When I was a teenager, I used to play this game where I would tell somebody something, watch them react in good faith, then mock them for it. As you can imagine, with asshole antics like this, I didn’t have a lot of friends when I was a teenager.

Some people have not grown out of this. Sex columnist cum technology hangabout Violet Blue is one of those people. Her pot-stirring article about what a sexist yawn-fest WWDC was demonstrates that.

The yawn-fest part was just stupid. I have yet to meet an actual shipping developer who isn’t completely bowled over by iOS 5 and Lion. I don’t get pissed off about stupid people saying stupid things about Apple. That has always come with the territory.

What pissed me off was the way she conducted herself, acting like a vacuous twat, then acting offended when people came to the natural conclusion.

It’s possible people assumed you didn’t know how to code “because you were a girl.” It’s likely, though, that they assumed you didn’t know how to code because most people don’t know how to code. The vast and overwhelming majority of people in the world have no idea how computers work. There is no gender imbalance there.

Ah, but this was a party after a tech conference. You wouldn’t assume people there didn’t know how to code unless you’re sexist—or know anything about our platform. Indeed, the tremendous growth means that neophytes and onlookers outnumber experienced developers even at a tech conference.

I advise every speaker I train to assume people in the audience have almost no technical knowledge. You have to, or you will lose people who are there to learn by overwhelming them with details. Your job as a speaker is first to entertain, then to inspire, and only then to teach.

Her behavior was unforgivably rude and short-sighted. It’s scary enough to talk to strangers at a party. You have to suppress your insecurities, and A-listers like Gruber and Shipley are no exception. Imagine meeting some women at a party who don’t seem to know a lot about computers, but seem curious.

I would definitely take that opportunity to drop some knowledge. I would think it was so cool that they were there, that they were curious. I would do anything I could to help them see what a great place this was for them, to make them feel welcome, to help them.

What then happens when that person turns around and mocks you for your effort? Even goes so far as to call you a sexist pig? How likely are you to approach another woman at a party? Or anyone, for that matter? How is this helping the gender imbalance in our industry? How is this helping anything?

There are some people who this sting operation will reach. These are the people who feel not puzzled, but guilty, about the lack of women in the industry, and who let that guilt motivate them to do things they hope will help, but that actually make things worse.

Anyone can learn to code, but it takes a certain rare and aberrant personality to actually pursue a career in software engineering with the seriousness it requires. It is a terrible mistake to push someone into something they are not going to enjoy or be any good at.

It is worse—much much worse—to do so because of the color of someone’s skin or the shape of their genitals. I have seen people with the best of intentions look the other way at some terrible work because they wanted to make their diversity numbers.

We have a high washout rate in this business for a reason. If you prevent people in selective groups from doing so, you stack the deck against people in that same group. You know what would be worse than having few women in the industry? Having lots of women in the industry who are almost universally terrible. How much harder would it be for the women who got into this for the right reasons?

I think it’s cliched bullshit that society pushes women away from engineering with the mentality that “math is hard.” Math is hard. Coding is hard. Engineering is hard. That’s why we get paid so well—because the vast majority of people can’t do what we do.

Yes, there was a time when little girls were supposed to play with dolls and wear dresses, but among the families of the modern engineer, that time is long past. Every parent I know wants their kids to grow up to be great scientists and engineers.

The balance is shifting, and will continue to shift. We will nurture that shift by thinking not in terms of race, gender, or demographics, but by moving to universalist thought, as we have with our product designs. What will not help, indeed what will hurt, is driving a wedge of faux offense for your own aggrandizement.