S12:E9 - Introducing DevDiscuss (Penelope Phippen, Ben Halpern, Jess Lee)

As an industry, tech is not well equipped to accept when people change their names. This problem effects a range of people, including those who have a change of marital status. However, it can especially effect the security of those who are survivors of domestic violence, and those who are trans, who have to suffer through deadnaming by their tech accounts. This constant barrage of deadnaming can be very psychologically and emotionally harmful. DevDiscuss hosts Ben Halpern and Jess Lee speak with Penelope Phippen, director at Ruby Central, and author of the DEV post, "Changing your name is a hard unsolved problem in Computer Science," about this issue and what can be done to make it better.

Show Links

• Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor)
• Ruby
• RSpec
• Rails
• Ruby Central
• RubyConf
• RailsConf
• RuboCop
• Go Format
• Changing your name is a hard unsolved problem in Computer Science
• Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names
• GitHub
• One Medical
• Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity
• GLAD
• SheCodes
• LivingSocial
• Rubyfmt

Penelope Phippen

Penelope Phippen (she/her) is a multifaceted Rubyist who works as a Director at Ruby Central, is the creator of Rubyfmt, and was formerly a lead maintainer of the RSpec project. She frequently writes and speaks about about complex aspects of the Ruby grammar, and issues of social justice for trans people in computer science. She's sad that she can't hug every cat.

Ben Halpern

Ben Halpern is co-founder of Forem.

Jess Lee

Jess Lee is co-founder of DEV.