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Girls and Software

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Re: Girls and Software

#181

Post by philwelch »

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…

The predominant gender role seems to be: men and boys are more things-focused and women and girls are more people-focused. So girls aren't willing to sacrifice social capital just to play with computers the way boys are.

Re: Girls and Software

#182

Post by hrktb »

superuser2 wrote: post #82
hrktb wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on the fence. I think it's a matter of age, and being able to follow on damaging content/encounters. My kid if too small to go around the web yet, but I have the feeling there will be a point where as parents my wife and I will need to let him do what he wants without asking us anything, but we keep the ability to check the logs of everything he accessed with any device in the house It means being able to have re…

The litmus test: Is it okay for you to force your child to wear a wire to school? Is it healthy to use the tapes to intervene in her conflicts? If not, then what exactly justified reading texts/facebook messages/emails between friends? >corruptive infos What exactly is corruptive information?

>> corruptive infos > What exactly is corruptive information?

I'd image 'grooming' a kid would match the criteria of corrupting a kid's personality. Or suicide/'special' interests sites crafted to target people lacking enough discrimination to understand how they work. Honestly I think there are things that I don't know and don't really want to know about on the web.

In general I'd say information that is crafted in a way to bypass common safeguards and push someone to do or believe something that would usually be considered harmful and he/she doesn't agree with in principle.

> Is it okay for you to force your child to wear a wire to school?

The thing is, at school he will meet professional staff and other kids with roughly the same level of knowledge. In theory bad things could happen, but it's a very controlled environment. Actually teachers will inform parents of conflicts or marking events when it's serious enough, and kids are generally not good at lying or hiding things.

To try another analogy, letting a kid access internet without any check is similar to giving 1000$ in cash and just hoping for the best. Wonderful things can come of it, or the kid can go to a drug dealer. Personally I'd prefer to give him a credit card. If we get a phone call from VISA because of fraudulent transactions, at least we have a chance to do something for the kid.

There will be a time when just sitting down and talking to own's kid should be enough to avoid most of the very deep trouble. But until he/she matures enough to be able to have such discussions, parents need to compromise, with the two extreme of restricting the kid's freedom to such extent that he can't put him/herself in trouble, or let the kid free to do what he/she wants but keep an eye on everything's going on. I tend to err on the 'keep an eye' side until just trusting the kid becomes an option.

> Is it healthy to use the tapes to intervene in her conflicts?*

No, it's not, in any extent. As it's not healthy in general to intervene in a kid's conflicts. You'll intervene when there is a crisis and your kid will get critically hurt.

I think having a log of what a kid does online doesn't mean checking it every night word by word. I means having a place to look at when there is something going seriously wrong and you know or need to know if you have to intervene.

For everything less than that, it's business as usual, talking to your kid, just getting involve enough in his life to have a feel of how it's going and give useful advice.

Re: Girls and Software

#183

Post by gruseom »

ucarion wrote: post #172
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 disagree. As a high schooler, I know many intelligent and creative young women who don't want to do robotics or programming because of the people in those fields. High school boys in tech are much more likely to be misogynistic and socially inept than other high schoolers are. They make girls uncomfortable (they make me uncomfortable too, and I'm not event the subject of their creepiness), and this discourages girl…

High school boys in tech are much more likely to be misogynistic

That rings very false to me. It was not at all the case when I was in high school. In fact it was just the opposite, and I see no reason why that would have changed.

Re: Girls and Software

#184

Post by belorn »

e12e wrote: post #157
belorn wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think the best way forward is to throw out years of feminist research. That sentence gave me a nice smile. feminist research is poor at best, non-existent at worse. Take affirmative action in education. Give me a single study that shows that it a) produce long-term professionals, b) is better than the base line, and c) if it has any of the negative and well documented long term effects inherent of single-se…

I was thinking about stuff like the research cited here: http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/papers/genderbias.html (I can't find the actual project I was thinking off, but this seems to be a good enough example of what I don't consider to be "poor at best, non-existent at worse".)

Let see what findings the cited studies in the paper has to say:

"teachers give boys greater opportunity to expand ideas and be animated than they do girls and that they reinforce boys more for general responses than they do for girls." (1994)

"teachers who are made aware of their gender-biased teaching behaviors and then provided with strategies and resources to combat bias are better able to promote gender equity in their classrooms." (2000)

All good and all, but nothing about single-sex education. Nothing about gender inequality in programming. Their conclusions are also very low hanging fruits. Is it non-obvious that educating teachers about discriminating behavior will have an effect in how they teach? It is good that they tested it, but it was not a very controversial proposition. Single-sex education is.

Re: Girls and Software

#185

Post by alecdbrooks »

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #150
erichocean wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, maybe I am an outlier, but I didn't start programming until I was 20, and didn't seriously get into it until I was 24 (i.e. actually shipping something). And I sure as hell don't think Zuck is "better" at tech or being a hacker than I am. Luckier, perhaps, but not better. I guess we'll see. Also, I was married at 19, and a year later was a father. By 24, I had two children with a third shortly thereafter. So I…

Since we're on the topic of unpopular-but-true, I'll go ahead and post another: It's not about whether we can program so much as what we can accomplish by learning to program while we're young. You and I may make fine and capable employees, but some want more than that. It takes more than just ambition: it takes positioning and luck. I hope it won't be too controversial to say that younger people can take more risks…

You've moved the goalposts. Neither ancestor comments nor the article were talking about founding a startup. But having conceded that programmers who start late are not necessarily at a disadvantage in terms of technical skill, you've changed the question to whether programmers are "fine and capable employees" or "more than that," apparently meaning success in the tech industry as a startup founder.

Younger people have advantages entrepreneurially speaking. But we shouldn't mistake that for technical skill by redefining hacking as "being a technical startup founder."

Re: Girls and Software

#186

Post by dev1n »

HedgeMage wrote: post #146
dev1n wrote: post #67

Growing up watching shows like "Dexter's Laboratory" and "Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius" definitely shaped me as a child into the tech freak I am today. Girls getting barbies thrown at them when they are 12 does not help put girls into the tech sector. We need television shows like "Diane's Laboratory" or "Jennifer Neutron Girl Genius" to get girls interested in tech. Hit 'em when they're young.

For my son, it was "Johnny Test" and "Phineas and Ferb", the latter being one of the most well-done bits of hacker/maker propaganda I've ever come across. Amusingly, all the scientists/engineers in Johnny Test that aren't creepy villains are girls (Johnny's twin sisters and occasionally friends). My son had no problem looking up to them anyway. I got a certain amount of crap from others for "letting" him be so into a…

Phineas and Ferb is awesome. I'm 22 and I watch that show.

Your frustration is justified IMO. Among the other interests I had growing up were movies like Johnny Tsunami and Brink where I wanted to get out and be a cool extreme sports athlete like the main characters in those movies. The fact that I picked the tech industry IMO shows that society doesn't always push kids to pick things up from examples, but providing the option to discover interests via same-gendered examples is imperative in my opinion. I really have no data for this other than my own personal experiences, however I did read a blog post maybe a year ago on the effects of television and career path choice which I thought was interesting.

Re: Girls and Software

#187

Post by hrktb »

a-saleh wrote: post #94
superuser2 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The litmus test: Is it okay for you to force your child to wear a wire to school? Is it healthy to use the tapes to intervene in her conflicts? If not, then what exactly justified reading texts/facebook messages/emails between friends? >corruptive infos What exactly is corruptive information?

> What exactly is corruptive information? Mostly porn and torture? I remember that when I was visiting my uncle, and he left me alone playing on his computer. I was poking around, until I found a folder containing video of a group of soldiers beheading a guy. I didn't sleep well for a week.

Sometimes I think brainwashing by some clever enough sect would be worse than regular trauma. In computer terms it would more akin to getting infected by a virus, while porn and torture are more in realm of a dos ?

Re: Girls and Software

#188

Post by marquis »

belorn wrote: post #143
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.

Any source for your claim? Is classes for girls better in producing hackers, ie, someone who is passionate about programming to the point of both work and hobby? I sincerely doubt it, but feel free to prove me wrong.

Hi, personal experience is my source and the fact that I come across very very very few other technical women in my field, and when I do they benefit from small, gender-balanced or single-gender classes. I think what works best for girls depends on their age - and there are a lot of studies out there showing that boys also do better in puberty in single-gender classes.

Re: Girls and Software

#189

Post by tomjakubowski »

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…

One summer in my childhood, my parents decided to severely restrict my siblings and I's access to the internet for unspecified reasons. We were each allowed 30 minutes use of the family computer and its Internet connection, which was "locked down" by passwords on the BIOS and Windows 98 screensaver. The laptop I shared with my brother and sister was still connected to our home LAN (through one of those crazy Intel AnyPoint phoneline network adapters) so we could print out summer schoolwork and such at our leisure, but Internet access was completely firewalled off.

The collaboration between my brother and I to get around these restrictions is one of the earliest memories I have of fruitful "hacking." At the time we both played (and I was obsessed with) a particular MUD, and a half hour per day was not enough playing time, so we wrote a very crude proxy server in VB6 over a week (7 hours between us) that hid in the system tray with a very "system" sounding process name and icon. That way we could connect to the MUD in secret from the laptop, hidden away in our bedroom. I think we later wrote a terrible, barely functional HTTP proxy too. We pulled a few more tricks like reverse engineering the screensaver password (it was stored as a hex string in the registry or something), which turned out to be the same as the BIOS password, before my parents caught onto what we were doing and kind of gave up (maybe they even saw it as a positive learning experience, who knows).

That summer introduced me to the idea that a computer is totally malleable in the hands of a determined and motivated person equipped with the right tools. I haven't looked back since.

Re: Girls and Software

#190

Post by gruseom »

VonGuard wrote: post #177
gruseom wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You don't. It's Java. It's like a kid asking you to build a car engine from scratch day one. We kindly point them to our Scratch class as a way to learn how to program.

Well, I'm glad I didn't come to the wrong conclusion. It's too bad, though, because Minecraft modding got this kid really excited, and there are many (maybe millions) like him. It seems like it could be a really fruitful area for work.

Actually, when I was looking through stuff for him, I found a project that implemented Minecraft bindings for JavaScript with the aim of creating a friendly environment for kids. The author was an HNer and had posted it here a year or two ago. But the project had languished since then, and it struck me (perhaps unfairly) that it probably wouldn't work out of the box in all configurations. The last thing one should put in front of a kid is something that immediately frustrates them by failing in strange ways. Tools like that need to be really, really well-hammered. Which is one of the advantages of Scratch.

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