Introduction

Teaching of any kind is filled with examples. Examples demonstrate content by creating a specific instance of whatever is being taught and populating that instance with identifiable and relatable context. This identifiable and relatable context comes in many forms but perhaps is most frequently a name, or names. For instance, if I were to find an example of a sorted array of strings, I might see:

[adam, bill, james, matt, nick, steve, tim]

But why don’t we see an example more along the lines of: 

[alice, carol, david, elizabeth, lauren, matt, sarah]

Or even:

[alice, bao, ji-min, kiyomi, sai, tim, virlomi]

What makes Bob and Harry and James and Steve and all those other white masculine names so prevalent?

The Theory

My theory is twofold. One: a lot of the people writing these blog posts are white men, since the tech industry is overwhelmingly populated by them, and they use names that are similar to theirs. Two: the people who aren’t white and/or men who are writing these examples use white masculine names because the resources they learned from used those names. It’s a cyclical pattern and the end result is a ton of white, masculine names in computer science-related examples.

I’m going to pause here, and backtrack a bit. By now you’ve probably guessed where this post is going. “We should use more diverse names” blah blah blah. “But why?” you might ask. “Names don’t hurt anyone or exclude anyone. If I treat everyone in the industry with respect, why does it matter what names I use in my examples on my personal blog?”

The issue that is implicit in that type of question is the issue of proactive versus reactive progress.

Reactive vs Proactive

The question above is an example of reactive progress. If you think that by treating your coworkers with respect (even if if they aren’t male or white!) you’re doing your part to make the tech industry a more welcoming, diverse place, you’re simply reacting to what’s in front of you.

Reactive progress isn’t actually progress; it’s just avoiding stagnation by more or less moving with the times. The technical industry is too far back on the bell curve of diversity to advance by employing reactive techniques. No; to truly overcome the sexism and racism implicit in the industry, the industry and thus the individuals that comprise it must act proactively. It is not enough to simply welcome the people from minorities who persevere to make it onto our teams; we must make our teams and companies welcoming enough that more people from minority groups will want to apply to jobs in the industry.

Proactive progress is hard. It’s much harder than reactive progress. It might look like providing free tampons and pads in all the bathrooms to support anyone–man, woman, or nonbinary person–with a period. It might look like a lot of hard introspection and keeping track of how many times you interrupt your female coworkers versus your male coworkers. It might look like giving back to the community and participating in programs that teach computer science to inmates or high schools that are comprised of low-income students.

The Next Step

But I’m not going to ask you to do any of that today. Instead, I’m just going to ask you to examine and perhaps change the names you use in your examples.

You see, a person named Bob or Tim or some such will look at the code and subconsciously recognize themselves in it. Their participation in the field of computer science is confirmed by the examples in that field. But someone named Onika might look through a dozen examples and never once see anything that indicates that the people writing the examples would think that anyone of her race or gender would be interested in computer science. Eventually, she might get discouraged and never seek a career in development. The people who wrote the examples didn’t intend for that to happen, but because they weren’t proactively inclusive, it happened anyway.

Conclusion

Proactive inclusion is the best way to support diversity and inclusivity in the tech industry, and in order to make a difference, everyone must take part. So, the next time you’re writing an example, and you happen to use names?

Take a second to think about what names you’ll use. Who knows–maybe your proactive acceptance will convince someone to stay in the industry.