I’m a Man and I Write Code

This post is mostly an exposition of the author's strongly-held opinion that A) technology communities are all currently meritocracies, which is good; B) self-imposed quotas will result in something that isn't a meritocracy, which is bad; and C) organizations which strive to help minorities (women who code etc) are bad because they try to help minorities.

I'm only going to respond to C because it's the most ludicrous. Recently, I (an asian male) was a teacher assistant at the very first ClojureBridge, and during the training I learned more about why these workshops are useful and important. They create an environment where attendees feel more comfortable learning, making it much more likely that attendees will be successful in learning to program. You can argue whether or not it's "right" that women would feel more comfortable attending a workshop geared specifically toward women, but frankly I think that's irrelevant.

The author says that these organizations give the message that "These people are different from the majority so we need to treat them differently." Well, yes. What's wrong with that? The author doesn't explain. In any case, I think this is a good thing because the majority already has special treatment, thanks to human nature. There is ample evidence that women and black people are seen as less capable, even by people who have no desire to be prejudiced. How easy will it be for you to learn if the people surrounding you all assume that you're not as smart as them just because you're a woman or you're black? It's important that these conscious efforts to combat the results of our unconscious biases exist.

Why do we (well, you :) keep arguing about this issue as if the gender imbalance in software was a new and strange thing?

Gender imbalances in many industries, along with every kind of policies written to address this, have been around for a long time. Certainly well-thought-out positions and empirical studies have been published. Why is the discussion still completely based on random opinions?

EDIT: removed the "prejudiced", I didn't mean it as a personal attack against OP.

This is already happening to boys and girls. See my comment below. No one is encouraged to code. It's not a popular activity. Up until recently it was basically asking to be socially shunned. Some boys either didn't care or didn't have any other options. But the discouragement starts very early.

The amount of time and resources poured into sports FAR out weighs any possible benefit.

Make coding a more social/group activity... social problem solved.

Have kids run during PE. Health problems solved!

Coding has become, relativity recently, high status - so people now care about gender ratios, more so than they do in the fields like carpentry or car mechanics. People are so quick to create vast, economically counterproductive misogynistic conspiracies when there's likely a simpler explanation. Perhaps women are just less likely to enjoy coding. Is this necessarily a bad thing so long as those who do aren't treated differently from men of similar skill level? There are already huge economic incentives for companies to not discriminate against highly skilled coders on any criteria other than ability. Even if you grant that there is a vast misogynistic conspiracy, it must be highly unstable, because any company that defects from the conspiracy will have access to cheap high-level talent.