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Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

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Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#51

Post by oolongCat »

azaxacavaba wrote: post #46

Competitive coding contests are in a way similar to chess or olympiads and it is a sport in itself. For all the years I have spent and observed on topcoder, Google Code Jam and others I haven't seen a lot of women coders reaching the top, not even from Russia. So what these girls are achieving is a big deal and should inspire many. It is a little disappointing to see comments like they didn't crush because they didn'…

I think most of the negative comments are here, because of the sexist tone of the author of this article. What these girls have archived is something we should celebrate, not as a victory for the sexes, but as a sign that more and more young people are learning to code.

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#52

Post by maxerickson »

tenpies wrote: post #32
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.

There was an interesting Norwegian documentary that looked into this[1]. The overall observation was that societies where women were extremely free, usually ended up with the same gender distributions as societies in which they were less free (e.g. few women in STEM). By contrast, societies where women were only somewhat free, the number of women in STEM exploded (although I don't recall if it was quite 50/50). Witho…

Was there extra social pressure to stay out of STEM in in the less free societies?

A couple plausible alternative explanations that quickly come to mind are greater reliance on aptitude testing and having more motivation to get a job that granted more freedoms.

(I don't have any idea if those are true, it just seems that there could be lots of things that would explain the difference)

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#53

Post by ae_keji »

user_0001 wrote: post #35
Apocryphon wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder which of these other nations are. Perhaps their engineering cultures are more gender-egalitarian than ours.

Equally as important, perhaps they do not have it drilled into them that beauty is all they should aim for. Everything they see is that women should be (model level) beautiful. Should flaunt their women-ness. Advertising, makeup, dolls, television, films play a bigger part than the so called sexism that exists in engineering cultures

The fact that makeup exists speaks a lot about our culture and how it views women.

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#54

Post by ae_keji »

home_boi wrote: post #33
nostrebored wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>take a look at the charts of women in CS over time. You mean the chart of video game growth over time? This might be a bit of a stretch but it has rung true with me and many other people. We all became interested in technology and computers because of video games. Our interests in video games transitioned to taking programming courses in high school and college.

Maybe Minecraft will change the industry before any of us can cook up a good solution to the gender gap.

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#55

Post by jacalata »

rdtsc wrote: post #47

That is pretty awesome. I remember back in high school in the Soviet Union (then, what became one of the ex-Soviet Union republics, much like Georgia), there were quite a few girls in my class who were doing well above and beyond what boys would be in math, informatics (what we called computer science) and physics. Remember asking a girl for help to understand integrals. So there is something to it in that part of th…

Some of it may be traceable to the enormous number of Soviet men who died in WWII, prompting intense state support for single mothers and allowing the remaining men to avoid responsibility and be spoiled, essentially. This is mentioned briefly in this article if you're interested - http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/all-the-...

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#56

Post by Johnny555 »

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…

They've won 2 bronze medals at IOI, 1 bronze at CEOI, 2 silvers at IZh

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#57

Post by scrollaway »

startling wrote: post #25
scrollaway wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ma…

So, your argument is "no one has ever said men are better at writing programs than women"?

Not only am I not arguing (and thus don't have an argument), but even if I were, that would certainly not be my argument.

I was explaining why the comment was getting downvoted.

It is, however, interesting to see how you yourself are adopting a very similar tactic to the one I talk about in the post you replied to. Simply fascinating.

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#58

Post by scrollaway »

lotso wrote: post #29
scrollaway wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people, especially here, believe that matters of equality are solved by treating peers as equals regardless of differences, rather than praise the differences, put them on a pedestal and give the people handicaps for being different. I'd also love to see all that "empirical evidence". HN is one of the most respectful communities in tech I've frequented. Sexist remarks and the like tend to be downvoted and fl…

As a minority, I think it is incredibly valuable to see people like me succeeding. >HN is one of the most respectful communities in tech I've frequented. I don't think I've ever seen a thoughtful discussion here when the topic relates to gender or race.

> I think it is incredibly valuable to see people like me succeeding

I feel the same way. In fact, most people here feel the same way, regardless of whether they are part of a minority or not. We all love to see people like ourselves succeed. It's incredibly empowering to feel that "this can be you". It doesn't just apply to careers, but in any situation where we feel we are faced with a challenge (this is why, for example, weight loss communities like /r/loseit are so successful).

Displays of success don't have to be contextualized as "they are successful because they are a minority", or "it's a big deal because they are a minority". Doing this cheapens the accomplishment and (I think) that's what rustynails was getting at.

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#59

Post by clevernickname »

tenpies wrote: post #32
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.

There was an interesting Norwegian documentary that looked into this[1]. The overall observation was that societies where women were extremely free, usually ended up with the same gender distributions as societies in which they were less free (e.g. few women in STEM). By contrast, societies where women were only somewhat free, the number of women in STEM exploded (although I don't recall if it was quite 50/50). Witho…

Came here to post that documentary (the entire series of which is freely available, btw[1]). I think you misinterpreted it slightly, however. The documentary presents evidence (strongly denied by the Norwegian social scientists interviewed) that male and female brains are wired differently, to be good at and enjoy different activities. It even goes so far as to show studies that link receiving an excessive amount of the opposite sex's hormones during prenatal development to developing the stereotypical interests of the opposite sex early in childhood.

When a very egalitarian, gender neutral society like Norway exhibits more "traditional" gender distribution in the workforce than a less egalitarian one, the Norwegian social scientists thought this must be because of institutional sexism, or cultural brainwashing reinforcing gender roles, or whatever other excuse you've heard a million times. The documentary instead posits the idea that in a society where you are truly free to do what makes you happy, maybe it's normal that less women than men would want to be engineers and less men than women would want to be teachers or nurses.

Whereas in "somewhat free" societies that have higher numbers of women in "male" jobs, these societies are usually much less affluent than, say, Norway. So of course people will end up doing jobs that they may not particularly enjoy, they have to to survive. It's not mild social pressure "daring" women to go against the grain or anything that could be imported, it's economic pressure forcing people to take whatever jobs are available (or indeed, having jobs assigned to them by a planning committee).

Humans are adaptable, of course. When an intelligent person is forced (directly or indirectly) into a role that they may not have chosen themself, they will most likely learn to be competent. And both intellectual outliers and people (as mentioned above) with prenatal hormone mismatch can account for people that do exceptionally well in a role dominated by the other gender. But the question is, are you really making society better if you are forcing average people into certain roles to fulfill your political goals? Or are you increasing the amount of unhappiness in the world and perhaps even driving down the average competency in that field?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjernevask

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#60

Post by jlg23 »

jacalata wrote: post #55
rdtsc wrote: post #47

That is pretty awesome. I remember back in high school in the Soviet Union (then, what became one of the ex-Soviet Union republics, much like Georgia), there were quite a few girls in my class who were doing well above and beyond what boys would be in math, informatics (what we called computer science) and physics. Remember asking a girl for help to understand integrals. So there is something to it in that part of th…

Some of it may be traceable to the enormous number of Soviet men who died in WWII, prompting intense state support for single mothers and allowing the remaining men to avoid responsibility and be spoiled, essentially. This is mentioned briefly in this article if you're interested - http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/all-the-...

Maybe, or maybe it was the basic understand that the communist dream can only come true if everyone, men and women, equally work towards it. In my parents' generation (I'm born in the GDR) there was no debate about feminism. Women were expected to work, childcare was available, it was free and it catered to people who had to work 40h/week. Sometimes I was in kindergarten from 8am to 8pm.

I still remember how I did not get jokes about inferiority of girls when we emigrated to Western Germany - I simply had never ever heard one before.

What speaks against your theory is that men died on all sides in WWII, but in the West (read: democratic societies), women's rights developed in a distinctively different/slower way.

PS: Yes, it was not all rosy, childcare was dual-use, it was also used for indoctrination of the youngest and even to some degree to control/check on the parents.

EDIT: It's probably revealing that my initial impulse is to consider this story as irrelevant because it focuses on the gender. Yes, after 26 years in the West I understand why it is relevant.

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