When men were men...

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It's a quote from Linus Torvalds and I interpret it as a half-joking expression of sentiment for pioneer times.

Personally, I can't do anything about fora descriptions. I guess Alex would need to agree on it.

Was one of my posts deleted?

As a male who actually did write device drivers I see this as nothing more than a nostalgic, rueful comment on changes in the way software tends to be written, with its heavy reliance on API calls and bloated libraries - where once work was sometimes done "directly at the coal face", or "on bare metal". It was also great fun. It's simply lamenting the loss of those days of byte-level, CPU opcode precision, direct hardware interaction and the challenges overcome, now consigned to history or some tiny subsection of a library.

↑ I have a similar background in writing custom software for the 4004, 8080, Z80, and others, during the time when programmers wrote programs and computers were used to compute.

"When men were men..." has been used to sell beer, cars/trucks, liquor, tobacco products and other "macho" fetishes.  It is an outdated phrase, since it often refers to a cultural phenomenon not seen since the 1950s.

I am inclined to agree with the OP, and if Alex would change it, that would be a change for the better.

Until then, I will just ignore it and move on.

I find "when men were men" amusing also (in that caveman way)... but it makes me think sadly of my mother and my grandmother and me in the field (or rather being pushed out). As I said I am in a lot of pain recently from lack of inclusion in IT. Some folks elbow their way through, but some are more... polite. I got burnt and burnt out. I don't post in that forum much b/c I have something PTSD-like as a woman in technology (and ASD to boot, eh?), and the description is a small albeit firm nail in that coffin. For my part, I'm working on it. At work there was a lot of invalidation (it's just a simple joke, mistake, oversight, they had a good intention to the exclusion of impact) and victim blaming (don't be so sensitive, why didn't you say/do something then?). It was rough. Kind of like some folks experience of being ASD in an NT world... if anyone here can relate to that.

If there is ever a cooking forum and it says "when women were women and grounded the flour and whipped the butter..." I'll be sure to pipe up. Asides all the fabulous cooks of all genders, so much is out of boxes these days (in the first world).

Thanks for the input folks... and the lightness. I laughed out loud about the greetings humans and the such.

I am sorry, Sharon.  In spite of my best efforts at inclusion in the workplace, women and minorities are still being marginalized and discriminated against through micro-aggressive acts, most of which may go unreported out of fear of reprisal and escalation.

@SharonB: I can probably change the forum description - it's not something I've tried so no promises - but if you (or anyone else) can think of a similar quip to add to "Do you pine for the days when men were men and wrote their own device drivers" I'll edit it to include the suggestion.
Maybe "and women could punch the heck out of a card", as you said in your first post?

Keep it as short as possible please!

"If you long for a time when pride in a line of code was a normal part of your day..."

But maybe that is too long ... ?

Too long, and I was looking for something addressing in some light-hearted way the contributions made by women as a balance to the "when men were men" part.

Hmm ... 260 total characters and spaces ... not much wiggle-room ...

Wait, what now - fake programmers wrote device drivers?

As said - I'm looking for something addressing in some light-hearted way the contributions made by women to add as a balance to the "when men were men" part, not a replacement for it.

I'm not sure there is a good replacement, I can't think of a phrase that replicates the tongue-in-cheek nostalgia and humourous juxtaposition of "men were men" and "writing device drivers".