91–100 of 154 posts
~50% of undergrads at Stanford are female. ~30% of new Stanford computer science majors are female.
Ok, so women still choose CS at a smaller proportion than men do...that's alright for now. What's awesome is that women are now choosing CS more than any other major , and Stanford is providing them an environment where it's cool to do so. That's incredible.
I wonder how much of the underrepresentation of women in this field is due to it being low prestige relative to other formerly male-dominated fields such as medicine or law into which women have made substantial inroads, because women seem much less willing to enter male dominated fields, however well-paying, if they lack prestige (electricians would be an example). If I'm correct, then the very same media outlets la…
Where have you seen Media outlets talking about Programmers are "geeks" or "nerds"? I recall The Register calling scientists "boffins" but not using the other two words for Coders. I have absolutely no problem with "Coder". At the risk of sounding grand and dandy, I think people realize the impact Code has on their lives, and being called a coder makes me very happy. I agree with your apprehension over Geek & Nerd, t…
The media by and large does not care about programmers, only insofar as there is overlap with Internet entrepreneurs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Where were the "women in tech" back when computer programming was some "weird" hobby of the outcast nerds? Programming was originally an exclusively female profession because it was seen as lowly-paid "women's work". Later it became a male profession. But you're talking about the non-professional setting. Well, that started with the home computer revolution. There were few teenage girls programming at home because…
> Programming was originally an exclusively female profession because it was seen as lowly-paid "women's work". Later it became a male profession. I just glanced at Wikipedia on this topic ... and, apart from the convenient mention of Ada Lovelace at the very beginning of both the articles[1] (makes you curious why they do this), history of programming is evidently a mostly -- no, nearly all -- male profession. Just…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC#Programming
ENIAC started with an exclusively female group of six programmers.
This Cosmo article is from 1967: http://boingboing.net/2015/07/31/the-computer-girls-1967-c.h...
In a line sure to make heads explode, it quotes Grace Hopper explaining how programming is just like planning dinner.
I wonder how much of the underrepresentation of women in this field is due to it being low prestige relative to other formerly male-dominated fields such as medicine or law into which women have made substantial inroads, because women seem much less willing to enter male dominated fields, however well-paying, if they lack prestige (electricians would be an example). If I'm correct, then the very same media outlets la…
As a physician, I don't think any of us have the perception that programming is lower status. Our in-jokes are usually about how we can't find housing on our salaries because the former computer science majors are driving up the prices.
Of relevance is the following snippet from http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/
"Does the staggering wealth of particular engineers and programmers mean that there is any chance for nerds to rise socially?
Stammbach worked with a colony of longtailed macaques. In the paper cited above, the running header is "Responses to Specially Skilled Java Monkeys." Stammbach took the lowest-ranking macaque out of the society and taught him to operate a complex machine and obtain food. When the nerd monkey was reintroduced to the society, the higher ranking macaques stopped kicking him out of the way long enough for him to complete operation of the machine and obtain food for the community. I.e., society cooperated to create the conditions under which the nerd could toil for them. However, the monkey who acquired these special skills and provided for the society did not achieve any rise in his dominance status."
Phil Greenspun's title for the above was "Java Monkeys."
(I personally don't have an opinion about the status of programmers relative to other professionals and how it affects women, so just commenting on your remark.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Woz, Bill and Larry were coders, geeks and nerds at some point, and in many ways still are. Are they prestigious? I guess it's up for the reader to decide.
They're famous and respected as businessmen and philanthropists, not software engineers. The media and general public are largely ignorant of the technical accomplishments of those men and would pay them little notice had they not been so phenomenally successful in business. Compare the responses to the deaths of Steve Jobs and Dennis Ritchie.
[1] http://documents.library.nsf.gov/edocs/HD6060-.A84-2008-PDF-...
With their high number of (rejected) applications and subjective criteria they can of course shape these statistics any way they want. So is this progress or Stanford appearing progressive ? There is no way to tell.
At Stanford, undergrads are admitted generally to the school, then they get to pick whichever major they like. Most students don't pick a major until sophomore or junior year. Stanford accepts 50% women and more of those women are picking to become CS majors after they get in, when they didn't just a few years ago. This is actually progress.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where have you seen Media outlets talking about Programmers are "geeks" or "nerds"? I recall The Register calling scientists "boffins" but not using the other two words for Coders. I have absolutely no problem with "Coder". At the risk of sounding grand and dandy, I think people realize the impact Code has on their lives, and being called a coder makes me very happy. I agree with your apprehension over Geek & Nerd, t…
Being called a "coder" implies you're performing mechanistic grunt work of manipulating symbols with little thought to architecture, or really without any implied discipline. It's akin to identifying a writer or journalist as a "typist". Though I suppose that's what many "coders" do, go figure. The media by and large does not care about programmers, only insofar as there is overlap with Internet entrepreneurs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's obvious that diversity can be both good and bad. A team where everyone speaks a different language is very diverse, but not effective, since there is no communication. One in which they at least share some common language which for all of them is a second language, not with full fluency, would be able to function, but likely not as efficiently as one in which everyone speaks the same language as their mo…
It's hardly clear to me that ethnic diversity helps in any way for most companies. Several people at my current company told me they were excited that I'd be providing diversity. I asked them what they thought that would bring them, and after pressing the issue I realized they had no clue. I have no clue either. Some unique perspectives I bring: I favor rigid APIs over close team communication, I favor Bayesian stati…
The JVM is a fantastic platform to build for and run on. I know of nothing else that's so powerfully general purpose for typical server-side business work, with such a compelling ecosystem. Multiplatform support can be useful, though mainly for me it's the ability to develop from any platform, rather than deploy to. It seems to be widely undervalued -- I would describe it as popularly unfashionable right now. Yet I don't know of any platforms with such deep ecosystems and comparable technical merit. .NET comes close (and is arguably better designed in some ways, and has some neat features), but is Windows-focused and seems to lack the open source communities Java has.
Talking about this almost makes me want to start a list of "awesome things about Java that are without parallel in other platforms".
I've enjoyed reading a number of the comments you've posted in recent days. Please continue and good luck with your evangelism!
What are we going to do about the lack of boys/men in higher education?