Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

blog.hackerrank.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 144 posts

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#11

Post by dr_toolittle »

positivity89 wrote: post #2

Wow, this was really inspiring. There are probably hundreds of girls/women like this, but they don't make headlines as often. This is awesome. The youngest sister may even grow up in a world where she doesn't have the same barriers as most women today. Could this be a sign of positive change?

> The youngest sister may even grow up in a world where she doesn't have the same barriers as most women today.

If there are fewer barriers, then you might see growth. Unfortunately this is difficult to tell. Some surveys show growth, others don't:

S.O. survey respondents 5.8% women (2016) - http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016

S.O. survey respondents 5.8% women (2015) - http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2015

Google: 17% women (2014) - http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/05/28/google-release...

Facebook: 15% women (2014) - http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/25/facebook-diversity/

12.33% women engineers in tech (2013) - http://qz.com/143967/the-tech-industrys-woman-problem-statis...

10-12% developers are women in L.A. (2012) - http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorikozlowski/2012/03/22/women-i...

International Game Developers Association reported women went from from 11.5% to 22% between 2009 and 2014(?) - http://www.gamespot.com/articles/percentage-of-female-develo...

Why?

In addition to there being fewer women in the pipeline for tech jobs, it's been said that a good percentage of the ones that would've stayed in the workforce were harassed, etc. and left: http://www.vox.com/2016/1/17/10781366/women-technology-sexua...

And then there is the wage inequality problem, shown in the stack overflow survey results- see "Salary by Gender" in http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016

Possibly men are more likely to hire men, which could cause problems with growth in women's share of the market.

Of course there are also problems like having fewer role models when there are fewer in the industry, not having government and schools enabling women via scholarships, funding, etc. as much as they could, or possibly it's genuine lack of interest, but I don't think that's the case.

Development was invented by women, and it would be great if they made up a greater percentage: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/in-celebration-of-...

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#12

Post by positivity89 »

komaromy wrote: post #9
differentView wrote: post #6

>As for my sisters, if a guy says girls can’t code as well as guys, then my sisters just say “well, my sister wins competitions.” >I’ve won 2 bronze medals at IOI, 1 bronze at CEOI, 2 silvers at IZhO. Mari, Ani and I competed in HackerRank Women’s Cup as a team last year, and we ranked third place! Some companies that sponsored the event even sent us a letter after the contest, but I had to tell them that we’re too y…

It's annoying when the subject of an article is interesting enough to warrant attention but the headline is sensationalized regardless.

If the article is great, then I don't see the harm.

It's worse when an article is completely misleading and the content/subject is underwhelming. This is definitely not the worst example of this.

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#13

Post by matt_wulfeck »

YuriNiyazov wrote: post #7

There's something that continuously goes unsaid in the US tech industry where we do massive amounts of soul-searching about the lack and/or poor treatment of women in STEM: the ex-republics of the Soviet Union, while they have plenty of other problems, do not have this specific problem.

my personal observation over the years says that the vast majority of new female engineers have come from foreign countries. Or are American citizens who immigrated here after middle school.

We're celebrating a narrowing gender gap, but American women seem to be largely left out.

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#14

Post by dcw303 »

To everyone arguing technicalities over whether they are actually winners, or some odd mental gymnastics of reverse sexism, consider the following:

This article is not written for you. Not everything on the internet has to be.

If this story inspires just one woman to start a career in coding, then it is worth all the collective eye-rolling.

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#15

Post by and-can »

dcw303 wrote: post #14

To everyone arguing technicalities over whether they are actually winners, or some odd mental gymnastics of reverse sexism, consider the following: This article is not written for you. Not everything on the internet has to be. If this story inspires just one woman to start a career in coding, then it is worth all the collective eye-rolling.

I don't see many people arguing over technicalities here.

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#16

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast »

lotso wrote: post #10
rustynails wrote: post #5

I'm not sure what you mean by positive change. Firstly, the article was very sexist and I don't see that changing any time soon. "programming is just another skill to be mastered through persistence — with or without a Y chromosome.". Can anyone point me to a link where anyone (other than a feminist) has said this? Smashing of records? They came 2nd and 3rd in most instances. That's not refuting they may be talented,…

> Can anyone point me to a link where anyone (other than a feminist) has said this? Seems odd to tie this to being a feminist. I would hope all commentators on HN are feminists. What is your definition of a feminist? > There has never been a myth that women can't code. I don't think anyone says women "can't" code. I would say in most universities in the US, you could reasonably argue there seems to be more barriers t…

> I would hope all commentators on HN are feminists.

I would hope so too, but the empirical evidence is against us.

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#17

Post by eip »

lotso wrote: post #10
rustynails wrote: post #5

I'm not sure what you mean by positive change. Firstly, the article was very sexist and I don't see that changing any time soon. "programming is just another skill to be mastered through persistence — with or without a Y chromosome.". Can anyone point me to a link where anyone (other than a feminist) has said this? Smashing of records? They came 2nd and 3rd in most instances. That's not refuting they may be talented,…

> Can anyone point me to a link where anyone (other than a feminist) has said this? Seems odd to tie this to being a feminist. I would hope all commentators on HN are feminists. What is your definition of a feminist? > There has never been a myth that women can't code. I don't think anyone says women "can't" code. I would say in most universities in the US, you could reasonably argue there seems to be more barriers t…

Just out of curiosity.. what barriers?

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#18

Post by scrollaway »

lotso wrote: post #10
rustynails wrote: post #5

I'm not sure what you mean by positive change. Firstly, the article was very sexist and I don't see that changing any time soon. "programming is just another skill to be mastered through persistence — with or without a Y chromosome.". Can anyone point me to a link where anyone (other than a feminist) has said this? Smashing of records? They came 2nd and 3rd in most instances. That's not refuting they may be talented,…

> Can anyone point me to a link where anyone (other than a feminist) has said this? Seems odd to tie this to being a feminist. I would hope all commentators on HN are feminists. What is your definition of a feminist? > There has never been a myth that women can't code. I don't think anyone says women "can't" code. I would say in most universities in the US, you could reasonably argue there seems to be more barriers t…

You're most likely being downvoted because you misunderstood the parent post.

Saying "you can code even if you're a woman" is incredibly patronizing. It was never in question.

If I started saying, "Well, I think everyone can code, even red-haired people", it'd be negatively worded against red-haired people.

Hey, have you ever heard a politician bring something up under the guise of defending their opponents?

Like maybe say "I do not believe in these allegations about my opponent being born outside the United States. And even if he isn't born in the US, it's not relevant. We should talk about his policies, not about my opponent being born outside the US."

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#20

Post by nostrebored »

rustynails wrote: post #5

I'm not sure what you mean by positive change. Firstly, the article was very sexist and I don't see that changing any time soon. "programming is just another skill to be mastered through persistence — with or without a Y chromosome.". Can anyone point me to a link where anyone (other than a feminist) has said this? Smashing of records? They came 2nd and 3rd in most instances. That's not refuting they may be talented,…

Maybe this is coming from a generational gap, but your experience does not mirror mine at all. I went to an engineering school where women in CS were either assumed to be a management major or people assumed that they were taking the easiest courses available. I've had my wife answer questions for people thoroughly and correctly, and had them come to ask me the same question 20 minutes later and trust that my answer was right.

I've talked to women who left computer science, not because of the difficulty of the courses, but because of the attitude that men at our university had towards them. The data supports this, take a look at the charts of women in CS over time.

And honestly, talking to women older than me, a refrain I hear from nearly all of them is "I'm not a math person". I had a relative in her 80's with a math PhD who would not tell people because she thought it was "too manly."

My coworker, who got into tech because she thought it was the only way she could stay in Seattle, frequently says "I'm not a coder." She just did a code review of one of the projects she's working on that is significantly better than any of the other work I've seen coming out of QA or DevOps at my job.

Your wife is an anomaly. So is mine. It doesn't take much effort to see that in our field.

Post reply on HN