My experiences at a woman's programming workshop • Hacker News Board

Re: My experiences at a woman's programming workshop

#171

Post by mnicole » Mon, Jun 11, 2012, 4:11 PM UTC

NotMyMorals wrote: post #28

these questions seemed designed to show off his own knowledge, or to challenge the instructor. Yes, Dave was showing off to an audience of women. she asked me a question she giggled and told me she had no idea what the project was about, or what to do. Yes, the woman was acting like a bimbo to elicit male help. Congrats, you now have the grasp of female/male dynamics usually figured out by middle school. I’d never re…

Laughing is a sign of nervousness, not being a bimbo in order to look cute. She probably felt out of her league despite her ability to grasp the material.

Re: My experiences at a woman's programming workshop

#172

Post by mnicole » Mon, Jun 11, 2012, 4:29 PM UTC

Here in Portland we have a group called Code'n'Splode that takes women who are already working as engineers and gives them an opportunity to sound off on [gender] issues they've had in the workplace as well as coach other women interested in learning programming every week. If and when I ever delve into that world, I would feel a lot more comfortable going to them than even my close male colleagues if only because I know I can go to them about issues men might not have or - as a lot of HN articles have shown me - just don't think exist.

I'm not trying to generalize, but in my years of working with male developers, they tend to have a much more hands-off and "just look at it and learn" approach. Whether this is because I am female (and therefore a 'lost cause') or because they are just not the teaching type, I'm not sure, but when I'm trying to learn something, I don't want to take the chance of dealing with Daves or people that think women giggling equates to their being a bimbo.

Re: My experiences at a woman's programming workshop

#173

Post by thursdayb » Tue, Jun 12, 2012, 12:32 AM UTC

As someone who was literally in the very classroom that Serge is discussing, I didn't see the problem that he's pointing to.

First of all, several of my classmates were stumped by the end of the class because we were doing the problems essentially by rote — we had a very limited set of 'tools' presented to us and not a lot of the theory behind those tools. I came in with experience in other languages, so I could figure things out a bit more on my own, but several of my classmates were completely able to finish the work for the class without actually being able to translate that into doing anything else.

As I recall, "Dave" happened to ask a few pointed questions about that underlying information — stuff that would be useful to these prospective programmers in order to go further than retyping code and swapping in different variables. Yes, it slowed down the class, which was very basic, but it wasn't a problem. Those questions came after most of us had been sitting in front of our computers for five hours plus. About that time, we all ran up against a problem in the project we were working on because we were working off of old instructions. I'm willing to bet there were other factors in why the class slowed down at that point.

I'm speaking up because I think that this is very much an issue of perspective. Everyone in that classroom probably has a different opinion. But I got a huge amount out of attending the PyLadies class and I want to make that clear. It was an incredibly valuable experience and I know that several of the other women who attended said similar things.

Re: My experiences at a woman's programming workshop

#174

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 12, 2012, 12:59 PM UTC

prawn wrote: post #161

pi18n wrote: post #26

I had a language class once with a student that was clearly not at our level constantly asking questions that the other students all already knew. As a mature adult, I attributed this lack of consideration for others to the individual, not the entire gender.

You're missing the point. It's not that it was a male troublemaker, but that the largely female group reacted in a particular way to that person acting as he did.

[deleted]

Re: My experiences at a woman's programming workshop

#175

Post by rhizome » Tue, Jun 12, 2012, 7:16 PM UTC

irahul wrote: post #170

rhizome wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can cite me correlation between gender and behavioral traits when it comes to learning, and that study isn't some crackpot theory based on how I taught a ruby workshop, This is where you're dishonest: You say you're looking for hard connections, yet any evidence is subject to a value judgement on your part. Tails I lose.

> This is where you're dishonest: You say you're looking for hard connections, yet any evidence is subject to a value judgement on your part. Tails I lose. I am looking for correlation, as in the sense correlation is defined, or causation. I don't think correlation or causation is open to value judgement.

I'm referring to your hanging judgement whether or not any supplied information is derived from "some crackpot theory."