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

Born for it – How the image of software developers came about

martinfowler.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 130 posts

Re: Born for it – How the image of software developers came about

#81

Post by icebraining »

sgift wrote: post #77
kabouseng wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't...

That were my thoughts too .. if they had ignored her "You see, nerds ignore women and make them feel unwelcome", now "see, they are creeps, that makes woman feel unwelcome" - and if you ask "what is your solution?" "They should behave normal." which is the most useless answer ever. If I ask ten people about normal behaviour in a given situation I get ten answers and if I drill a bit further more like 40 answers, almo…

On the other hand, just because the solution is unclear, doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist.

Re: Born for it – How the image of software developers came about

#82

Post by sgift »

icebraining wrote: post #81
sgift wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That were my thoughts too .. if they had ignored her "You see, nerds ignore women and make them feel unwelcome", now "see, they are creeps, that makes woman feel unwelcome" - and if you ask "what is your solution?" "They should behave normal." which is the most useless answer ever. If I ask ten people about normal behaviour in a given situation I get ten answers and if I drill a bit further more like 40 answers, almo…

On the other hand, just because the solution is unclear, doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist.

Certainly, but almost everything can be redefined as a problem, because almost everything can be a problem. In a given context.

For a problem you need a problem definition or things get very murky, very fast and you end in "just do the normal thing" territory, which is what I wanted to highlight with my comment above.

Re: Born for it – How the image of software developers came about

#83

Post by sgift »

kami8845 wrote: post #80
tajen wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is still blaming nerds for something they really can't do anything about. There's really a gap between "scientific surveys" and the terrain I've seen. In my last project as contractor there were 9 male/developers and 4 females with a management title. The meantime-to-management I've seen is 2 years after graduation for women, 7 years for males. All 15% females of my 150-student class are now in management positi…

Maybe it made more sense for the business to have you as a developer writing code and her as a manager rather than you as a manager and her writing code?

Then it wouldn't be a problem that there are few women writing software, wouldn't it? Because .. maybe it just makes sense?

No that is NOT my opinion, I just want to highlight the logic flaw I see here. You cannot say that the same thing (underrepresentation) is a problem in one case and not in the other, that's just .. weird.

Re: Born for it – How the image of software developers came about

#84

Post by sgift »

The idea that some people are born for some things is very prevailent. Usually, it is called "talent" and nobody cries foul. As a completely tech-unrelated example: Art schools usually ask you for a portfolio when you apply to show that you are "talented" in art, which would be as if I needed a certificate as a doctor to study medicine. Sometimes these things seem to be accepted, sometimes not. Weird.

Re: Born for it – How the image of software developers came about

#85

Post by halomru »

eva1984 wrote: post #70

First of all..The stereotype is mainly nerdy, socially-awkward male...but is it overall white? No. Actually the percentage of white people in software is lower than the overall demographics. I can understand why white is singled out here, because it helps to drive the rhetoric of the discussion to racism and sexism, but fundamentally the problem is much more complex. My 2 cents about why women are underrepresented in…

>Gamers are overwhelmingly MALE.

This used to be true for decades, but by now the majority of people who play computer games are female. Social games and mobile games were a game changer in this regard. It will be interesting to see how that affects interest in programming in the future.

Re: Born for it – How the image of software developers came about

#86

Post by mpweiher »

icebraining wrote: post #78
blah5432 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

diversity (or lack of it) of the field is a result of the shift in targeting a certain type of person for the programmer's job Based on... which facts exactly? Edit: As far as I can see, the picture is that there's a bunch of socially inept males that some shadowy powers carefully select to make a mysoginistic getto to keep women at bay. This is utterly ridiculous, no matter which amount of social science "evidence"…

shadowy powers carefully select I don't think anyone's claiming that.

Actually, that is exactly the claim.

For example, the book "The Computer Boys Take Over" quoted all over in TFA claims that the drive to "professionalize" programming and make it more "engineering like" was specifically to drive women out, after men found out the profession was gaining status and money in the late 70ies and early 80ies.

Which is ridiculous on so many fronts, I am not sure whether to laugh or cry. And of course makes me not give too much credit to anyone basing their argument on that book.

Re: Born for it – How the image of software developers came about

#87

Post by icebraining »

mpweiher wrote: post #86
icebraining wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

shadowy powers carefully select I don't think anyone's claiming that.

Actually, that is exactly the claim. For example, the book "The Computer Boys Take Over" quoted all over in TFA claims that the drive to "professionalize" programming and make it more "engineering like" was specifically to drive women out, after men found out the profession was gaining status and money in the late 70ies and early 80ies. Which is ridiculous on so many fronts, I am not sure whether to laugh or cry. And…

Oh, fair enough, I understood a different thesis from the article (of a self-reinforcing stereotype among employers).

Re: Born for it – How the image of software developers came about

#88

Post by fsloth »

jonathankoren wrote: post #30
cb18 wrote: post #19

So many mysteries of the modern world become quite understandable when you allow yourself the luxury of understanding the relevance of intelligence. It varies among races, knowledge of this is scientifically sound, it is the consensus of everyone who studies it seriously. The modern tendency is to feverishly avert one's eyes from this fact, but it must be reckoned with eventually. I believe we'll all be better off wh…

> [Intelligence] varies among races, knowledge of this is scientifically sound, it is the consensus of everyone who studies it seriously. Holy fuck. Yeah. I'm calling you out for being a racist fuck. Your "human biodiversity" aka "scientific racism" is a pseudoscience that has no basis at all. All your ideas better explained by economics. So in conclusion, fuck you.

It's likely that an arbitrary metric can vary among groups. This as such is not problematic. The problem with the quoted 'research' is that they are effectively just p-mining data sets and trying to find correlations between IQ and other metrics.

Re: Born for it – How the image of software developers came about

#90

Post by azazqadir »

halomru wrote: post #85
eva1984 wrote: post #70

First of all..The stereotype is mainly nerdy, socially-awkward male...but is it overall white? No. Actually the percentage of white people in software is lower than the overall demographics. I can understand why white is singled out here, because it helps to drive the rhetoric of the discussion to racism and sexism, but fundamentally the problem is much more complex. My 2 cents about why women are underrepresented in…

>Gamers are overwhelmingly MALE. This used to be true for decades, but by now the majority of people who play computer games are female. Social games and mobile games were a game changer in this regard. It will be interesting to see how that affects interest in programming in the future.

True, especially for Facebook games. Majority of them are female. Though hardcore PC gamers and console gamers are still male in majority.
Post reply on HN