"_Out of Time: Reflections on the Programming Life._" by Ellen Ullman (1995) This series a short stories captures some of Ellen's experiences and observations about working in computing. It touches on both her struggles of being a woman in computing and quite humorous observations about computing. I'd consider it a good "further reading" to the latest FOC episode. https://gandt.blogs.brynmawr.edu/files/2009/03/ullman.pdf

It's the closest thing to programming poetry that I've ever seen. It puts in words so many things that I thought were impossible to describe... It's very personal but also grounded in reality. Hopeful and sad. Beautiful!

Wow. That's brilliant. Here's Ellen more recently, IRL so to speak:

I'll also link to Dr. Amy Ko whose lab is doing a lot of interesting research (and has perhaps the best-summarized academic web page I've ever seen 👏), is also working¹ on an accessible and polyglot language (https://wordplay.dev/), and has a lot to say about CS culture and inclusivity. This passage from ¹ stood out to me as echoing Dr. Hermans' talk:

... But not all of that struggle is necessary, or good. And that’s generally where I part with the culture of computer science. So much of computer science as a discipline and a community glamorizes extraneous complexity ...

Interesting read. I have seen similar subcultures in theoretical physics, where the analog of "close to the machine" is "close to the fundamental laws of the universe". There are some very nerdy people in there, but they are neither dominant nor a social norm. Others respect and admire them, but don't seek to become like them.