Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Girls and Software

linuxjournal.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 434 posts

Re: Girls and Software

#51

Post by krstck »

Oooh, this was an icy stab right at the core. She's completely right:

>Dump her in a situation that operates on different social scripts than she's accustomed to, full of people talking about a subject she doesn't yet understand. Then tell her the community is hostile toward women and therefore doesn't have enough of them, all while showing her off like a prize poodle so you can feel good about recruiting a females

This explains, better than I ever could, why I've always felt weird about all of the attention on getting women into programming.

As a kid, I loved programming. When I became a teenager, I got wind that it wasn't something "cool" and got spooked. For someone as insecure as I was, having a hobby that I couldn't really "explain" to normal people was embarrassing. Probably if I had known a single other kid/girl that liked computers like I did, I might have continued on that path and not been distracted for about 10 years.

Re: Girls and Software

#52

Post by InclinedPlane »

jt2190 wrote: post #13

I'm not sure I understand what the definition of "hacker" is in this article: > Young women don't magically become technologists at 22. > Neither do young men. Hackers are born in childhood, > because that's when the addiction to solving the > puzzle or building something kicks in to those who've > experienced that "victory!" moment like I had when I > imposed my will on a couple electronic primates. It seems to impl…

You can become a "hacker" at an older age, it's just a more difficult path. Most hackers have spent their teenage years building up various technical skills and are intimately familiar with learning new systems and troubleshooting systems. That doesn't mean they have necessarily been programming since they were 12 but it does mean they've been "solving or building". Similarly, one would be surprised to see a high caliber athlete begin as an adult. Typically such folks have embarked on a long program of athletics and sports from the age of puberty, or earlier, onward.

Re: Girls and Software

#53

Post by jkrems »

Crake wrote: post #34
skybrian wrote: post #29

It's a good rant. There are concrete suggestions for improvement, and also concrete examples of where some people went a little too far. I'm less happy about excluding people who are coming into computing late, though.

>I'm less happy about excluding people who are coming into computing late, though. I don't think she's doing that. Note that she doesn't say that you haven to have been programming since age 2, just that you have to have a natural interest in "solving the puzzle or building something." I came late to programming since I didn't have access to computers I could tinker with, but I was still putzing around with k'nex and…

I think it's also important that she points to reasons why women stopped coming to CS early (the Barbie-beauty culture) and mentions the often forgotten "old enough to remember when they worked on teams that were about one third women". I don't think she wants to say that you have to be a bad developer because you start late, but rather that we won't get back to a decent percentage of female developers without a shift in how we treat young girls.

Re: Girls and Software

#54

Post by timr »

bitwize wrote: post #35
timr wrote: post #14

I'm torn. I think she makes some really good points -- particularly about discouraging young girls and the futility of shoving adult humans into foreign social situations -- but I also think she might be rather narrowly defining the personality type of a "hacker", and dismissing behaviors that she doesn't find valuable (in her words: "ephemera -- popularity, beauty and fitting in" ). Maybe it's possible that there ar…

For the longest time I harbored the biggest crush on a girl from my high school. The thing that made me fall in love with her (and it was love -- as much love as a 14-year-old could feel) wasn't that she was pretty or cute or popular -- though she was all these things. (Head cheerleader. Literally. Dated a football player and everything.) It was that I had the good fortune to peek over her shoulder at some BASIC code…

"My point here is that you become what you invest time in becoming. If you want to ascend to elite-level hackerdom, then you almost have to put things like attractiveness and popularity on the back burner."

No, you really don't. You believe this because it's what you've seen around you, but that's a selection bias. Someone else on this thread pointed out that Von Neumann was an exceptionally stylish guy, but he's far from the only example. Only in the peculiar little world of computer programming do we seem to equate slovenly behavior with competence.

One of the great qualities of smart, capable people is that smart, capable people tend to have a lot of different interests. There's no reason that you can't be attractive and smart.

"Specialization is for insects." -- Heinlein

Re: Girls and Software

#55

Post by imsofuture »

superuser2 wrote: post #12

>Parents are warned to keep kids off the computer This point cannot be overstated. I'd never have been a hacker without vast quantities of unsupervised, unfiltered internet time around age 9-12. The largest enabling step for me was when I got my own laptop which I was free to break (software-wise) and free to take into my room so I could focus away from the distracting noises of the kitchen/living room. Much of even…

Yep. I wouldn't be much of a technologist if not for computer games (to get me onto the computer), and vast quantities of unsupervised and unfiltered internet at a formative age.

Re: Girls and Software

#56

Post by simias »

superuser2 wrote: post #12

>Parents are warned to keep kids off the computer This point cannot be overstated. I'd never have been a hacker without vast quantities of unsupervised, unfiltered internet time around age 9-12. The largest enabling step for me was when I got my own laptop which I was free to break (software-wise) and free to take into my room so I could focus away from the distracting noises of the kitchen/living room. Much of even…

I don't agree. Having unlimited access to technological resources is great, I don't think anybody is denying that.

But with unlimited net access also comes extremely violent videos, social networks with all kinds of shady types hanging around etc...

I really don't think it's responsible to let a 9-12 yo alone on the net in their room. Enabling them to access the net easily while still supervising what they do, giving them advice on how to use the web, find what they want etc... That sounds reasonable to me.

I may be a bit bias because while I consider myself a hacker I didn't have the net before I was 18 at home. My parents didn't care for it, only when I moved to my own studio did I get an internet subscription.

Before that I would use floppies (and later USB sticks) to download stuff from the high school library's computers and buying programming books. Didn't stop me from learning C and writing games on my TI calculator.

Maybe I'm just a bit paranoid, but on the web you're always one click away from a video of someone being burned alive or decapitated with a chainsaw.

Re: Girls and Software

#57

Post by gruseom »

jt2190 wrote: post #45
gruseom wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to me the author vividly conveys what she means by "hacker" in the very paragraph you quoted: technologist addiction solving puzzles building things "victory!" moment impose will on electronics These things are done and felt for their own sake and not as a means to an end, like a paycheck. Perhaps that's the main difference.

Don't forget: born in childhood (edit: I don't disagree with her other definitions. I am concerned that she's missed some key points of the larger debate, namely: * Should "outsiders" be actively encouraged to join the community, or should the community be insular and inward-focused? * Should those who simply want to make a better living be encouraged to learn about and seek employment in the industry, given how lucr…

That seems uncharitable. "Born in childhood" is not a quality like the others. "A child's sense of play" might be.

Re: Girls and Software

#58

Post by gruseom »

VonGuard wrote: post #50

themade.org teaches free programming classes to kids. We've been doing this for 2 years now, and most of the time, our ratios are 50/50. Yesterday, in fact, we had 3 boys and 6 girls for our scratch class, then had 8 girls and 2 boys for our interactive fiction class, taught in Twine. Couple things we've learned. First, girls default to pair programming. They cluster, they work together, when they have a problem, the…

How do you get kids modding Minecraft? I suggested this a little while ago for a kid in my brother-in-law's Grade 8 class, but then regretted it because the tools for doing it seemed inaccessible to beginners.

Re: Girls and Software

#60

Post by mistakoala »

I groaned at what sounded like another SJW article on 'teh evil patriarchy of technology'.

I'm glad I read on for an interesting and original viewpoint.

More Susan Sons' and fewer Adria Richards', please. The former have meaningful and constructive contributions to make while the latter just make political hay for their own self-interest. As a learner, the perception of an increased emphasis on identity politics is off-putting to me. Not because I secretly want to have a career and interest in tech to further my patriarchal tendencies, but because it's shifting attention away from the interesting stuff - the stuff that makes tech fun and interesting in the first place.

Post reply on HN