's just that nerd-pride type of idea comes from two aspects: (A) that there's a history of being marginalized such that people in these circles can feel defensive and (B) there's a definite white-guy cultural thing all tied into the "nerd" identity such that people who identify that way aren't comfortable with the idea that tech could be potentially dominated by the sorts of people who are culturally ill-fit to that identity. The identity politics isn't nonsense.
There's just more going on with the sort of people who would get that up in arms over this stuff than just the surface issues themselves.
