What happened to all the female developers? • Hacker News Board

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#211

Post by maeon3 » Wed, Jul 27, 2011, 1:41 AM UTC

Of all of the female computer programmers I've gotten to know well and worked with (maybe 4 or 5), none of them were half as good as the average male programmer I've gotten to know.

Programming is, and always will be a male profession. The only thing that will change this is if we force women to learn programming, but even then you can't make them like it. I think the solution here is to realize that there is a physical pre-programmed revulsion to everything that Higher math, Physics and Programming have to offer.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#212

Post by sapphirecat » Wed, Jul 27, 2011, 1:43 AM UTC

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #98

Duff wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than that, medicine is more portable. At a typical large company, the ingress point into the company is at an entry-level position. Many women want to interrupt employment when they have children, which isn't practical for a IT person or programmer at a bank or government agency. My mother, to use a fairly typical example, is a nurse. She took 5-6 years off at various times when my siblings were born or when day…

Why should it be a big deal if you interrupt your career for a few years (whether to have a family or to travel the world...somehow I bet the second would be seen as ok in tech circles)? A good programmer can pick up a new technology in a couple of months. If you are hiring based on candidates winning resume buzzword bingo, you are going to get crappy candidates anyway. Hire for intelligence and capability and five y…

> A good programmer can pick up a new technology in a couple of months.

I would love it if things worked this way. But I told someone I could get coding in C# in a week, and probably be quite comfortable in a few months, and they sent me a polite rejection letter saying they were "impressed with my confidence" but there were many highly qualified candidates, etc. But then, that's probably the only advertised tech job I pursued that I didn't land an offer for.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#213

Post by zerohp » Wed, Jul 27, 2011, 2:02 AM UTC

maeon3 wrote: post #211

Of all of the female computer programmers I've gotten to know well and worked with (maybe 4 or 5), none of them were half as good as the average male programmer I've gotten to know. Programming is, and always will be a male profession. The only thing that will change this is if we force women to learn programming, but even then you can't make them like it. I think the solution here is to realize that there is a physi…

I've had the opportunity to work with several women programmers. I don't think they were worse than average but none of them live to write software and use technology as a lifestyle. I have never met a female programmer that was self-taught.

I think the answer to the original question (in the title here, not the Fog Creek post) is that the rise of personal computers, and parental influence on girls at the time drove them away from it. Prior to the personal computer, most programmers were being introduced to the field in college. At the dawn of personal computing, parents viewed it as a male activity, like radio or electronics. Once this generation reached college, the males had many years of experience exploring their curiosity at home that the females did not have. College course work had to adapt to this with increased expectations of incoming freshman into Computer Science programs, which left those without computer experience intimidated and struggling.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#214

Post by vacri » Wed, Jul 27, 2011, 2:05 AM UTC

joeyo wrote: post #73

gaius wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite. Can't outsource a surgeon, can you? Not to mention the social prestige.

At the risk of getting quite off-topic, in my opinion most physicians will eventually be replaced by a combination of Bayesian diagnostic software and surgical robotics. There will be an intermediate period where physicians will control and oversee the software and robots, but this too will pass. Those tasks which cannot be easily roboticized (for example, all the soft skills) will be shifted over to nurses.

Good luck in getting the vague descriptions of symptoms that patients give into your diagnostic software. When you say this, do you think it will happen in our lifetimes?

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#215

Post by vacri » Wed, Jul 27, 2011, 2:06 AM UTC

jleader wrote: post #85

gaius wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite. Can't outsource a surgeon, can you? Not to mention the social prestige.

Two words: medical tourism.

Which is due to too much domestic demand, raising prices too high. Medical tourism isn't costing surgical positions.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#216

Post by jamesteow » Wed, Jul 27, 2011, 2:44 AM UTC

benmccann wrote: post #92

curtis wrote: post #16

I wonder what the percentage of high school graduates who can program is, broken down by gender. My guess is there's close to an order of magnitude more 18 year-old males who can program than there are 18 year-old females, at least in the U.S., anyway. Furthermore, I'd guess that many if not most 18 year-olds who can program (male or female) are largely self-taught. My thesis here is that teenage boys are much more l…

Except you don't have to be able to program to be accepted to a CS program, so that shouldn't have a dramatic effect on why there are so few female students interested in CS.

True, but it's intimidating when a large part of the class has already had years of experience.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#217

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 27, 2011, 2:55 AM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #120

benmccann wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except you don't have to be able to program to be accepted to a CS program, so that shouldn't have a dramatic effect on why there are so few female students interested in CS.

But you have to know about what programming and computer science is about before WANTING to apply to a CS college. Or you can just rely on the media or your parents to tell you that CS pays good money - but that's just disastrous. I think that CS does not appeal to females simply because females are more social than males; spending endless hours in front of a computer is not really that attractive.

[deleted]

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#218

Post by mctavjb9 » Wed, Jul 27, 2011, 3:06 AM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #67

Here you go: It seems like sometimes the family computer is bought mainly for the boy to use and then he’s kind of forced to share it with his sister. That pretty much explains it, doesn't it? Girls are discouraged from using computers because they learn from a young age that computers are the "domain" (property / territory) of boys.

Happily not the case in my family. The Apple II Plus was my Christmas present in 1980. My younger brother (now an MBA) was content playing video games when I wasn't hunched over the keyboard writing BASIC programs with alarming numbers of GOTO statements.

Do you really think that girls are discouraged from using computers in this day and age? I'm always excited to meet women who can code or who show even the slightest interest in learning how to actually program a computer because there don't seem to be very many of us (even in a place like Boston). That being said, most women that I know who are approximately my age or younger are at least reasonably adept at using software that other people wrote.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#219

Post by sp332 » Wed, Jul 27, 2011, 3:13 AM UTC

mctavjb9 wrote: post #218

sp332 wrote: post #67

Here you go: It seems like sometimes the family computer is bought mainly for the boy to use and then he’s kind of forced to share it with his sister. That pretty much explains it, doesn't it? Girls are discouraged from using computers because they learn from a young age that computers are the "domain" (property / territory) of boys.

Happily not the case in my family. The Apple II Plus was my Christmas present in 1980. My younger brother (now an MBA) was content playing video games when I wasn't hunched over the keyboard writing BASIC programs with alarming numbers of GOTO statements. Do you really think that girls are discouraged from using computers in this day and age? I'm always excited to meet women who can code or who show even the slightes…

No, I just meant that if the present is given to the brother, then girls learn that computers are for boys. Especially if he defends it from her :)

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#220

Post by WalterSear » Wed, Jul 27, 2011, 3:20 AM UTC

For better or worse, the thing that jumps out at me from that graph is that the numbers all look similar until you get to the code review, where half as many women made the cut as men.

If this is a statistically significant difference, it speaks volumes.