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

Confessions of a Failed Female Coder

hackernoon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 136 posts

Re: Confessions of a Failed Female Coder

#61

Post by Retric »

dxhdr wrote: post #59
jansho wrote: post #55

There seems to be a bit of a contradiction in her post: > Despite the cargo shorts and the loner attitude, I learned like a girl. And: > it was an all-girls school, and every single other woman who took that computer science class that year became an engineer or scientist. Hmm, it sounds more like she has a different learning style, which is not necessarily down to her femaleness. That said, I think that at a fundame…

> at a fundamental level, there are differences in how men and women think It's undeniable there are biological differences between men and women, but this seems far fetched. Biological differences don't manifest themselves in an intuitive way; for example, there is no difference between men and women's hair. However we perceive a large difference entirely due to environmental training.

It would be odd for there it be zero observable differences considering how different many brain structures are between men and women.

If nothing else women get migraines more frequently than men do. Which seems unlikely to come down to environmental issues.

Re: Confessions of a Failed Female Coder

#63

Post by dxhdr »

Retric wrote: post #61
dxhdr wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> at a fundamental level, there are differences in how men and women think It's undeniable there are biological differences between men and women, but this seems far fetched. Biological differences don't manifest themselves in an intuitive way; for example, there is no difference between men and women's hair. However we perceive a large difference entirely due to environmental training.

It would be odd for there it be zero observable differences considering how different many brain structures are between men and women. If nothing else women get migraines more frequently than men do. Which seems unlikely to come down to environmental issues.

Are these differences in brain structure observable in the womb, or after years of growing? As an example, abuse victims can also have altered brain structures but they certainly weren't born that way.

Re: Confessions of a Failed Female Coder

#65

Post by flotillo »

matt4077 wrote: post #47
GhostVII wrote: post #21

It's interesting that a lot of her experiences are similar to what the Google manifesto said - that currently, computer science is more targeted towards the way men learn and work than the way women learn and work. Although she was focusing more on the education side of things versus the work side, the core message seems to be that men and women learn and work differently, and that needs to be addressed to get more w…

I thought the guy's behaviour after he was fired had put this "he's just interested in science" myth.

Indeed, I thought it quite telling that Damore's subreddit, that he actively moderates, is full of posts and comments hating on women.

And also that he's embraced becoming something of a folk hero for alt-right dullards.

Re: Confessions of a Failed Female Coder

#66

Post by rocqua »

> girls and women prefer collaborative rather than solo work, that they are more engaged in “things” if they can see the “people” aspect to it, and that they are prone to perfectionism and a fear of failure.

This does not quite jive with enrollment at my university. I am thinking specifically of maths as compared to other STEM fields. Of all seriously theoretical courses, maths has the most women, last time I checked, it was pretty close to 50/50.

Yet, math is much less collaborative than physics, that is the understanding has to be your own. If there is a people part to either, I'd argue its physics because it is closer to an application. I suppose one might say that maths has more of a people part, because much of math in practice is communication. That feels like stretching a definition though.

When looking at the enrollment numbers, what is most striking is the difference between CS and maths. Whereas maths is about 50/50, CS seems to be below 10% female. As far as subject manner is concerned, I'd say these two studies are very close. And yet, maths is way more popular.

Based on this, I'd argue that the low enrollment in CS has nothing to do with the subject matter, and much more to do with how comfortable women feel in either group.

Re: Confessions of a Failed Female Coder

#67

Post by marktangotango »

rocqua wrote: post #66

> girls and women prefer collaborative rather than solo work, that they are more engaged in “things” if they can see the “people” aspect to it, and that they are prone to perfectionism and a fear of failure. This does not quite jive with enrollment at my university. I am thinking specifically of maths as compared to other STEM fields. Of all seriously theoretical courses, maths has the most women, last time I checked…

My understanding is you get a lot secondary ed math majors, which tends to skew female. In my area at least.

Re: Confessions of a Failed Female Coder

#68

Post by 33a »

dxhdr wrote: post #59
jansho wrote: post #55

There seems to be a bit of a contradiction in her post: > Despite the cargo shorts and the loner attitude, I learned like a girl. And: > it was an all-girls school, and every single other woman who took that computer science class that year became an engineer or scientist. Hmm, it sounds more like she has a different learning style, which is not necessarily down to her femaleness. That said, I think that at a fundame…

> at a fundamental level, there are differences in how men and women think It's undeniable there are biological differences between men and women, but this seems far fetched. Biological differences don't manifest themselves in an intuitive way; for example, there is no difference between men and women's hair. However we perceive a large difference entirely due to environmental training.

Not that I disagree with the sentiment, but hair is a bad example. Men go bald and get beards, while women don't.

Re: Confessions of a Failed Female Coder

#69

Post by jansho »

dxhdr wrote: post #59
jansho wrote: post #55

There seems to be a bit of a contradiction in her post: > Despite the cargo shorts and the loner attitude, I learned like a girl. And: > it was an all-girls school, and every single other woman who took that computer science class that year became an engineer or scientist. Hmm, it sounds more like she has a different learning style, which is not necessarily down to her femaleness. That said, I think that at a fundame…

> at a fundamental level, there are differences in how men and women think It's undeniable there are biological differences between men and women, but this seems far fetched. Biological differences don't manifest themselves in an intuitive way; for example, there is no difference between men and women's hair. However we perceive a large difference entirely due to environmental training.

> more likely ... due to environmental differences.

Maybe, which still affects how we think because we're still classified by gender in society. The assumption that I made earlier is probably intuited from personal experience and countless books like "Men are from Mars..".

I'm not shy if it does turn out that male and female brains are wired differently (that sounds really awful), but my point is really that ultimately, we all think differently. Because we're not just defined by our gender, there's so many other factors like upbringing, autistic or not, etc. And then there's also free will.

We should celebrate this diversity.

Re: Confessions of a Failed Female Coder

#70

Post by taysic »

zengid wrote: post #60

> "Rather, I was frustrated because the course consisted of lone work on exercises that seemed to have little application to the real world, the expectation that coursework required coding and debugging for hours after school threatened my ability to excel in other classes or in varsity sports" Just taking this at face value, I think she failed because she was afraid of failing. I've always learned better from having…

Well I'm a woman and I learned coding by myself in exactly the way you describe. I personally don't think it has anything to do with gender. I didn't find many study partners within my major that I could relate to so I just studied by myself. This continued to lay the groundwork for a continuing self-education after college. I don't think this is so weird, but certainly it's nice whenever you have a supportive group around yourself. I wouldn't discourage anyone from seeking that out but I can't say I needed it either. If anything, I came to prefer the independence of working on my own much more.
Post reply on HN