When She Codes, The Revolution’s Coming • Hacker News Board

Re: When She Codes, The Revolution’s Coming

#11

Post by Craiggybear » Sun, Jan 22, 2012, 6:50 PM UTC

I don't know. Women have always coded. I was taught assembler (my first programming job) by a woman.

They have always been there (admittedly in smaller numbers then men) but they have always struck me as being excellent coders.

We have women like Ada Lovelace and Grace Murray Hopper as fine computing minds to emulate and admire.

Women have always been able to take to coding in my experience and be first class at it. They tend to be good at languages -- better than men generally -- and that includes programming languages, too.

Re: When She Codes, The Revolution’s Coming

#12

Post by prophetjohn » Sun, Jan 22, 2012, 6:50 PM UTC

josscrowcroft wrote: post #7

So I'm reading this, then I skim down and see how long it is. I read some more. Is it me or did this make no real point at all? Ladies learning code. Good idea, because more people coding is good, ladies or otherwise. I fail to see why the author is so amazingly hung up on whether or not it's feminist.

The writing definitely struck me as pretty meandering. I was pretty sure I was going to read about what the class was like and what she learned at first, but then it just kind of veered off into debating whether or not it was a feminist organization with no real direction. It's only tangentially about learning to use WordPress.

Re: When She Codes, The Revolution’s Coming

#13

Post by guard-of-terra » Sun, Jan 22, 2012, 6:54 PM UTC

quinndupont wrote: post #2

It's a fantastic movement, and the feminist in me is very happy to see the profession moving away from such a male focus. My only concern with articles like this (and female friends who participate in similar learning) is that learning HTML hardly makes you employable as a hot-shot startup whizz. In fact, it's arguable that HTML isn't even programming, it's really just basic computer use skills these days. I suppose…

If you know HTML+JS+CSS (and know it really well), then you're the hottest technical specialist on the market.

Compared to back-end programming it's harder to learn by accident (surprisingly so), it requires less common character traits, it's less rewarding in the weird programming sense than coding neat gems in ruby. But the demand is huge because most projects has bigger front-end than back-end these days.

Re: When She Codes, The Revolution’s Coming

#14

Post by sequoia » Sun, Jan 22, 2012, 6:55 PM UTC

prophetjohn wrote: post #3

> I left Ladies Learning Code having accomplished my goal. I built a WordPress.org What does this actually mean? The sentence itself seems to indicate that the class was focused around learning to program by building a WordPress clone. My suspicion based on reading the whole article is that she took a class showing her how to use WordPress to create a blog. If she doesn't know the distinction, I'm skeptical that she…

Wordpress dot com is a blog hosting service based on wordpress. Perhaps she meant they were setting up a web server to run multiple blogs with multiple users, using wordpress as as a platform (and specifically the MultiSite feature https://codex.wordpress.org/Create_A_Network ).

I can see how this would be a useful endeavor. In any case, yes, her language may be imprecise here but remember to be forgiving to people who are just learning!!! You are skeptical of her skills; I am skeptical of the notion that you have enough information to evaluate her skills or the class. :)

Re: When She Codes, The Revolution’s Coming

#15

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jan 22, 2012, 6:57 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: When She Codes, The Revolution’s Coming

#16

Post by rabidsnail » Sun, Jan 22, 2012, 6:58 PM UTC

antirez wrote: post #10

> “If we allow the future of the web, software, hardware, video games, etc. to be conceptualized, created and maintained by just one sector of the population, it’s impossible to expect that it will serve the needs of the entire group. I don't think it is so bad, if there is an user base soon or later a web site will be created serving the needs of this user base, because this means profit for the site creator. It see…

The population of players of video games is dominated by teenager males because the developers of video games have teenager males in mind.

Game developers have teenager males in mind because the original game developers _were_ teenager males.

Farmville and Wii Sports show that there is a vast market for video games aimed at women that is only now starting to be explored.

Re: When She Codes, The Revolution’s Coming

#17

Post by prophetjohn » Sun, Jan 22, 2012, 7:01 PM UTC

sequoia wrote: post #14

prophetjohn wrote: post #3

> I left Ladies Learning Code having accomplished my goal. I built a WordPress.org What does this actually mean? The sentence itself seems to indicate that the class was focused around learning to program by building a WordPress clone. My suspicion based on reading the whole article is that she took a class showing her how to use WordPress to create a blog. If she doesn't know the distinction, I'm skeptical that she…

Wordpress dot com is a blog hosting service based on wordpress. Perhaps she meant they were setting up a web server to run multiple blogs with multiple users, using wordpress as as a platform (and specifically the MultiSite feature https://codex.wordpress.org/Create_A_Network ). I can see how this would be a useful endeavor. In any case, yes, her language may be imprecise here but remember to be forgiving to people w…

No, you're right; I don't really have enough information to evaluate her skills, mainly because she didn't talk about what she learned. So, the language she used to describe technical things is the only way I could try to evaluate her technical knowledge.

And upon further review, it seems pretty likely that the class she took is this one: http://ladieslearningcodejan14.eventbrite.com/

Re: When She Codes, The Revolution’s Coming

#18

Post by mekoka » Sun, Jan 22, 2012, 7:02 PM UTC

Avery Swartz, a mentor at another table, works as a freelance website designer. “A lot of my clients are women. They don’t necessarily want to work with a man because they are afraid of the intimidation factor, the tech speak, the ‘jargon’. I want women to feel empowered, to know that they can take an active role.”

This is not a gender problem, it's pedagogical. My granddad would be intimidated to learn to code for those exact same reasons. I assume that having a name like Ladies Learning Code somewhat entices women to approach programming with the perspective that the pedagogy will be different. Playing on the notion that there's an alternative way to explain code to different gender might be a good marketing ploy, but I'm wondering if it's not also doing a disservice by perpetuating the myth.

Re: When She Codes, The Revolution’s Coming

#19

Post by akoumjian » Sun, Jan 22, 2012, 7:04 PM UTC

What I find interesting is that "tech jargon" is listed as the number one reason these women feared getting involved in the technical side of there businesses. It is not as though men are born knowing this jargon; they spend both work and free time learning it as a part of their interests.

I know this is an old question, but how are we raising our young women to shy away from these things? Why is it acceptable to let young girls get away with not having to learn the small bits of technical language that will help them develop an interest and feel confidence with these subjects at a young age?

Re: When She Codes, The Revolution’s Coming

#20

Post by berntb » Sun, Jan 22, 2012, 7:05 PM UTC

I approve of people learning to be programmer professionally or as a hobby, I think it is a good thing.

But this repeated media phenomenon of people learning to code is something that really worry me -- it is like 1999 again.

It feels like when mainstream media writes that it is time to invest in the stock market; when e.g. Time write about how good it is going, it is so far over the hill that soon there will be a crash...