Need cleanup advice for multiline string

[Piet van Oostrum]

CL> This thread has surprised me: it gives more of an impression
CL> than I expected that a significant portion of practitioners
CL> sincerely believe that "women don't do computers". Abundant
CL> resources are available to those who choose to pursue the facts;
CL> <URL: http://www.indwes.edu/Faculty/bcupp/lookback/hist-10.htm >
CL> and <URL: http://cs-www.cs.yale.edu/homes/tap/past-women-cs.html >
CL> are accessible starting points.

CL> Incidentally, I feel particularly ignorant myself about contri-
CL> butions from Eastern Europe during 1950-1970, say; if I just
CL> wanted to accumulate debating points, I'd look there.

I don't know how it's in other countries, but here in the Netherlands
the percentage of girls studying computer science is veeeeery low. I
have been teaching a class of Computer Networks, and in 2008 there were
zero girls attending the course. I think that was also the number of
girls that started CS in our university that year. This year there were
10 out of a population of 100. Still much to low on a university were
55% of the students is female.

Before starting to work at the university I worked at DEC (Digital
Equipment) and in 1978 I had to attend a course at DEC's headquarters in
MA, and there 50% of the attendants was female.

 

[Steven D'Aprano]

Is that true for everyone who understands and/or writes English? In that
case, I'm fine with your above statement. Otherwise, I'd wonder who you
meant with the term "cultural chauvinism". So far, I only learned that
most North-American English native speakers use that term in the way you
refer to. That doesn't even get you close to the majority of English
speakers.

If you read the entire thread, you'd see that we've already discussed the
issue of "guys" for mixed sex groups and females. In fact, as I'd already
said, I'm one of those old fashioned guys who still gets surprised when
women refer to themselves as guys, but I'm learning to keep up with the
times. I'm Australian, not North American, and the British author Michael
Quinion, one of the researchers for the Oxford Dictionary, also states
that "guys" now refers to both men and women:

http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-guy1.htm

When "guys" can refer to either sex in English, American, Canadian and
Australian English, I think it should be pretty uncontroversial to treat
it as standard now.

 

[Stefan Behnel]

If you read the entire thread, you'd see that we've already discussed the
issue of "guys" for mixed sex groups and females. In fact, as I'd already
said, I'm one of those old fashioned guys who still gets surprised when
women refer to themselves as guys, but I'm learning to keep up with the
times. I'm Australian, not North American, and the British author Michael
Quinion, one of the researchers for the Oxford Dictionary, also states
that "guys" now refers to both men and women:

http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-guy1.htm

When "guys" can refer to either sex in English, American, Canadian and
Australian English, I think it should be pretty uncontroversial to treat
it as standard now.

Ok, then I guess I just misread "after being adopted in the USA it started
to change meaning" in one of the cited articles as "it changed meaning in
the USA". I didn't expect Australians (and Oxford dictionary writers, and
potentially others) to be /that/ influenced by shifts in US juvenile word
semantics...

I for one wouldn't start calling my leg "foot", even though the Austrians
kept insisting for ages now.

Stefan