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Girls Who Code

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Re: Girls Who Code

#171

Post by zhemao »

Patrick_Devine wrote: post #32
HaloZero wrote: post #6

It sounds like Harvey Mudd's program improves female enrollment but it's just seems like a good idea in general The quick program for Harvey Mudd seems to be 1) Make the problems more practical in application (ie controlling a robot, modelling a disease) 2) Giving students choices in what problems they are interested in 3) Segmenting students according to skill set, thus putting people who have been programming in an…

I think Harvey Mudd's approach is fantastic. I love the idea of two separate tracks for getting people to code. It allows people to take an academic risk which they normally wouldn't be able to take for fear of destroying their GPA. I think this is a fundamental problem with STEM programs in general. Why have grades and tracks at all? The important thing is to learn the material, and not what grade you got on a test…

The problem with MOOCs is that they have a pretty low retention rate. Sure you can repeat the material until you know it, but how many people actually will? The benefit of having a physical class is that you can turn to the professor or TAs for help if you're having trouble. It's also more difficult to completely fall behind because there are milestones in place (tests, assignments, projects, etc.). This isn't to say that MOOCs don't have their place, but they are not a replacement for the traditional classroom model.

Re: Girls Who Code

#172

Post by codex »

In a far off land, bounceyball was the national sport. A funny cross between basketball and volleyball, it was hugely popular, and to be a professional player was considered the most prestigious occupation.

A minor scandal erupted when was noted that there were few women in the co-ed national league, and a huge about of effort was made to recruit female players. Every family wanted the prestige, fame, and fortune that came with having a daughter in the league. Male players wanted more females playing so it didn't feel like a damn sausagefest all the time, and to help with dating (for some odd reason, most male bounceyball players were surprisingly unattractive).

Eventually it was suggested that the problem lay upstream, so major efforts were made to recruit teenage girls for the middle and high school leagues, which were also coed.

However, for some reason this attempt also failed. Finally, an anonymous poster on the Internet noted that, as a broad generalization, taller bounceyball players were more suited to the game, scoring more points. Perhaps a gender difference in height was to blame, discouraging female players and hurting them in the draft. The poster tracked down these differences in height to a disparity in average male and female birth weights, and suggested that perhaps a cocktail of experimental prenatal hormones (primarily testosterone), continued until age 15, would do the trick.

The anonymous poster was promptly downvoted and the discussion turned to topics of sexism, discrimination, and cultural bias in the bounceyball leagues. Various horror stories were recounted by female bounceyball players and a new round of self-flagellation began among those in the industry.

Re: Girls Who Code

#173

Post by Dewie »

judk wrote: post #126
parennoob wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and a series of uncomfortable truths about how things work against men (specially Asian men) who are trying to learn to code: 1. At school and such, no one tries to encourage you to code. People naturally think, "Oh, male and Asian, screw him , the world doesn't need another Asian dude coding. Let's try and teach Rails to that cute girl -- we need more of her kind." 2. People assume you are better at coding, mat…

Are you joking? The fashion world has massively outreached to men in recent couple of decades. Axe and chest shaving and all that other metrosexual stuff. And the lack of male teachers is a persistent concern in the education world, especially with respect to the need to provide male role models for kids of single moms.

> metrosexual stuff.

That's a funny word, to me. Apparently grooming has a lot to do with sexual orientation.

Re: Girls Who Code

#174

Post by [deleted] »

tptacek wrote: post #13
rokhayakebe wrote: post #4

I am a man. These initiatives will simply not work. Imagine "Men Nurse." Many women SIMPLY do not code for the same reason many men do not code. Most of us were not exposed to the science as kids, hence step 1 is to make Programming mandatory. Note I say programming and not C.S.. I am an amateur programmer and I can say wit confidence that this is as fundamental as basic arithmetic. Full stop. I frankly wish they shu…

There are tons of male nurses. 'iamelgringo, a former top contributor here, is an ER nurse. Back of the envelope: There are ~24,000,000 people aged 18-24 in the US. Assume half are female: there are ~12,000,000 "girls who might code" in the US. Of these, 12.6% are African American. There are ~1,440,00 "black girls who might code" in the US. There are ~400,000 people who live in Tulsa. There have probably been several…

[deleted]

Re: Girls Who Code

#175

Post by krakensden »

Anechoic wrote: post #52
city41 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

9.6% of all RNs are male [0] Why is there not a male nurse initiative? Or male elementary teacher initiative[1]? I have to admit, I am strongly against things like "Girls who code". If there truly are issues in our culture that prevent girls from looking into coding, then absolutely let's get rid of those as best we can. But a girl can look into and explore coding just as easily as a boy can. There's really nothing s…

Why is there not a male nurse initiative? Or male elementary teacher initiative[1]? There are! It's just not discussed on HN because this isn't a site focused on nursing and teaching, but copying from a prior post of mine, 45 seconds of Googling brought up http://www.malenursemagazine.com http://www.menteach.org/ and http://www.minoritynurse.com/article/recruiting-men-nursing-... .

malenursemagazine.com seems to be a spam/product placement blog

menteach.org has a (C) of 2007, and a dead forum.

Re: Girls Who Code

#176

Post by hacker789 »

tptacek wrote: post #98
yetanotherphd wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Tulsa Codes would exist for logistical and practical reasons (it makes sense to organize people who already live in an area). Girls Code is associated (fairly or not) with an ideological movement to correct for oppression and privilege that exists in our society. People who disagree with this movement will of course post about it when they see these articles.

Yes. Exactly my point. The problem people have with "Girls Code" is that accepting it requires them to accept that women have been at some point treated unfairly.

Let's look at what you said above.

> But nobody has a problem with "Tulsa Codes!". Threads aren't full of people ranting about "third wave feminism" when they do.

If young Tulsa residents were more already more wealthy and more educated than young Oklahoma City residents, people would certainly complain about "Tulsa activists" if:

1. Companies were demonized by "Tulsa activists" for hiring young people from Oklahoma City for tech jobs, or

2. Mobs of internet "Tulsa activists" bullied people who dared to suggest that we shouldn't be spending extra money trying to further the achievement gap between young people from Tulsa and young people from Oklahoma City, or

3. "Tulsa activists" accused you of hating young people from "Tulsa" if you disagreed with any of their points.

Re: Girls Who Code

#177

Post by ps4fanboy »

RivieraKid wrote: post #148
overgard wrote: post #70

When I hear about this being a cultural thing, an important aspect people leave out is that men aren't exactly encouraged to be coders either. Writing code has pretty much no social cred until you're out of school, and pretty much automatically gets you tagged as a nerd. No coder I know started coding because it was cool, they just sort of enjoyed it and accepted the social consequences. I'm just going to throw this…

> I'm just going to throw this out here: only about 10% of nurses are male. I think this is partly caused by the fact that men and women have a different natural tendency to enjoy nursing. (Honest question – is this belief politically incorrect?) If you completely filter out cultural effects, the tendency to incline to a specific profession will differ between genders, at least very slightly (that's just statistics).…

To suggest that men are some how different to women is incredibly sexist, check your privilege.

Re: Girls Who Code

#178

Post by dragonwriter »

city41 wrote: post #20
tptacek wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are tons of male nurses. 'iamelgringo, a former top contributor here, is an ER nurse. Back of the envelope: There are ~24,000,000 people aged 18-24 in the US. Assume half are female: there are ~12,000,000 "girls who might code" in the US. Of these, 12.6% are African American. There are ~1,440,00 "black girls who might code" in the US. There are ~400,000 people who live in Tulsa. There have probably been several…

9.6% of all RNs are male [0] Why is there not a male nurse initiative? Or male elementary teacher initiative[1]? I have to admit, I am strongly against things like "Girls who code". If there truly are issues in our culture that prevent girls from looking into coding, then absolutely let's get rid of those as best we can. But a girl can look into and explore coding just as easily as a boy can. There's really nothing s…

> Why is there not a male nurse initiative?

There are male nurse initiatives, e.g., [1].

> Or male elementary teacher initiative?

There are those, too [2].

There's even specifically (ethnic) minority male teacher initiatives. [3]

The fact that you are ignorant of something and haven't even done a simple Google search to look into it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

[1] http://www.minoritynurse.com/article/recruiting-men-nursing-...

[2] http://www.menteach.org/

[3] http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2013/09/shortage_of_minorit...

Re: Girls Who Code

#179

Post by dcre »

RivieraKid wrote: post #148
overgard wrote: post #70

When I hear about this being a cultural thing, an important aspect people leave out is that men aren't exactly encouraged to be coders either. Writing code has pretty much no social cred until you're out of school, and pretty much automatically gets you tagged as a nerd. No coder I know started coding because it was cool, they just sort of enjoyed it and accepted the social consequences. I'm just going to throw this…

> I'm just going to throw this out here: only about 10% of nurses are male. I think this is partly caused by the fact that men and women have a different natural tendency to enjoy nursing. (Honest question – is this belief politically incorrect?) If you completely filter out cultural effects, the tendency to incline to a specific profession will differ between genders, at least very slightly (that's just statistics).…

I'm not sure it's exactly politically incorrect -- lots of people probably believe it -- but I do think it's wrong. Similar to saying girls naturally prefer to play with baby dolls and wear dresses, when in reality every person they meet has been subtly (or not) pushing them that way their whole lives. "Oh, you're so pretty! Want to try this bow on?" Etc.

Re: Girls Who Code

#180

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast »

wlievens wrote: post #158
GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"and that's exactly the kind of label that women slaps on tech jobs" what kind of world are you living in because it's not one I've visited.

Actually it is what I remember from most girls in high school (late nineties): they want to work "with people instead of machines". It's a stigma that existed then in girls' minds and presumably still does, at least where I live. I'm all for more women in tech, even if only to make the workforce more diverse. I'm also all for more minorities in tech, sure. Where I live, working in a tech job means 95% of youf colleag…

That's not at all the same kind of thing. Here's some male nurses talking about their experiences: http://allnurses.com/nursing-career-advice/you-ashamed-being...

""" I'm not "ashamed" of being an RN but it's hard when you are a guy and around other people that are uninformed about nursing. I dont use the term "nurse" because many people associate that term with a variety of menial jobs. I tell them I'm an RN. Even that doesnt register with many people. Of course being a guy I'm always asked "when are you starting med school?" or I get a veiled smirk and they say something like "oh you're a male nurse.." as if I'm a pariah or something. """

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