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

Women Outnumber Men For The First Time In Berkeley’s Intro To Computer Science

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 176 posts

Re: Women Outnumber Men For The First Time In Berkeley’s Intro To Computer Science

#91

Post by wutbrodo »

theautocrat wrote: post #71

CS10 TA here: I have been involved in the development of this course for almost 4 years and in that time I watched it grow from a small 80 student pilot course to a 220 student CS goliath. In my opinion the growth in popularity of this course is representative of an underwhelming high school CS education. For students without some previous experiences, CS61A as an introduction can be brutally discouraging. This fact…

> For students without some previous experiences, CS61A as an introduction can be brutally discouraging.

CS61A hasn't been the intro course for inexperienced students for as long as I can remember: What about CS3? I came into CS having never touched or seen a piece of code, and I took CS3 because my understanding was that it was supposed to be the gentle introduction for complete neophytes. I found CS3 to be enormously easy and hand-holdy (it was a little _too_ easy, but that's not necessarily a bad thing for a course meant to be a gentle intro).

What was wrong with CS3 that necessitated the introduction of a new course that (AIUI from the catalog) focuses more on things like the social implications of computing and its relevance to society?

Re: Women Outnumber Men For The First Time In Berkeley’s Intro To Computer Science

#92

Post by PavlovsCat »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #26
geebee wrote: post #18

I recently read the "top jobs" on the us news and world report website. http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/rankings/the-100-b... Computer jobs were well represented, but so were health sciences. Here's the full list 1. software developer - san jose - 116K (93k natl avg) 2. computer systems analyst - (couldn’t find it in SF, best anywhere was $116k in bridgeport, 84k nation avg) 3. dentist - couldn’t find SF, c…

Was looking at nursing for these exact reasons. It's bizarre that you have more free time as a nurse to work on your own programming projects than you do in the tech industry.

Nursing can be extremely exhausting though, physically and mentally. That's not to say you can't program a bit after work to get your mind off it, instead of watching TV or whatever; but I don't find it "bizarre" at all that nurses are well paid, I think they ought to be. Just like teachers and people working in kindergartens, I don't think very many people can do that job, certainly not for decades. (Speaking purely of those who have empathy, as the rest shouldn't do these jobs to begin with)

Technology even at its most complicated is hardly a comparison, but at its average? Heh. You can't compare any of it to caring for people while they are sick, get better or die.. with feeding them, taking care of their wounds, cleaning up vomit and feces, washing a dead body, being confronted with suffering and fear (as well as bravery and generosity beyond comprehension).

I never even worked as a "real" nurse myself, just in a close enough capacity for long enough to have some serious respect for cojones I simply don't have, not in the long run. A few years would be rough, but a career of it? Anyone who light-heartedly thinks they could hack that might be fooling themselves. Programming is "just" hard, but being a nurse is hard.. of course I can only speak for myself, but what kept me from becoming a "real" nurse wasn't anything I could have learned, no matter how disciplined; I just don't have it in me. On the other hand, I think at least smart people generally all could learn to program in just about any language if they really wanted to, and invested time regularly. I'm not trying to diss "the tech industry", but I do think firefighters and nurses and whatnot play in wholly different leagues, sorry :P

Re: Women Outnumber Men For The First Time In Berkeley’s Intro To Computer Science

#93

Post by geebee »

alphaoverlord wrote: post #74
geebee wrote: post #18

I recently read the "top jobs" on the us news and world report website. http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/rankings/the-100-b... Computer jobs were well represented, but so were health sciences. Here's the full list 1. software developer - san jose - 116K (93k natl avg) 2. computer systems analyst - (couldn’t find it in SF, best anywhere was $116k in bridgeport, 84k nation avg) 3. dentist - couldn’t find SF, c…

I am a current UCSF medical student and I majored in statistics in undergrad. I program in R and python. In undergrad, did consider doing an internship at a tech company as a data scientist, so I feel like I understand the perspective from both sides. That said, I feel this is entirely a false dichotomy - there are actually very few people choosing between nursing and computer science, and it is not "diverting some o…

This is where I got the entering class profile link:

https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2011/09/10594/ucsf-school-medicine...

"The 167 new arrivals were chosen from 6,767 applicants. The average age of the class is 25, with a range of 21 to 34, and it is 58 percent female and 42 percent male."

I haven't made any further inquiry into the accuracy of this statistic, so it could be wrong, or it could be an unusual year.

Re: Women Outnumber Men For The First Time In Berkeley’s Intro To Computer Science

#94

Post by seestheday »

Pxtl wrote: post #50
ef4 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha. That's a Silicon-Valley-centric problem. There's plenty of programming work in great walkable places in San Francisco proper, New York, Boston, etc.

I'm not in Silicon Valley, I live in Ontario. The tech industry in this province is concentrated in two places: 1) Waterloo, which everyone sees as a ticking time-bomb because of Rim. and 2) Mississauga, which is Toronto's sprawl and is where all our soulless corporate code is written. Fortunately, I work for a hospital.

I live in Waterloo. Toronto dwarfs Waterloo. It's not really close.

Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of great stuff going on in Waterloo and I love living here, but Toronto is so much bigger and has so many more opportunities its not funny.

Waterloo has a population of 100K people. If you include Kitchener and Cambridge then you're up to 400K.

Toronto on the other hand is the 10th largest city in the Americas[1]. To put that into perspective for Americans, that means that if you live in a city in the states that isn't NYC or LA, then Toronto is bigger.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_cities_in_the_Americas

Re: Women Outnumber Men For The First Time In Berkeley’s Intro To Computer Science

#95

Post by saraid216 »

nousernamesleft wrote: post #87
saraid216 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Individual agency en masse should be a random distribution, which results in a proportionate representation within reasonable error margins. Not having this suggests that there's another factor besides individual agency factoring into decisions. It could be something acceptable, like men can't biologically give birth (yet), or it could be something unacceptable, like blacks being targeted by police solely on suspicio…

>Individual agency en masse should be a random distribution What are you basing that assumption on? You are 100% certain that there is no possible way that men and women could have different preferences, priorities or interests?

A basic understanding of math, mostly.

Re: Women Outnumber Men For The First Time In Berkeley’s Intro To Computer Science

#96

Post by ebfe »

slamdesu wrote: post #73
paulwithap wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, you're saying that aside from genitalia, men and women are exactly the same and, in a vacuum, the distribution of genders in any given profession should be perfectly equal? You really believe that?

"So, you're saying that aside from skin colour, black and white people are exactly the same and, in a vacuum, the distribution of race in any given profession should be perfectly equal? You really believe that?" ^ It wasn't long ago that that type of claim was used often. Sexist views always have some sort of justification like "men and women ARE different!" or "men have a natural ability to think logically and are t…

How about this:

So, you're saying that aside from the numerical value, a set of people with an average testosterone level of ~500ng/dL are exactly the same as a set of people with an average testosterone level of ~20?

To deny that hormones exert a tremendous influence over our behaviors and motivations is absurd.

Re: Women Outnumber Men For The First Time In Berkeley’s Intro To Computer Science

#97

Post by tbrownaw »

paulwithap wrote: post #19

What is up with the obsession to get women coding? Why does it matter? You don't see anything like this in female-dominated professions.

Because your stereotypical computer geek doesn't have the social skills to meet women who aren't also computer geeks?

Because computer geeks don't push back hard enough against overtime requests (a social skills issue again), and so have a hard time meeting anyone they don't work with?

Because unlike many jobs, much of computer programming also makes for good hobbies, so we spend a greater fraction of our time associating with like-minded people (and would like for said group to include women)?

You don't see anything like this in female-dominated professions.

But only because we're too insular to notice (again, a social skills issue).

Re: Women Outnumber Men For The First Time In Berkeley’s Intro To Computer Science

#98

Post by theautocrat »

wutbrodo wrote: post #91
theautocrat wrote: post #71

CS10 TA here: I have been involved in the development of this course for almost 4 years and in that time I watched it grow from a small 80 student pilot course to a 220 student CS goliath. In my opinion the growth in popularity of this course is representative of an underwhelming high school CS education. For students without some previous experiences, CS61A as an introduction can be brutally discouraging. This fact…

> For students without some previous experiences, CS61A as an introduction can be brutally discouraging. CS61A hasn't been the intro course for inexperienced students for as long as I can remember: What about CS3? I came into CS having never touched or seen a piece of code, and I took CS3 because my understanding was that it was supposed to be the gentle introduction for complete neophytes. I found CS3 to be enormous…

CS3 was self paced and saw a high rate of failure. CS10 has been the replacement since Fall 2010 and has a continuation rate of over 75 percent. It also opened the scope to instill a CS consciousness in even those who only ever take CS10.

Re: Women Outnumber Men For The First Time In Berkeley’s Intro To Computer Science

#99

Post by jpwright »

peterwwillis wrote: post #75

(sorry, ranty opiniony comment) Why do people care about the numbers of women in Computer Science classes? Because, they say, it shows some inherent discrimination against women in the industry. (which totally exists, but mainly as a bigger cultural issue that affects everyone along gender lines) If you ask how that could be (as nobody is actually barring women from signing up for classes) the most popular theory is…

No one is saying that more women in CS courses will eliminate sexism everywhere. There is intrinsic value to having gender diversity in any field, and CS is one with a notable lack of it.

This is a classic example of "moving the goalposts". By claiming that incremental progress doesn't matter (or is somehow detrimental[1]) because of sexism elsewhere, you inhibit progress everywhere. By relying on strawman arguments and a false comparison to the election of Barack Obama, you implicitly frame any incremental achievement for women in CS as a failure.

[1] Referring to your, frankly, bizarre comment about a misogynist saying "you can have a computer in the kitchen". No idea what this is supposed to imply, or who exactly is saying it.

Re: Women Outnumber Men For The First Time In Berkeley’s Intro To Computer Science

#100

Post by nousernamesleft »

saraid216 wrote: post #95
nousernamesleft wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Individual agency en masse should be a random distribution What are you basing that assumption on? You are 100% certain that there is no possible way that men and women could have different preferences, priorities or interests?

A basic understanding of math, mostly.

Shit, I guess I must have been sick the day we covered "men and women are statistically identical in all choices they make". Was that in calculus?
Post reply on HN