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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

#551

Post by evincarofautumn »

esperluette wrote: post #508
evincarofautumn wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She first mentions such halfway through the article, and her writing style is masculine. Even I guessed (not assumed) male until that point.

what does "her writing style is masculine" even MEAN?

Dunno, now that you mention it. There’s some research[1] that correlates word choice and grammatical structure with author gender, predicting gender with ~80% accuracy. Presumably I do something like that without thinking about it.

[1]: Shlomo Argamon, Moshe Koppel, Jonathan Fine, and Anat Rachel Shimoni: Gender, Genre, and Writing Style in Formal Written Texts

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#552

Post by frozenport »

newsreader wrote: post #386
frozenport wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in the US, where Java is required for the Advanced Placement exam in computer science.

Are you serious? You want a HS teacher to teach Java?

Bigger Point: It is already being done.

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#553

Post by joseph_cooney »

x0054 wrote: post #224
joseph_cooney wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is the presence of a father relevant? The mother was away at a conference, possibly in a different time-zone or otherwise not contactable. Email seems perfectly reasonable to me.

The girl does a lot to please her mother and chooses to communicate about important subjects over email. Let's put it this way, I am not Dad yet, but when I am, my daughter or son will not be bullied in school because: 1. They would know how to deal with bullies. 2. And if they ever have problems dealing with it on their own, I am going to help them by doing something more then writing a letter on a tech blog. And no…

It is a long road between becoming a parent, and having a kid in high-school. Parenthood sometimes doesn't play out exactly how you thought it would.

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#554

Post by nl »

VLM wrote: post #345
Nate75Sanders wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, you really managed to do that in a thread pertaining to sexism in tech.

I thought the most hilarious thing about the HN comments was the 100% sexism oriented response WRT general HN culture, and nothing about hetronormativity or whatever its called, I currently work with a great tech, who happens to be female, and she also happens to have a wife, and I've worked with other women with the same family life as that in the past, so I was LOL the whole way about the HN "belief system" that ap…

I actually considered the hetronormativity thing when I wrote my response (my response was "the hga is female" one).

Initially my response was much longer and included a discussion about female-female partnerships. In the end I cut it right back, because as far as I know "wife" is always a term used for a spouse who identifies as female.

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#555

Post by lsiebert »

asdasf wrote: post #396
lsiebert wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bullying took a sexist form. I don't care why, no female should ever be told they need to go to the kitchen and make sandwiches for the guys in a programming class. That's behavior that should be stopped, or preferably never happen. The expectation should have been set that it will not happen, that the cool programmers don't discriminate and are respectful of each other as individuals.

Do you know what it was like for the only guy in home ec? It is not a case of sexism, it has nothing to do with programmers (likely none of the students would identify with programmers at all). It is just normal bullying. The same kind that teenagers who are in a minority of some kind deal with all the time. Yes, it needs to be addressed. But pretending it is some other problem isn't going to help it be addressed.

First, I am glad that you agree that it needs to be addressed. If you disagree with everything else I think, we can at least agree on that.

I think your argument is that this is bullying, not sexism. I don't think bullying supercedes sexism. I think bullying comes in a variety of types. I don't really care if it's sexism or bullying, except in so much as it may make it easier to stop this sort of BS.

In my mind, You are teaching them to program, hence you are making them into programmers.

When I learned to drive, I learned both the mechanics of the car, but also the rules and expectations. Like let people merge, and wave a thank you to people who let you merge.

That said, there may be a better way to address the issue then trying to inculcate egalitarian values as part of being a good programmer. I didn't dig through journals to look at studies of bullying/sexism interventions in american secondary education. Feel free to do so.

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#556

Post by lsiebert »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #353

The entitled and largely unconscious male privilege in most of these HN comments is pretty hard to stomach against the large and steadily-accumulating picture of just how very different this industry presents itself to men and to women. Just because you don't directly experience or see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Just because you haven't been (consciously) chauvinistic to a woman doesn't mean women don't experi…

WeWe need to fix it, and congratulate only after we fix it.

But it's far from a fixed problem currently.

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#557

Post by throwaway9848 »

jessedhillon wrote: post #258
throwaway9848 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Oh fuck yourself. I'm not saying what I did was right or defensible -- in fact in the comment you're replying to I said that I agreed that I was wrong. And in a reply to a sibling comment I apologized for thoughtlessly slamming obese people. I wrote about a time I was a jerk and put my name next to it. You ran to your throwaway account so you could show that you're effectively illiterate.

I've been a jerk plenty of times, and those are my problem and I feel badly about them. I try to be a better person through introspection, patience, and humility.

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#558

Post by flylib »

frozenport wrote: post #244
flylib wrote: post #190

not sure why your criticizing Visual Basic, it is a good language for Intro HS courses

Not in the US, where Java is required for the Advanced Placement exam in computer science.

sure I live in the US and most of my college classes are based around Java but there is plenty of options to pick from including Visual Basic for an intro course, not saying that's the right option (it's not) but at the end of the day, it is the teachers preference and what they feel comfortable in, the person criticizing VB doesn't even have the merit to do so it seems

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#559

Post by javert »

derleth wrote: post #537
javert wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree that it has in the past.

> I don't agree that it has in the past. Good for you. The rest of us can look at history with less bias on this subject.

As far as I know, there has never been a society with a public education system that was privatized.

Which makes your claim factually incorrect.

Since you're making unfounded assumptions, maybe you need to check your whole mental model on this topic.

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#560

Post by lotsofcows »

madaxe wrote: post #369
lotsofcows wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem in and of itself is a valid problem that can be worked on. By lots of small, manageable efforts we can make the world a better place. Abstracting problems away - making them more generalised - only turns manageable problems into philosophical debates. Btw, you need to get away from the habit of directly attacking the author and focus instead on attacking the argument.

Oh, pot, kettle! C'mon already. You're right that by abstracting things away you can just create a philosophical point with no path to resolution, but you can also actively inflict harm by tackling an issue in isolation without evaluating and understanding the root cause. This is the same philosophy (general problem, specific problem within that general problem that we think we can act on, so act, without looking at…

I don't understand your point. The syphilis example is, as you say a specific cure to a specific problem. Good. It's also good science. This is the opposite of what you were arguing earlier.
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