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To my daughter's high school programming teacher

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Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#211

Post by javert »

bangbang wrote: post #207
javert wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Life gets waaaay harder that this. In my experience, life gets much better after the end of high school, because in my experience, adults don't bully adults [1]. And if you are bullied, you can generally leave. [1] except the TSA, NSA, IRS, CIA, etc., but that's a different issue

If the most adversity you experience in life is high school you're either very fortunate or very unfortunate, hard to say which.

I've experienced a lot of adversity. But at least as an adult you can do something about it.

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#212

Post by dandrews »

anigbrowl wrote: post #182
dandrews wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, Louden's book? Still got it here somewhere. For an hour of nostalgic fun and an excuse to burn a Bass Ale while your wife watches DWTS, take a look at the 1130 emulator at http://ibm1130.org/sim

while your wife watches DWTS You're part of the problem.

I regretted that as soon as I hit the "reply" button... but really, that's the way it is in my house and I meant it innocently. Bernice was literally watching that show a couple of years ago while I installed the Hercules S/370 emulator and the MVT 21.8F Turnkey system on my Nokia N900. Mainframe on a handheld! I was laughing like a maniac while she wondered what in the world I was doing in my office.

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#213

Post by [deleted] »

jessedhillon wrote: post #86
bangbang wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids say terrible things. This isn't the sign of a bad teacher or a worthy of a internet rant, it's an opportunity to prepare her kids (Not just the girls) for the real full-contact brutal reality known is the the real working world.

Oh. Just curious, where's the line on this? Like, what things is she allowed to attempt to draw public attention to, and what things should she just counsel her daughter to learn to live with, and accept as a part of life? How should a person know what sorts of circumstances belong on which side of that line? Are these written in a book somewhere that I missed?

[deleted]

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#214

Post by jholman »

philwelch wrote: post #198
anigbrowl wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

while your wife watches DWTS You're part of the problem.

I guess it would be politically incorrect to point out the actual ratings demographics of DWTS are about 2/3 women?

So much wrong with this comment.

First of all, you need to go do some remedial math. The percentage of DWTS watchers who are women is no predictor of what women do. This fallacy is called confusion of the inverse, and it's a probabilistic variant of the better-known converse error.

Second, even if 99% of women were to be DWTS fans, it has no bearing on anigbrowl's comment. The reason that "while your wife watches DWTS" is part of the problem (as anigbrowl identified) is that it implies that (watching DWTS) is to women as (checking out 1130 sims) is to men. It implies that in situations where men do interesting tech things, women watch TV (I assume "DWTS" is some kind of TV?). It's basically a put-down against women collectively. Note that if someone were to be putting down humanity collectively, I wouldn't complain.

Third, "politically correct" is a label principally used by reactionary dullards to dismiss arguments or objections that they see as excessively leftist. It's equivalent to calling someone a commie. Mind you, some people are communists, some people are knee-jerk excessive leftists, etc... but if that's true in a particular situation, you can just explain why it's true. Calling it "political correctness" is just a lowbrow dismissal.

That's a lot of incorrectness for one 20-word sentence.

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#215

Post by nl »

dandrews wrote: post #155
hga wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My high school programming course, in 1977---IBM 1130 FORTRAN 'IV'---was taught by a coach . Who, without referring to notes, nor was it in the book, one day taught us 2s compliment representation on the blackboard (and boy was it useful to get a peek under the hood!). I suspect, like in the real world, programming ability still sometimes counts more than credentials. Pity that unlike my teacher he wasn't so good at…

Heh, Louden's book? Still got it here somewhere. For an hour of nostalgic fun and an excuse to burn a Bass Ale while your wife watches DWTS, take a look at the 1130 emulator at http://ibm1130.org/sim

hga is female.

(Actually I don't know hga's gender, but wow - I have never seen an example of gender stereotyping as explicit as that on HN, and in a discussion about sexism in programming too. I'm really hoping your comment was supposed to be ironic)

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#216

Post by anuragramdasan »

I find this very weird. I wasn't even aware of such a situation until I started reading about it online. Back here in India, Computer Engineering is one of the branches of engineering with a high amount of female students. Thanks to that, I wasn't even aware until some point that there was a scarcity of women in tech.

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#217

Post by throwaway9848 »

jessedhillon wrote: post #124
jpatokal wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? You should be thanking the large, smart man for teaching you the correctness of a wise set of rules designed to maximize the number of people who can use the limited number of seats in a popular fast food joint. Unless you called ahead and made a booking, you had no right to reserve those seats and inconvenience all the other people (including said gentleman and his family) looking for a seat.

A) I was in college then. I'm inclined to agree with the reasoning you gave here now. B) But, the reason he gave was that it was against "the rules" -- that's the point: no, it's not. It's rude and inconvenient, maybe. It's not an abrogation of a code that everyone knows. It's an unwritten agreement, at best.

You are really inconsiderate. And way to be a bully and pick on their weight because you didn't get your way.

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#218

Post by gemma »

cookiecaper wrote: post #97
gemma wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Minority entities will be teased practically any time they exist, regardless of sector or age, and they need to be taught to handle it well. Yeah? So this high school programming class isn't so much a programming class as a crash course in coping mechanisms for gender-based harassment? Please. It's the educator's job to create a safe space for, you know, education--for every student in the class, not just the privi…

>Which real world are you advocating this high school programming class introduce to a 16-year-old girl? The real world where HR thought police aren't sitting in every room of every company. The real world where even HR people try to "make jokes" and be funny. The real world where HR people generally judge the severity of a harassment complaint by favoritism, which reality a blunt HR person (not employed at my curren…

I think we're evaluating the circumstances with different criteria. You're looking at the story and relating it to a thin-skinned woman who can't handle non-politically-correct humor in the workplace. I'm relating it to a 16-year-old kid who hasn't had the time or experience necessary to develop the thick skin and snappy retorts that would shield her from her peers' disrespect. She's not getting passed up for a promotion; she just wants to learn programming. It's entirely within the job description of a teacher to notice, step in, and set standards for behavior in the classroom. Even when they're not met, they communicate more than tacit acceptance of bad behavior.

I completely agree that people in general, and women in tech specifically, have to be thick-skinned to survive professionally. Nobody's advocating HR thought police--they'd be unnecessary in this case anyway--or politically-correct automatons. We're talking about kids. Kids! Surely it's not totally out of line to suggest that they could learn better behavior than "get in the kitchen and make me a sandwich". Surely there's a better response to the whole situation than "that girl needs to suck it up and learn how the world works".

For what it's worth, I remember the first time those trite cliches were thrown at me, and they felt neither trite nor cliched. They hurt. I thought I was part of a team, among equals, brothers-in-arms, friends, and I wasn't. I was different, I was other, I was less, I was not welcome. It's a paradigm shift that happens in an instant, and it can be pretty shattering--great for killing enthusiasm and developing thick skin in the future, maybe, but not for learning things in a programming class.

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#219

Post by alukima »

ryanx435 wrote: post #3

my theory is that there are not a lot of women in tech jobs because the men in tech jobs generally don't know how to interact with women. any woman that shows an interest in tech is not disuaded by the material, but rather by the inability of her male coworkers to treat her normally. I would not want to work or study in an environment surrounded by social akwardness and harassment either. the problem lies with the me…

I just went through several interviews before accepting a position. At various companies the following was said to/asked of me.

"Why should I take on the liability of adding a women to my engineering team?"

"I've never had a women answer any hard math questions correctly so we can skip those." It was great when I insisted we walk through them together, he got one completely wrong and couldn't remember the basics.

"I normally delete any resumes from women applying for engineering positions without actually reading them." =recruiter who didn't know I was within earshot. I assume he was forced to bring me in by HR. Which is yet another annoyance. I don't accept token female positions. See below.

"I need a women on the engineering team so the guys don't have to deal with the women in marketing." - actual job offer.

"Do you plan on having children?"

I recently left a job, because I couldn't get my other team members to stop leaving commit messages like "fuck heroku in it's whore ass', 'fucking cunts'. The hilarious part is that my background is in porn, I wasn't offended, I just couldn't figure out what the fuck they were committing. When I asked them to write more descriptive messages they said I was too sensitive. The guy who took over for me constantly emails me and asks if I remember when x was done....

I'm very active in my local tech community and I spend my free time teaching, so I know that 99% of guys in tech are not like this. (at least on purpose) But the attitude is accepted and even defended, which is obvious just reading the comments on any article involving women in tech on HN. But, it doesn't happen to them so how are they to know that I hear the 'hilarious' Tits or GTFO joke hundreds of times. The only reason I've started to become vocal about it is because I hope that it gives someone a little insight into what we have to deal with. I'm not at all a SJW and hate the concept of check your privilege. I think SJW are actually making women in tech look like weak victims.

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#220

Post by roopeshv »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #141

From a purely utilitarian, game theoretic pov, harassing and chasing girls out of your personal and professional social circles and networks is a very poor reproductive strategy. I would have thought programmers would be more logical, even if initially unthinking about it. If you love sausage fests, by all means, continue. Otherwise, think twice before disparaging girls and women, even jokingly (it's never a joke).

high school students taking CS class != programmers. I would have thought person talking about logic would be more logical.
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