I'm going to create an organization for one of my libraries written in Rust. Hey, fans of "frank_jwt" - join me.
Django Girls one year later
51–60 of 131 posts
Re: Django Girls one year later
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm in the "whatever works" camp. If someone were to create a "guy's programming workshop" with weight-lifting and sports-talk, I'd welcome the experiment. It's all fine as long as the market demand for programmers is going unmet.
Experiment if you want, but as a guy, I would "nope" right out of there. I don't think those sort of tricks have a net positive impact on your numbers.
> Experiment if you want, but as a guy, I would "nope" right out of there.
As would I. I found the PyCon2015 talk by Ola and Ola rather too cutesy, but I liked the djangogirls' tutorial online just fine. I can imagine there are others who find the online tutorial too dry, and would like some of the cutesy stuff to maintain attention or interest. All we can conclude is that these techniques are not for the likes of you and me.
> I don't think those sort of tricks have a net positive impact on your numbers.
These are all didactic methods. Not everyone learns something best in the same way. As far as I'm concerned, there are still some people whose learning needs are not met by current mainstream methods. Any variation that attracts more people into the field ought to have a net positive outcome.
Consider this too: books for young children have lots of pictures in them, whether they're storybooks or textbooks. I can clearly recall a time when I was 6, and the first thing I'd do with a new science textbook is look at all the pictures. Back then, I found the books for older children rather dull. I grew out of that phase, as did millions of other children. Who is to say that these cutesy addons don't perform an analogous role in the early stages of some programming newbies?
Re: Django Girls one year later
#53I've been waiting for good tutorials for to many years. I come from the 500 page computer phone books! I would go to B & N--and literally pick up a phone book--filled with confusion/pontification/useless diagrams/filler? I would pick these books up, and wonder "Who reads these?"
At first, I blamed the Editors.(I just figured the person/persons didn't understand the material, and only corrected serious grammatical errors?)
As years went by, books/tutorials became better, but even the better ones Left Out Steps? They just expected me to know what they are poorly writing about? If the information was free--fine? It bothered me when I paid $39.99 for a poorly written technical manual. (I will pay for thin books! I've never picked up a book, and felt weight equated with cost. The thinner the better?)
I went through Djanjo Girls tutorial and with every page--it felt good. It was to the point. It didn't leave out steps. Yes, I will repeat; it didn't leave out steps! It didn't go off on tangents.
I wish them well. To any future writers out there; less is more. I've thought about writing a technical manual, and I am seriously considering using a cartoon format. Maybe not literally, but less is more. There's no need for overly long sentences, and pages to explain what could fit in a well written paragraph. If a topic is important, put an askerick in the margin?(As a reader, I take those Tips seriously. I will read other material, until I grasp what you are trying to get across.)
To those of you just starting out in Computing--it is definetly easier to learn this stuff now.
Re: Django Girls one year later
#54In every work environment which has an clear gender imbalance we see the same stories of the minority group being pushed out by the majority group. The minority group feel pressured to be more majority-like to fit in, receive comments like "you are good for a minority person", and feel a social expectancy to be more like the majority group. Those who don't behave correctly report of being silenced and treated in a ve…
There is also the problem that we are talking about certain subsets of badgers and squirrels. Consider that many of the badgers that originally grew the forest that they now enjoy only did so because they were shunned not just by the squirrels, but by many other badgers. Look closely and you'll notice that some of these badgers, or those of the same subgroup, are resistant to both squirrels and other badgers coming i…
Are these squirrels and badgers resistant to other squirrels and badgers coming in, or just resistant to changing their behavior to fit in with the newcomers?
And do we really believe that squirrels and badgers are fundamentally that different?
Re: Django Girls one year later
#55In every work environment which has an clear gender imbalance we see the same stories of the minority group being pushed out by the majority group. The minority group feel pressured to be more majority-like to fit in, receive comments like "you are good for a minority person", and feel a social expectancy to be more like the majority group. Those who don't behave correctly report of being silenced and treated in a ve…
In every work environment which has an clear gender imbalance we see the same stories of the minority group being pushed out by the majority group.
This isn't true at all. Lots of fields had clear gender imbalances and explicit hostility, and yet the minority gender had little trouble entering. For example, medicine, law, pharmacy, HR, advertising, professor of subjects which don't use math, etc.
Re: Django Girls one year later
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find it baffling everytime someone refers to men and women as separate groups. What's the point of equality then if we're still so different? (In my experience, if you want to talk about "groups" in programming companies, it's mostly geeks vs. non-geeks, with men and women in both groups.)
It's easy to say that we're all one group if you're in the dominant group...
You presuppose that gender/racial/identity politics groupings are the natural one. They aren't.
I do find this easy to say, in spite of the fact that my company has exactly 1 other person of my race (out of 100+) [1]. Though I am in the other "dominant group" (engineering)...
[1] This has been the case for most of my career, and my life was not significantly different in the few cases when it wasn't true.
Re: Django Girls one year later
#57In every work environment which has an clear gender imbalance we see the same stories of the minority group being pushed out by the majority group. The minority group feel pressured to be more majority-like to fit in, receive comments like "you are good for a minority person", and feel a social expectancy to be more like the majority group. Those who don't behave correctly report of being silenced and treated in a ve…
In every work environment which has an clear gender imbalance we see the same stories of the minority group being pushed out by the majority group. This isn't true at all. Lots of fields had clear gender imbalances and explicit hostility, and yet the minority gender had little trouble entering. For example, medicine, law, pharmacy, HR, advertising, professor of subjects which don't use math, etc.
Are you sure about that? I think the difference is that the pioneering women who opened the doors of fields such as medicine and law did so over 100 years ago. The minority gender had lots of trouble entering, and up until recent times suffered from many of the same things that women complain about in the programming community.
Re: Django Girls one year later
#58You don't beat sexism by creating a sexist organisation.
It's amazing how people think that there are all these barriers to programming for certain groups of people which must be overcome. There aren't. Sit down, grab a computer and a book, and learn to code. If you're good at it, you'll get a job, and people will respect you.
If you can't learn to code on your own, you probably don't have the mental skills necessary to be a good coder. (Critical thinking, drive, determination etc).
Re: Django Girls one year later
#59You don't beat sexism by creating a sexist organisation. It's amazing how people think that there are all these barriers to programming for certain groups of people which must be overcome. There aren't. Sit down, grab a computer and a book, and learn to code. If you're good at it, you'll get a job, and people will respect you. If you can't learn to code on your own, you probably don't have the mental skills necessary…
Ah yes, the convenient argument that the world is truly a meritocracy, and that those in positions of power, who evaluate merit, have no biases.
I do not know whether you are in a position of power, but I note that this argument is often advanced by people in positions of power.
Re: Django Girls one year later
#60In every work environment which has an clear gender imbalance we see the same stories of the minority group being pushed out by the majority group. The minority group feel pressured to be more majority-like to fit in, receive comments like "you are good for a minority person", and feel a social expectancy to be more like the majority group. Those who don't behave correctly report of being silenced and treated in a ve…
I find it baffling everytime someone refers to men and women as separate groups. What's the point of equality then if we're still so different? (In my experience, if you want to talk about "groups" in programming companies, it's mostly geeks vs. non-geeks, with men and women in both groups.)
In spite of what some may think, these groupings are not based on some essence but on observation and the goals of those of us who seek to change the situation. We don't try to make everything equal, but first and foremost see if there are any obvious power differences in society at large. Since women form a group with a power share that is clearly and significantly lower than that of men, it is useful to treat women as a group for the purpose of enacting change.
Again, the goal is not to make everyone the same, but to make sure there aren't any social groups that are somehow marginalized away from society's seats of power, and software happens to be one such seats of power.
The categorization into geeks and non-geeks, while perhaps useful for identifying social cliques, is not at all useful for correcting society's power imbalances.