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Girls and Software

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Re: Girls and Software

#121

Post by e12e »

krstck wrote: post #51

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 T…

I really love this article I came across a few years ago -- this is the kind of environment we should try to achieve again... sadly there aren't any technical hurdles to cross any more -- it's all hurdles we've created for ourselves (and our children...):

http://www.atariarchives.org/bcc1/showpage.php?page=61

[The Best of Creative Computing Volume 1 (published 1976): Learning About Smalltalk, Marian Goldeen]

"My name is Marian Goldeen. I'm an eighth grade student at Jordan Junior High School in Palo Alto, California, and I would like to tell you about how I got started working with computers at Xerox and the class I taught.

It all started in December, 1973 when I was in the seventh grade (...)"

Re: Girls and Software

#122

Post by mistakoala »

forgottenpass wrote: post #99
mistakoala wrote: post #60

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 o…

While I don't agree 100% with what you say here, you more or less drive at why I posted it. There are some conversations about gender and tech that, while useful in their own right, also become exclusionary of other possible framing and interpretation of issues and events at hand. "SJW", while neither an apt nor particularly nice monicker, does (to some) refer to a practicing particular brands of off-putting rhetoric…

I recognise that tech has its politics and is rooted in it to an extent (Cypherpunks etc). I'm not particularly against that or blind to it.

What I dislike is the braiding of tech with identity politics issues by people who are unaccommodating, and hostile in their language and behaviour, if not their motives. Here, I feel that SJW is an apt description for people whose interests are primarily identity politics. It's not a term that I apply universally.

Sons made her point in a thoughtful way. She was not hostile (explicitly or implicitly). If there are issues regarding identity politics and tech, I'd rather hear about it from people like her. The pity is (in an awkwardly expressed way), because of her position, she doesn't necessarily want a platform from which to say things on these matters because she doesn't frame her experience in terms of gender (and that seems to carry through into the comments).

Re: Girls and Software

#123

Post by HedgeMage »

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…

> it makes me think: this might be a problem. Is it harder to be a hacker if you > also have an interest in social media and graphic design and popularity and > friendships? Are we defining "hacker" to include only people with bad social > skills and no interest outside of technology? I hope not.

I never said any such thing. I didn't say "you are pretty, what are you doing here?". I said:

>> you're not a programmer, what are you doing here?!

I am a highly social hacker, and a polymath to boot. I have a vibrant love life, good friends from all walks of life, and plenty of non-coding interests: writing, reading, psychology, music, crafts (I do leatherwork, weave rugs, sew, do native american loomed seed beadwork, etc), backpacking, martial arts, and more.

What I don't do is walk into a room and tell a woman who's good at something I'm not -- a dancer, for example -- that she's being graded not on her ability to dance, but on whether she looks like my idea of what a dancer should be. I don't demand that her math skills (something just as orthogonal to dance as fashion is to coding) be evaluated instead of her dancing.

In my not-so-humble opinion, if you can't code, you don't get a vote on how it is or isn't okay to be a female (or any other) coder, period. Wave that "feminist" flag all you want, I'm not buying it. Women in generations before me didn't burn their bras so I could be judged on my fashion sense instead of my work.

Re: Girls and Software

#124

Post by sillysaurus2 »

dchichkov wrote: post #72
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…

> Young women don't magically become technologists at 22. It depends. There is no strict requirement onto starting at the early age. Yes, there is a correlation, but no strict requirement. I knew someone, who had really started coding only at around 22, after she had finished a computer science / engineering degree. She was not a tinkerer/nerd, just a regular bright girl, her dad was not an engineer [was an architect…

It depends. There is no strict requirement onto starting at the early age. Yes, there is a correlation, but no strict requirement.

You'll be excluded by 22 if you haven't started early. Excluded by whom? By nature. It was no accident that Zuck developed Facebook only after years of being a hacker, and that he also developed it while he was relatively young. By 22 you start to take on responsibilities which hinder your ability to learn as efficiently as possible. It's perhaps an unpopular opinion, but nevertheless it seems true from the evidence.

Re: Girls and Software

#125

Post by spikels »

timr wrote: post #54
bitwize wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Specialization is almost entirely responsible for all the gains in our standard of living since the stone age. This includes almost every technological advance.

Heinlein is wrong on this and a specialist himself: a writer who requires other specialists to meet his every basic need (water, food, shelter...).

Don't dismiss specialization as it is the key to both past and future success.

Re: Girls and Software

#126

Post by ps4fanboy »

gemma wrote: post #111
facepalm wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Girls don't get barbies thrown at them, they beg for them. The are expensive, too.

When I was 8 or so, a relative gave me a huge pink plastic box full of barbies and barbie accessories. I hadn't asked for it, and I wasn't entirely sure what to do with it, but I said thanks and tried my hand at playing with barbies, because that's what was expected of me. After that, I kept receiving dolls as gifts--plastic dolls, porcelain dolls, dolls on stands, dolls in cases. I tried playing with all of them, be…

But your example says that it doesnt?

Re: Girls and Software

#127

Post by HedgeMage »

marquis wrote: post #95

>Young women don't magically become technologists at 22 I did exactly that. I have a degree in the arts, but always loved physics and pursued that secondarily. I failed physics because I had taken arts instead of mathematics but found that that didn't stop me learning C and building all the arts programs I ever wanted. Quite some years ago now and I was an outlier but it's not too uncommon. Good schools are now getti…

Ahh, but it wasn't magic...as you go on to say, the seeds were planted when you were young. "messing with radios and old VHS players" is a precursor to becoming a good technologist. It's not about what you played with, it's about early experiences of problem solving, of making and/or fixing and/or tinkering in any context.

Re: Girls and Software

#128

Post by krstck »

jseliger wrote: post #110
krstck wrote: post #51

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 T…

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. When I was a teenager, coding or being technical in general wasn't cool either, and most of the people who were involved were or at least seemed insecure and embarrassed. Perhaps the climate in middle / high schools h…

> what makes many boys persist in their uncool, embarrassing, low-ish status activity?

I've wondered this myself! Perhaps archetypes of nerdy boys that grow up to be successful and respected adults are/were more readily available? I still think of a stereotypical "nerdy girl" as being really into literature or history, as opposed to building computers.

Re: Girls and Software

#129

Post by supersystem »

HedgeMage wrote: post #112
marquis wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the reason why classes for girls (not necessarily primarily but directed towards) work so well. Being in a room full of men with few or no women in ANY circumstance is awkward unless you are top of your game.

Sure, it might be awkward at first for girls who don't have a lot of experience in mixed-gender environments. If it's a friendly mixed-gender environment, the awkwardness wears off pretty soon. I've watched it happen. On the other hand, "foo for women" events are high-pressure environments that put a spotlight on poor newbies. It's a way of saying "You aren't just here to learn something, you're representing women, y…

I don't think anyone, regardless of gender, should be forced to "fit in with mainstream hacker culture".

Re: Girls and Software

#130

Post by fudged71 »

stefantalpalaru wrote: post #42

> Last year, his school offered a robotics class for girls only. When my son asked why he couldn't join, it was explained to him that girls need special help to become interested in technology, and that if there are boys around, the girls will be too scared to try. And that's why we can't use sexism to fight sexism (or mistakenly enforce the same composition of the general population on self-selected subsets).

I've wanted to mention this for a while but the topic hadn't come up. My engineering faculty tried many things to get more girls in the program, including having girls-only events with the female dean. Of course, all students got these emails, and many of us guys were left wondering why we never had the chance to meet the dean in events like these.

Excluding sometimes seems worse than the biases these programs aim to solve.

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