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1984 – When women stopped coding

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Re: 1984 – When women stopped coding

#121

Post by panglott »

1984 was the year that CS majors began to drop off. You're not talking about girls that were begging their parents for a C64. You're talking about girls that were born circa 1962-1966 and after.

Many early programmers in the 1960s and 1970s were women because it was seen as the equivalent of secretarial work, a sector of the office labor that women were confined to due to overt sexism. The profession was then masculinized in overtly sexist ways. If women fled CS, they were fleeing an overtly sexist niche (which both locked them into submissive, secretarial roles as well as undervalued their technical accomplishments). http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/researcher-reveals-how-...

Re: 1984 – When women stopped coding

#122

Post by talmand »

crusso wrote: post #79

And these toys were marketed almost entirely to men and boys. That's a pretty bad correlation-is-not-causation slip there. Marketing efforts, especially in new markets tend to take the path of least resistance. If they were marketing to males, it was most likely because males were showing an early interest in those products and likely to be the quickest way to grow marketshare. My personal experience was that I didn'…

You mean there isn't some large advertiser-driven conspiracy to hold back girls by only marketing the cool stuff to boys? Marketing actually does the things they do only to make money and not push some regressive social agenda? Clearly you haven't been on the Internet lately.

Re: 1984 – When women stopped coding

#123

Post by roymurdock »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #115
kelukelugames wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30 years ago, software engineers also had low social status. Only recently did our profession become more respectable.

While it may have improved I feel like it's still quite low. Outside of the valley and a few other key cities we're still largely considered anti-social dweebs who can't talk to women, have regressive sexist ideologies, are pedantic assholes, etc.

The image of the computer scientist/programmer/data scientist is changing pretty rapidly within the younger generation. STEM degrees garner a lot of respect, especially CS degrees, because everyone has suddenly become obsessed with "intelligence" as an indicator of future success and wealth, to the detriment of professionalism and altruism.

Programming is now cool and desirable - you can see the shifts everywhere in pop culture. Being a nerd or a geek is a badge of pride for many.

Re: 1984 – When women stopped coding

#124

Post by ryanmarsh »

purpled_haze wrote: post #6

I have daughters and was not able to get them interested in any computer unless it involves games or social media. But the boys they hang out with are the same way- games only, for the most part. While I played a lot of games on my computer as a youth, I also spent a lot of time trying to program games. Today, I'm a developer. Because of kids' fascination with their phones and tablets, and because programming isn't a…

I think it's the individual child's (intrinsic and extrinsic) motivations. Case in-point, my eldest daughter (14) is a studious introvert with a strong mastery of Latin and formal logic but loves beauty and wants to be a hairdresser (meh) or Instagram model (barf). Programming and robotics just don't do it for her even though I'm certain she could be good at it.

My middle daughter is wicked smart extrovert with zero patience an excess of confidence and absolutely loves robotics, electronics, Goldiblocks, etc... I'd hate to work with her on a software project because she's so agressive but chances are she'll wind up in STEM.

So that takes care of intrinisic motivation, as for extrinsic, both thought programming was something only nerdy anti-social boys do. In fact boys and girls chastised my middle daughter for liking so called "boy" things like building a trebuchet or going to the comic book store.

If we assume that only a small percentage of children will have both proclivity and potential and that we then also have to play peer-pressure Russian-roulette until they get to college then it's no wonder so few girls are still getting into STEM.

Re: 1984 – When women stopped coding

#125

Post by talmand »

gauthr wrote: post #109
scbrg wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be nitpicky, but you probably want to review how you typed those numbers. The second is smaller than the first, and the commas are not grouping the zeroes in groups of three. I suppose you mean either 10^5 or 10^6, but I'm not sure which.

They're using the Indian numbering system -- see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_system

That's really interesting, thanks for the link.

But it still doesn't make sense, because if you remove the commas from 1,00,000 and 2,00,00 you end up with 100000 versus 20000. Based on the examples in your link I'm assuming that the last figure should be 2,00,000. In the examples all the high number always end with three zeros.

Re: 1984 – When women stopped coding

#126

Post by kjdal2001 »

delibes wrote: post #116
grandDesigns wrote: post #78

Because women are smarter. I notice that graph compares Computer Science ($50K-$150K/year), to Medical School ($150K--$1M), Law School ($120K--$1M), and Physical Sciences (???). Women see the writing on the wall on High School: Med/Law School offer a clear career path to the upper middle class, while CS offers a muddy path at a middle class life. They also see "rich" old Doctors and Lawyers. They have never seen a "r…

I'll focus on the professional salaries... "Uncle" Bob Martin gave an interesting talk in London last night about the need for a professional body for software. Doctors have the American Medical Association (or BMA here in the UK). Lawyers have the American Bar Association (I think the Law Society is the UK equivalent). They can regulate their profession, ensuring standards, controlling membership through certificati…

I saw him give the same talk in Chicago, and the impression that I got was that the body he was advocating for had nothing to do with salaries. The AMA and the Bar might increase salaries by creating scarcity in their professions, but they aren't salary negotiating organizations like a union.

Re: 1984 – When women stopped coding

#127

Post by noxToken »

roymurdock wrote: post #103
purpled_haze wrote: post #6

I have daughters and was not able to get them interested in any computer unless it involves games or social media. But the boys they hang out with are the same way- games only, for the most part. While I played a lot of games on my computer as a youth, I also spent a lot of time trying to program games. Today, I'm a developer. Because of kids' fascination with their phones and tablets, and because programming isn't a…

I'm 22 so I'm kind of caught between you and your daughters, but my understanding is that Minecraft is that new "OS" or "application" that is exceedingly fun while teaching programming in the phone/tablet age. It's phenomenal how popular it is among the younger generations...its coming to replace the legos of my (relative) youth. MSFT is pushing it down the coding/education path as well - they recently launched a Min…

I was preemptively horrified before I clicked your Minecraft link. I taught a summer camp for middle/high school kids that wanted to learn how to make Minecraft mods. It was a disaster.

We specifically put that the kids must have programming experience in a Java-like language before beginning, but all the affluent parents saw was, "Get your kids out of the house for 9 hours a day for an entire week!"

Don't get me wrong: the kids were stoked. They even had some incredible ideas for mods. One kid's idea was that an entire building would generate based on the location of placed bricks, the type of brick, and how high you stacked the bricks. We liked it so much that we built it and gave it to the students to play with. Problem is that only 2 of 30 had any programming experience at all, and Minecraft development (at least back then) was not exactly beginner friendly. I just wasn't possible to teach Java development and Minecraft's library in a week.

I guess my point in all this is to say that I'm glad that they're taking the initiative to make programming more kid-friendly with Minecraft. I hope that they can expand the foundation built by Scratch (loops, conditionals, etc.) to allow kids to see their crazy ideas come to fruition.

Re: 1984 – When women stopped coding

#128

Post by kelukelugames »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #115
kelukelugames wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30 years ago, software engineers also had low social status. Only recently did our profession become more respectable.

While it may have improved I feel like it's still quite low. Outside of the valley and a few other key cities we're still largely considered anti-social dweebs who can't talk to women, have regressive sexist ideologies, are pedantic assholes, etc.

I agree. "Silicon Valley" is a step up from "Big Bang Theory", but we don't have a primetime show like "Grey's Anatomy" or "The Good Wife."

Re: 1984 – When women stopped coding

#129

Post by pc86 »

flexie wrote: post #117
grandDesigns wrote: post #78

Because women are smarter. I notice that graph compares Computer Science ($50K-$150K/year), to Medical School ($150K--$1M), Law School ($120K--$1M), and Physical Sciences (???). Women see the writing on the wall on High School: Med/Law School offer a clear career path to the upper middle class, while CS offers a muddy path at a middle class life. They also see "rich" old Doctors and Lawyers. They have never seen a "r…

Law is a middle class profession for most lawyers. Very few lawyers make anywhere near $1M per year. I guess that the number of US attorneys consistently making $1M yearly is in the hundreds or low thousands. Median salary for lawyers is $113,530. That's a pay most lawyers don't achieve until they are in their late 30s or 40s. Top 10 percentile is at $187,200. Most lawyers spend 4 years in college and then 3 years in…

Programming also seems like a pretty clear path to management (if that's your goal), which is one of the best upper-middle class professions there is. And once you've proven the ability to manage a team it is much easier to translate that into non-technical management, which opens you up to a plethora of different positions, particularly if you have advanced education (e.g. MBA or similar).

Re: 1984 – When women stopped coding

#130

Post by teacup50 »

CrLf wrote: post #98
mattmanser wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programming a major system has absolutely no need of a CS degree. I know and have worked with programmers with and without a CS degree (I'm one of the ones without). As far as I can tell it's no indicator of programmer skill at all.

Just like building a skyscraper doesn't require a degree. You don't need a degree to lay bricks, pour cement or assemble rebar. But you do if you're the one designing the structure in the first place. There is a lot of knowledge to be gained by experience, but sometimes it's useful to have knowledge gained from books, and in particular from books you had no interest reading in the first place (which is the real value…

Books are not the sole property of colleges.
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