I stopped reading Ars Technica when I reached the last 5 words:

The distinction between a program and an API makes intuitive sense to computer programmers who regularly use APIs (and write programs) in their daily work. But it’s far from obvious to Supreme Court justices, all of whom are lawyers over the age of 50.

Source: Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google | Ars Technica

What does age have to do with this? What a stupid thing to write.

Update: I contacted the author of that and he responded that while some older people are tech savvy, most older people are not tech savvy. That’s his assumption and his entire defense.

I noted I have a BS in computer science (1980), an MBA (2001), an MS in software engineering (2012, thesis on Android power management), two patents (one in wireless communications and one in aviation, from two years ago), and have written a dozen tech books[1]. I will not quote his private email directly but suffice to say, he argues that it is appropriate to assume that older people are not tech savvy. Do the math and you can readily see that my age is around 60.

Let’s rewrite that sentence to see the implicit bias of Ars Technica – for example, if written as “But it’s far from obvious…all of whom are lawyers who are women” or “But it’s far from obvious…all of whom are lawyers who are black“.

The bias in these examples is obvious as it should also be in the irrelevant age reference.

I’ve deleted all bookmarks to Ars Technica. I do not make a habit of reading fake news services that promote the -isms: racism, sexism, ageism, ethnocentrism.

[1] And hey, I did that in spite of six head injuries including a skull fracture/moderate traumatic brain injury, and the remainder being (mostly) knockout blows that also broke other bones, and two with broken bike helmets, leaving me with lifetime brain issues. But you know, Trump says brain injuries are not real injuries, so there you go!