1984 – When women stopped coding • Hacker News Board

Re: 1984 – When women stopped coding

#151

Post by noxToken » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 4:28 PM UTC

cheez wrote: post #148

noxToken wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wro…

Was this at the university camps? I sent my daughter to the gaming sessions and she absolutely loved them. I didn't send her to Minecraft for the reasons you stated :)

Yes it was.

After the 2nd day of getting no where, we pretty much just asked for ideas. If they were simple enough, we made and distributed them. There were a couple of enterprising young minds that were doing their damnedest to make their own mods. We helped them as much as we could. Other than that, the kids basically just played Minecraft for a week.

At least one kid did come out of the camp wanting to learn to program. I ran into him and his family one evening a month or so later. They sat next to us in a restaurant, and after excitedly bring up the camp, he told me that he's trying to learn programming on his own.

Re: 1984 – When women stopped coding

#152

Post by cookiecaper » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 4:29 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #129

flexie wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Management requires an entirely different skillset than programming, and one that many programmers are not well-suited for.

Management is not about selecting objectively good tools, and it's not about making hard choices or settling disputes. It's about keeping everyone that works for your employer happy, which is, frankly, 95% about the superficial.

Re: 1984 – When women stopped coding

#153

Post by darkr » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 4:30 PM UTC

caskance wrote: post #120

darkr wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've totally missed the point why people hate marketing. It's not because of a lack of understanding on it's mechanics. > From this point of view, there is no "travesty" to thank marketing for. The reality was that probably personal computers were more appealing to men, so it made more sense to spend marketing resources towards them. Why it was more appealing to them is a good question to ask, and it could…

Marketing only manufactures desire if you interpret desire in the most narrow possible sense as desire for a specific product. What marketing actually does is make desires concrete and suggest to the audience how that desire can be fulfilled. If you look at one of the most famous examples of successful marketing, diamond marketing created demand for a specific product, but it was only able to do so because the emotio…

The term desire works in a broader sense, as long as you differentiate between a need and a desire.

A need (I guess I'm referring here mostly to needs in the context of those defined by Maslow's Hierarchy) is defined as something that is an absolute; an end state. There is a requirement of truth for something to be a need.

A desire is defined as "a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen". A desire is open to suggestion, to invention and misrepresentation.

Taking your example of the diamond industry: The "needs" being targeted here are pretty much the solid base of the pyramid (sex & shelter, family/stability, love & intimacy). Does a tiny, expensive shiny rock from Sierra Leone provide those needs? No; obviously it is the symbolism of giving to/receiving from someone in the hope that they will provide those needs to you. Did humans manage to satisfy those needs before De Beers came along? I'm pretty sure they did.

The desire for diamonds among the general populace was completely manufactured, whereas the aforementioned needs always existed, and (I strongly suspect) were always being filled before the normalisation of diamond rings as intentions of marriage.

I suppose diamonds (at least in the context of use as jewellery), and the whole story of De Beers are a shining example of commodity fetishism.

Re: 1984 – When women stopped coding

#154

Post by omilu » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 4:39 PM UTC

jcadam wrote: post #94

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…

THIS . I love programming, and spent my childhood hacking away on Apple IIs/Amigas/etc., but if I had my teens/twenties to do over again, I would pursue a career in Medicine (couldn't have stomached a career in Law, methinks) while continuing to program as a 'hobby.' Alas, I followed my "passion." Blech.

Grass is always greener. If you were a medical professional you'd probably be having the exact same thoughts, wishing you had taken up law or computers, anything to escape from all the blood, broken bones and sick and dying people, day in day out, with no end in sight.

Re: 1984 – When women stopped coding

#155

Post by nsxwolf » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 4:43 PM UTC

jcadam wrote: post #94

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…

THIS . I love programming, and spent my childhood hacking away on Apple IIs/Amigas/etc., but if I had my teens/twenties to do over again, I would pursue a career in Medicine (couldn't have stomached a career in Law, methinks) while continuing to program as a 'hobby.' Alas, I followed my "passion." Blech.

Hey, at least your passion wasn't glass blowing, right?

Re: 1984 – When women stopped coding

#156

Post by scotty79 » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 4:47 PM UTC

Isn't that about the same time when greed driven people started doing such crappy games that adults (women included) stopped playing them altogether? After the market nearly died they had to move games from electronics to child toys but they had then pick either boys toys or girls toys and they went with boys.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i08CVkBxvBM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_cras...

It seems that there is only one way for normal people to enter programming and it's through games.

Re: 1984 – When women stopped coding

#157

Post by hasenj » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 4:50 PM UTC

Maybe it's actually the time that men became more interested in software.

The first programmers were mostly females because men in STEM were probably more interested in physics and hardware. This is entirely a hunch on my part, but even the term "soft-ware" sounds almost derogatory.

Imagine if math was called a soft science? Why, it's all imaginary!

I think the term "soft science" is some derogatory towards fields like social sciences.

Re: 1984 – When women stopped coding

#158

Post by cookiecaper » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 4:52 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #140

lotu wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really question where you are getting your numbers they don't really make sense to me. Second, I will point out that the market for lawyers is completely oversaturated, so if you go to law school unless you went to a top ten law school you may end up working at Starbucks (slight exageration). As far as medicine their is very clear demand but the costs to get their are very high. You have an extra $100K, for 4 years…

I think the argument is that "big bucks" in CS is relative and the ceiling is much higher in medicine specifically (and to a certain extent law but you're 100% correct about the oversaturation). Outside of San Francisco and (maybe) NYC, "big bucks" for a programmer with no managerial responsibilities is probably somewhere in the $120-180k range. In my very low cost of living area, it's in the $100-120k range. You jus…

It's about the entire cost. If the average wage for a programmer is 72k, but they can make that for 10 years while the future-doctor is living off student loans, that's worth something; at the end of the 10 year training period for the physician, they've made -200k while the programmer has made +720k. If the physician comes out of school and makes the median wage of 187k, at year 20 the programmer will have grossed 1.4 million while the physician has grossed 1.8 million, but the physician also has had to pay down 200k student debt at a rough estimate of a 6% total interest rate (total: 266k), making his 10-year career take home only about 220k more than the programmer.

It's definitely true that doctors make more money over the long run, but if by year 20 (~age 40), the difference is only about 2 years' extra salary, a lot of people would say it's not worth the stress.

Re: 1984 – When women stopped coding

#159

Post by cookiecaper » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 4:57 PM UTC

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…

The AMA and the ABA end up performing the function of unions in attempting to guarantee a rough wage floor by artificially constraining supply. One of the ways they do this is by working to ensure that the barriers to entry in the field are artificially high.

I believe that licensing and authoritative standards bodies are inevitable in software engineering, but I think it will radically change the face of the programming job market, removing many of its most attractive qualities. It will be a very dark day, and the end of the era of the self-taught programmer, when something like the American Software Engineering Association gets to set the rules.

Re: 1984 – When women stopped coding

#160

Post by ashark » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 5:06 PM UTC

beachstartup wrote: post #75

mattlutze wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a similar way that some parents will fruitlessly try to coax their children into being the sports starts they want/wanted to be, for some children the "digging about in the computer" bug just won't catch. I hope it won't be too disappointing for you... there's a whole world of experiences to explore with your daughters! I'm on the older edge or in the early middle of the Millennial generation, depending who define…

my parents tried hard (real, real hard) to get me to play tennis and piano, and refused to let me spend as much time on the computer as i wanted to. guess which i did at 2 in the morning while they were asleep? guess which i dropped like a bad habit as soon as i left the house? and this was in the 90s, when dot com mania was at its height. newsflash: parents live vicariously through their kids and project all sorts o…

I have a theory that you'll have a very hard time teaching your kids to be into something if you're not. Kids whose parents play a sport on the weekends or who play music regularly are probably more likely to stick with those things, at least recreationally[1]. Eat your veggies (which probably means you're cooking tasty veggie dishes) and your kids will.

Even values, like "learning is important" may work like this. Bet they'll study better if they see you learning new things, watching you struggle and gradually gain understanding and skills.

"Reading is super important!" says parent who only reads instruction manuals, Facebook, and (maybe) garbage fiction. "You will practice the piano!" says parent who hasn't played a note on an instrument since high school. "Get your ass out of bed and to tennis practice!" says parent who wheezes going up a flight of stairs. "Math is vital to your future success!" says parent who can count the times they've used anything past 8th grade math as an adult on one hand.

Show, don't tell, I guess.

[1] Nearly of people I've encountered who were serious amateur or part-time pro musicians came from families that played music, not families that played no music but insisted their kids take piano lessons, for example.