Maybe the next Request for Startups should be "By Women, For Women."
Seems there might be an opportunity to address the other half of the population, for their ideas and for the market.
When She Codes, The Revolution’s Coming
21–30 of 148 posts
Re: When She Codes, The Revolution’s Coming
#22"If we allow ..."
Who is this we and how is this authoritarian power exercised?
Interestingly enough, Age discrimination in the industry continues to be ignored while the (IMO) highly debatable notion of sex discrimination in the field is the subject of countless articles and debates. At least the Japanese are honest about the fact that they don't want programmers older than 30 years of age.
The barrier to entry in this field is low. Github, for example, doesn't ask you to check a box with your sex when you open an account. Nor do I care one bit when I [pull] a project if the author was a woman.
Re: When She Codes, The Revolution’s Coming
#23My take on the article is that she had a problem - she needed to better understand how things worked underneath the web software that is Wordpress. The meeting she wrote about helped her do that. It also raised (meta?) questions related to gender issues in the technology field.
As the married father of a four year old daughter, I do get the sense of comfort that is prevalent in ladies clubs. Watching my daughter play with boys and girls, just boys and then just girls I have observed a noticeable difference in the intersections between the children. I have also noticed the differences in my wife's book club (all women) when its her turn to host. It's not that they exclude me or the other guy's we are friends with but, the books they read are not to my taste so I would not be able to contribute anything meaningful to the discussion. Although I do still need read The Girl With THe Dragon Tattoo book on their recommendation.
So reading about an women's club where they go into the basics of coding is a good thing even if most of the members never become elite programmers - they will have learned a valuable skill in a comfortable setting. That is something they can take back to work and apply now: how to talk to the programmer in a meaningful way. For my daughters generation (not just girls) I am coming to suspect that a line will be drawn between those who can make use of the technology underneath the productivity tools their generation is raised on (web/office being the most prevalent today) and learning to code in anything is a step towards being successful in any field, not just web and software.
Re: When She Codes, The Revolution’s Coming
#24> “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…
> It seems strange to think that to represent everybody's need the web needs to be developed by everybody.
It's not that strange. It's hard to represent the needs of people that you don't fully understand.
When it comes to an under-represented cultural/social/racial group, I simply don't understand the market, what they want, or what is important to them. I don't come up anything like the ideas that entrepreneurial members of that group will come up with, and even once I've heard the ideas, it often takes a radical shift in my thinking to see the advantages.
Women make up roughly 50% of the population, but many industries repeatedly fail to provide the products that women would prefer -- as you've almost accidentally elucidated above with your comment regarding video games.
Re: When She Codes, The Revolution’s Coming
#25> “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.
The population of players of video games is dominated by teenager males because the developers of video games have teenager males in mind.
I would not be so sure. We all played games like pac-man, goonies, super mario and such. I remember when we were kids that we had tons of somewhat gender neutral games, but boys were the ones mostly interested in playing. Looking back, I'm more convinced today that it was a cultural issue. Girls were simply conditioned to do "girl things". Eventually, game developers skewed their production toward their dominant market. This conditioning still exists today, but is slowly disappearing and game developers will, in time, adjust accordingly.
Re: When She Codes, The Revolution’s Coming
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
The first event was learning Ruby. See: http://ladieslearningcode.com/events/
The first event that I see on that page is "HTML and CSS or Beginners." It seems like the class the author took was "WordPress with Wes Bos," since she mentioned that he was the lead instructor
I can see why it might be confusing, the Ruby event is directly after the "Launch Party" event. Someone might assume that was the first event if they didn't scroll further down.
Re: When She Codes, The Revolution’s Coming
#27It's growing movement
Re: When She Codes, The Revolution’s Coming
#28First sentence:
"The magazine I also work for, is rebuilding our website in WordPress."
I couldn't find anything valuable in the first few paragraphs. Can anyone post a quick summary of any specific facts from the article that were surprising, or are going to affect the reader's behavior in the future?
Re: When She Codes, The Revolution’s Coming
#29Avery 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 t…
You're missing the point-- it is about gender. Women don't want to work with, and especially learn from, men because they are afraid that the man will not know how to speak to them as an equal. They're afraid he'll hide his discomfort behind jargon, and that he will be unable to be nice without being patronizing. Heaven forfend that this man, like many highly technical people, is socially awkward in general! In that case, he may be outright incapable of communicating with them.
They're not afraid of this by chance; this is a rational fear arising from a hundred, a thousand previous encounters with men, even trained teachers, who were abjectly unable to interact with women in a way that left them feeling comfortable. This is of course not to say that such men do not exist, as they surely do. But after a decade or two of experience, why roll the dice?
Re: When She Codes, The Revolution’s Coming
#30Honestly, I really do not understand why women being programmers is such a hyped concept. I have seen many women as doctors, lawyers and in science. Women might be more interested in other professions, which I think is the only reason that keeps women from working as programmers or engineers.
Definitely, the problem, if it is a problem, is due to choice women make, not due to their abilities.