Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Gender

gistfile1.md

1. There are two and only two genders.
2. Okay, then there are two and only two biological genders.
3. Gender is determined solely by biology.
4. Okay, it’s mostly determined by biology, right?
5. Please tell me it’s determined by DNA.
6. Gender can be reliably determined through visual means. After all, no man would ever wear a burka.
7. Once gender is set, it never changes.
8. Even if the gender can change, it will only change from the one value to the other value.
9. Only one gender can be “active” at the same time.
10. We’re tracking gender now, so we’ve always tracked it.
11. I only need to be concerned with human gender.

Source: http://www.cscyphers.com/blog/2012/06/28/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-gender/

(the rest of the falsehoods listed in this thread are valid but not programmer specific)

I would argue that my point about there not being a single gender value would also be relevant to programmers and not necessarily covered by this list.

Of the original 11 falsehoods, only 1. There are two and only two genders (i.e. Gender is bool), 7. Once gender is set, it never changes (i.e. Gender is readonly), and 11. I only need to be concerned with human gender, (which I've mentioned that in a previous comment) could be seen as developer specific. The rest are just falsehoods that everybody (in the 21st century anyway) believes.

...we shouldn't assume database entries or struct instances are describing different people just because the gender fields are present and don't match.

That's a valid point that isn't covered in my reduction. I'll have to think of a way to fit it into the "Gender is keyword" format. Maybe "Gender is IComparable<Gender>"?

funnily enough, all of these also apply to sex, with some interpretation :P

Gender is enum