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Django Girls one year later

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Re: Django Girls one year later

#121

Post by fooballs »

bayesianhorse wrote: post #108
sfk wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are the 50% of open source projects that should have been started by women? Or are they deleted from the Internet by those in power?

It's a BS argument. A lot less than 50% of programmers are women, so there is no way 50% of open source projects (as a sign of merit, as I understand you) could be started by women.

And the reason there are less women programmers, is because less women want to be programmers. Just as less men want to become fashion designers.

There is nothing to "solve" here. Let people do what they want to do.

Re: Django Girls one year later

#122

Post by fooballs »

pron wrote: post #61
fooballs wrote: post #58

You 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…

There is a problem with your argument: evidence points to the contrary. As a (very) gentle introduction, here are some facts: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-... http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelor...

I'm not sure what college has to do with learning to code. If you're waiting until school/college to learn to code, you're probably not going to make a very good coder.

Re: Django Girls one year later

#123

Post by pron »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #119
pron wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read it again. I said that if the consensus theory is wrong then we'd see constant power shifts. Instead, we see long stable periods disrupted by short rare, revolutions or a relatively slow, very visible struggle. Hence, hegemonies do resist social mobility. IIRC, you made the exact same mistake last time we discussed the issue. Also, I fail to see how your formula is meaningful at all, as it has nothing to do with…

I said that if the consensus theory is wrong then we'd see constant power shifts. This is clearly wrong - I demonstrated a stupidly simple alternate theory which disagrees with the consensus, but still lacks constant power shifts. Rapid shifts in the composition of various fields would debunk basically every theory that presupposes human nature doesn't rapidly shift. As such, your theory proves very little, and other…

> This is clearly wrong - I demonstrated a stupidly simple alternate theory which disagrees with the consensus, but still lacks constant power shifts.

Your theory didn't even explain the data (in the software industry), and had nothing to say about power. Basically, it can comfortably exist beside the consensus theory as a second-order effect (and the data actually looks like that is probably the case, explaining representation differences of up to 2:1).

> So why cling to that theory, rather than, say, my theory of p=A - B x math_content + second_order_corrections?

Two reasons: 1. your theory doesn't explain the anomalous software industry (neither the very low participation nor the sudden change) while the consensus theory does, and 2. your theory doesn't explain the lack of representation (and possible correction after well-documented struggles) in fields of high prestige and little math (such as law, medicine and politics). In all those fields: law, medicine, politics and software, women participation was (or is) far lower than 30%. It was/is lower than 20%.

You might think that singling out software is uninteresting from a statistical perspective, as in Scott Alexander's regression it was just a single (outlier) data point, but in fact, the software industry is larger than all "heavy math content" professions combined, and holds more power in today's society.

> My theory predicts more things (e.g., it predicts % women in academia, % women in finance, % women in tech vs non-tech roles) and is vastly simpler. How is that not a win?

Because it predicts fewer things, and not even what you claim it does. At best, it predicts fewer women than men in certain subjects, but that's it. However, we see that while the binary relation "fewer" may remain, how much fewer decreases over time. Second, it only holds (even as a binary prediction) when you look at the past few decades -- far too short to look at social change -- which means it does not explain the exclusion of women from law, medicine and politics. Third, it does not explain the way-too-low representation in CS, nor the drop in participation. The consensus theory explains all of it, for any time duration. It even explains interesting shifts we see in, say, education (more women as prestige drops, while in CS fewer women as prestige rises). Yes, it's more complicated, but fits reality better, plus it's supported by lots and lots of data.

Re: Django Girls one year later

#124

Post by fooballs »

bayesianhorse wrote: post #106
fooballs wrote: post #58

You 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…

You should research feminism in general and diversity movements in technology some more. Also Lynn Root's talk at EuroPython was a good recapitulation of current diversity trends. There is evidence which prooves discrimination and unfavorable bias against women in technology. Therefore, there is nothing wrong with creating organisations for women. Fact is, several DjangoGirls "graduates" who have never done any progr…

I have looked at feminism. It's not about equality, and not something I think of as a good thing. It's about closing down mens clubs and opening up women only clubs. It's hypocritical at its core.

People who have never done any programming? Attending some course and then getting programming jobs? I don't think this is a great idea.

There is absolutely no barrier to entry here. Learn to code, at home, on your own, like everyone else does. Make an OS. Make games. Publish them. Make open source projects.

If you're not already doing all of the above, chances are you'll make a terrible programmer, and the industry will get more bad programmers - as if it needs more.

Re: Django Girls one year later

#125

Post by ionelm »

bayesianhorse wrote: post #99
wisty wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

One of the points of the fable as I understood it is that the badgers often aren't actually badgers, but all sorts of other individuals trying to mimic a badger.

On that idea, there was a very interesting lightning talk at EuroPython 2015: https://youtu.be/Tt-R2KdQUFs?t=2772

Re: Django Girls one year later

#126

Post by pron »

fooballs wrote: post #122
pron wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a problem with your argument: evidence points to the contrary. As a (very) gentle introduction, here are some facts: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-... http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelor...

I'm not sure what college has to do with learning to code. If you're waiting until school/college to learn to code, you're probably not going to make a very good coder.

First, college is used as a proxy. The significant drop coincides with the drop in participation in industry, the data is just cleaner.

Second (and unrelated to the discussion, really), I don't know where you get your assumption that learning to code in college is too late. I've been in this business for twenty years and some of the very best developers I know only learned to program in college. If anything, I'd say that not going to school at all and having a weak background in algorithms/mathematics is a much greater stumbling block for some software achievements than not programming before school, but even that is probably a bad generalization. Excellent developers come from all backgrounds.

Re: Django Girls one year later

#127

Post by bayesianhorse »

fooballs wrote: post #121
bayesianhorse wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a BS argument. A lot less than 50% of programmers are women, so there is no way 50% of open source projects (as a sign of merit, as I understand you) could be started by women.

And the reason there are less women programmers, is because less women want to be programmers. Just as less men want to become fashion designers. There is nothing to "solve" here. Let people do what they want to do.

Obviously, women do want to be programmers, unless they are told by society that they shouldn't or couldn't. If that weren't the case, movements like DjangoGirls would be far less successful.

The comparison with fashion design is also BS. For one thing, there are lots of male designers (especially the famous ones) and then the number of fashion designers is a lot lower than the number of programmers.

And this is not as irrelevant a choice as whether to play with dolls or lego: Programming is a skill which allows for social upwards mobility like nothing else. Just assuming women (and minorities) don't want that, is a bit too easy.

Re: Django Girls one year later

#128

Post by thoughtmonkey »

pron wrote: post #120
thoughtmonkey wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are actually some really interesting numbers coming out of that study, they can be found here: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf13327/pdf/tab33.pdf The first thing to note, is that both the number of men and women getting CS degrees dropped: the entire field went from ~42k BS degrees to ~24k degrees. There were about 10k less men, and about 8k less women graduating in 1996 compared to 1986. The number eventuall…

> I would probably hypothesis that CS was seen as a risky degree, so while men are generally less adverse to risk I don't know about that. Men consistently study fields with higher income potential than women. The current theory is that when CS started gaining prestige and power, the same thing happened as with all professions that carry power and prestige -- women were pushed out (and by that I don't mean that there…

I could definitely be wrong about the risk factor for girls/guys. It was just another possible issue that could be extrapolated from the data

I still feel that saying "women were pushed out" is the wrong way to phrase it. We can see from the data, that both men and women were "pushed out" of the field, with men recovering from the drop earlier. After reading a bit more, it could be that marketing in the 80's (as suggested by the NPR article) negatively effecting both women and men (which was left out of the NPR article) entering the field, but women ended up more effected.

Side note: drops like this have occurred in other fields at different times. Psychology actually ended up losing a lot of men in the 70s, while women increased. I am sure we could find a few other examples as well.

Re: Django Girls one year later

#129

Post by pron »

thoughtmonkey wrote: post #128
pron wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would probably hypothesis that CS was seen as a risky degree, so while men are generally less adverse to risk I don't know about that. Men consistently study fields with higher income potential than women. The current theory is that when CS started gaining prestige and power, the same thing happened as with all professions that carry power and prestige -- women were pushed out (and by that I don't mean that there…

I could definitely be wrong about the risk factor for girls/guys. It was just another possible issue that could be extrapolated from the data I still feel that saying "women were pushed out" is the wrong way to phrase it. We can see from the data, that both men and women were "pushed out" of the field, with men recovering from the drop earlier. After reading a bit more, it could be that marketing in the 80's (as sugg…

> Side note: drops like this have occurred in other fields at different times. Psychology actually ended up losing a lot of men in the 70s, while women increased. I am sure we could find a few other examples as well.

Absolutely. Many researchers compare those shifts with changing attitudes towards certain professions (say, by counting certain words when they're described in the media etc.), with women participation usually correlated negatively with prestige.

In any case, much of the distinction between masculine and feminine professions is traced back to Victorian times. Of course, similar differences have existed much longer than that and in many cultures, but the Victorians elevated the distinction between gender roles into an elaborate system of social codes (e.g. they had certain rooms in the house more appropriate for men to spend time in, and other for women).

Re: Django Girls one year later

#130

Post by Lawtonfogle »

bayesianhorse wrote: post #99
wisty wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

One of the points of the fable as I understood it is that the badgers often aren't actually badgers, but all sorts of other individuals trying to mimic a badger.

Which gets confusing because it makes one wonder if all the squirrels are actually squirrels are a bunch of different animals in squirrel costumes. If they are all squirrels, what does it mean that there are very few badgers, a bunch of animals looking like badgers, and a bunch of squirrels. But if most squirrels are actually other animals in a squirrel costume, it gives a second level of reflection in the squirrel society as well.

The ending of the fable seems a bit open ended, like a plot twist thrown in at the end but never resolved.

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