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Girls and Software

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Re: Girls and Software

#131

Post by arrrg »

gwern wrote: post #74
timr wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

> Someone else on this thread pointed out that Von Neumann was an exceptionally stylish guy, but he's far from the only example. So your solution is to suggest everyone be as smart as John von Neumann so they can master subjects while still being a snappy dresser? Does this seem like something people can do? The proverbial 10k hours of practice have to come from somewhere . Time is limited, activities are zero-sum.

I don’t think anyone was suggesting that.

Many hackers I know do have other hobbies besides hacking and they devote lots of time to those hobbies. Beer brewing, coffee making, writing poetry, music, languages, …

What if one of those hobbies is dressing fashionably? Or makeup? Or whatever?

Beyond a certain point activities are zero sum but do you seriously suggest that to be a proper hacker you have no time at all for anything beside that?

I don’t think anyone should ever feel obligated to be into dressing fashionably or makeup or even just feel obligated to dress a certain way. That’s awful. (I especially hate gender policing.) But telling someone they can only be part of the group if they aren’t into makeup isn’t all that much better than telling someone they should wear makeup to represent women better.

It’s a heuristic for identifying in-group people that makes no sense and to me seems highly destructive.

Re: Girls and Software

#132

Post by auggierose »

krstck wrote: post #128
jseliger wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I like to quote "True Detective" here:

Because we know what we want, and aren't afraid to be alone.

Re: Girls and Software

#133

Post by e12e »

Many good points in this article, but I think it falls short in analysing what's changed (or what's wrong).

> Most of all, I'm disappointed. I had a haven, a place where no one cared what I looked like, what my body was like or about any ephemera—they cared about what I could do—and this culture shift has robbed me of my haven. At least I had that haven. The girls who follow me missed out on it.

Well, yes. Computing and programming has become (more) mainstream -- it's no longer a tiny sub-culture free of mainstream bias. I'm sure there are disappointed skaters, surfers and punks out there too.

I don't think the best way forward is to throw out years of feminist research, or think that "if we could all just get along like before, the problem would go away". It's not that it wouldn't go away, it's just that we need to make an effort to get there. One way to do that is to have sex-segregated introduction classes. They shouldn't all be segregated, nor is it the only thing that we should be doing -- but that is one way of creating a safe and rewarding environment. If we have tutors managing to get mixed classes going, in a way that works well, then that's great too (see VonGuard's comment for example). Generally if you can grab kids before they've been hammered into groupthink about toys, fun and gender roles (which is harder and harder to do with increasing tv commercials, product placement etc) -- then kids don't need to be "de-programmed" -- they can just be allowed to be kids. And they'll play and learn by themselves. But the later you start, the more likely you'll need to have a plan of attack if you want everyone to get a fair shake, and similar participation.

I do think she's right in calling out a lot of the crap that people do in the name of "political correctness" -- without much thought about how or why, though. Being righteous isn't enough; if you're not right, you're probably just making things worse.

[edit: I don't usually comment down-votes -- but I'd like to see a comment. The general idea is to down vote submissions that don't contribute to the discussion -- while I certainly expect many to dis-agree I certainly hope this post isn't perceived as vapid?]

Re: Girls and Software

#134

Post by HedgeMage »

japhyr wrote: post #78
superuser2 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OSX so no license keys or activation. I had to ask where the disks were kept the first couple times but I was careful to frame it as "I know what I'm doing, I just need the disks." My parents didn't mind. Also we were covered by AppleCare and I had no problem calling in for myself. This was in the PPC days so no VMs for me. Eventually I got a used PC from my dad's office for like $45 which has probably been through 8…

> Since it is impossible to autonomously do payments on the internet before age 18, my parents' willingness to let me use their credit card I'm a high school teacher, and I teach some intro programming classes once in a while. I teach primarily low-income/ at-risk students, and this is one piece of the puzzle that keeps my students from gaining more real-world experience. It's a hard issue, too, because you can rack…

Recent bank reforms in the US created a requirement for any institution offering any checking account to offer at least one checking account option with no fees and no overdraft protection. At my banker's suggestion, I opened this type of account for my son. He has a debit card, but no checks. When he runs out of money, the debit card gets rejected -- no debt and no overdraft fees are possible. It's a great tool for him to learn money management, doesn't cost me anything, and enables him to buy ebooks online and other stuff he's interested in with his own money.

That said, at his age I couldn't afford a VPS...I learned by setting up server daemons on my desktop and messing around with them.

Re: Girls and Software

#135

Post by pjc50 »

superuser2 wrote: post #100
jiggy2011 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Music is self learn able with instruments like the guitar, using online tabs and videos as a learning resource. There's quite a lot of famous self taught guitarists, although instruction at some stage can be useful. Sports can be pretty cheap too, playing soccer in a field is a popular activity with poor British youth.

Good point on guitar, I guess I was thinking of piano, strings, and voice, which are quite popular where I live. Sports can be cheap but in extreme cases of (sub)urban sprawl, getting to a field - or the field where an organized game is happening - is pretty difficult without a car. Also you can't really play organized, coached, team sports without your parents signing liability waivers.

You can play without litigation waivers in most non-US countries. You can also kick a ball around in the street.

Re: Girls and Software

#136

Post by woah »

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #18
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…

Maybe it's possible that there are plenty of people out there who care about "ephemera", and yet are also capable of programming a computer or soldering things together? I think it's possible. Sure, Jobs did. On the other hand, Woz was the tech genius, not Jobs. I've never heard of a tech genius who also cared much about the qualities you mention. This seems more than a coincidence. If it were, then there'd probably…

So it's a binary choice between being Richard Stallman and not programming at all? Your worldview is narrow.

Re: Girls and Software

#137

Post by chewxy »

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…

What are the ages? I think a lot of the problem stems when the girls grow up to adolescents. That's when all the negative societal pressures start to set in.

How would you keep this up through their teenage years?

Re: Girls and Software

#138

Post by pjc50 »

japhyr wrote: post #19
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…

> which I was free to break (software-wise) I'm curious, were you on a linux os? Did you break your software often? It seems to me people who get on linux early might have an easier time, because they can so easily break their system and rebuild it. It seems like a kid who breaks a windows/ mac os might need to go to their parents to deal with license keys, which might cause the parents to say "no more hacking".

Other way round: the parents break the system and the kids fix it. A pattern from the VCR upwards.

I don't see why you'd need to contact parents about product keys. OEM Windows puts it on a sticker on the machine. Or you get a pirated version.

(The BBC Micro had a large friendly notice in the front of the manual that you couldn't break it just by typing, so you should feel free to experiment. One of the things that made it a great learning system.)

Re: Girls and Software

#139

Post by belorn »

simias wrote: post #56
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…

When will people understand that people online is no different from people you meet in real life. Some are shady, some will cause trouble if you talk to them, and violence exist everywhere?

Violent videos are bad, but so is bullying. Should we demand that parents supervise their kids at school to prevent bullying? What about all the shady people on the street, in the store, or on buses. Should a responsible parent prevent a child from ever leaving the home alone?

24/7 supervising is not healthy. Constant watching will cause worse psychological harm than any extremely violent video will do. Instead, talk to the child, and one might learn that they are not interesting to see people burned alive or decapitated with a chainsaws, and thus will close videos that has that kind of content.

Re: Girls and Software

#140

Post by pdonis »

mtrimpe wrote: post #21
pdonis wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your quote is a good one, but I like this one even better: I came to the Open Source world because I liked being part of a community where my ideas, my skills and my experience mattered, not my boobs. That's changed, and it's changed at the hands of the people who say they want a community where ideas, skills and experience matter more than boobs. I don't at all see her failing to acknowledge that she was fortunate--…

The thing is though that she is in a very rare, privileged position. She liked her community, fit in well, felt protected and cared for, wasn't troubled by the gender ratio and all in all was just happy with her situation. For a very large amount of women that is unfortunately not the case nowadays and unfortunately her situation is not typical in the slightest and I didn't see much actionable advice to improve on th…

nowadays

Exactly: it isn't the case now, but it was the case before. Why is that?

if we would use it to belittle the work of everyone who is trying to improve the situation

But the whole point is that "trying to improve the situation" by making a huge fuss about "women in tech" is counterproductive; it makes the situation worse, not better.

To the extent that there is a "right" approach, IMO it is to not fuss about anything except what each individual child is interested in. The moment you start thinking "I want more girls to do X" or "I think more boys should do Y", you've already gone wrong. Thinking of people as members of groups instead of unique individuals is what caused the problem in the first place; that kind of thinking is not going to fix it.

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