I code like a girl • Hacker News Board

Re: I code like a girl

#101

Post by dspillett » Tue, Mar 17, 2015, 2:30 PM UTC

ajuc wrote: post #41

rmc wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes people claim that women are biologically, statistically, just not as good/interested as men at programming/technology, and point to current gender balance in tech as evidence of this ("There's a reason there's lots of male programmers, men must be just better!") Remembering some of these women, and the early history like this, is very relevant today to show that that's nonsense.

It's not nonsense. Modern women are statisticaly less interested in programming. That's because boys 20 years ago got c-64 or PC because they wanted to play games, and girls 20 years ago got barbies. Turns out barbie doesn't have the same side effects.

There is evidence that the games kids choose and how they react with each other has an effect though, and some of that seems to be affected by natural gender-sensitive bias.

Though while this might be large enough to be considered statistically relevant, nothing I've seen suggests a natural bias strong enough to account for more than a fraction of the mis-balance we see in later life in the science & technology arenas, so social pressure (even "accidental" pressure due to, as you suggest, the "toys" parents and other family buy), both at a young age and as kids progress through school, are presumably the larger factors by quite some margin.

There are natural gender biases, mental as well as physical, that are not caused by external cultural pressure, and to completely disregard that would be a mistake. But I think (caveat: going by my experiences here rather than any scientific study) in most cases that the difference between the average man and the average woman is smaller than the range of differences within each gender (so if you consider only the bulk of the population it might be valid to consider us identical overall).

Re: I code like a girl

#102

Post by MollyR » Tue, Mar 17, 2015, 2:31 PM UTC

_bfhp wrote: post #97

MollyR wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. I'll add it to the reading list. However as I'm usually short on time, I'd prefer to just read the scientific articles for myself. Do you have any notable scientific articles from the book references to recommend ?

The book has a Wikipedia page explaining what it is; it is an original scientific work, not a wrapper for other people's articles.

I gotta say my enthusiasm is significantly dulled. I prefer scientific articles, because they tend to be peer-reviewed, and have a testable null hypothesis.

Its also why I avoid books like outliers by malcolm gladwell.

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll probably check it out eventually.

Re: I code like a girl

#103

Post by facepalm » Tue, Mar 17, 2015, 2:32 PM UTC

kazagistar wrote: post #96

facepalm wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well do you have an answer? To me it seems highly unlikely that all the women have been turned away by sexism. I remember the times when programming and computers where considered extremely unsexy and basically made you an outcast and unlikely to get a girl-friend. Computer kids back then would have been very happy to meet a girl who was interested in computer stuff.

There is a large difference between being treated as a professional equal, and being treated as potential meat by sex starved nerds...

So you say yourself that girls don't like nerds. So who is to blame? And the "treated as potential meat" remark is just sexist from you.

Also those where the days of playing video games on home computers. Professional IT work was decades later.

And boys weren't the gate keeper to the technology either - how should that have worked? Today as then, if you are interested in doing stuff with computers, nobody can prevent you from doing it.

Re: I code like a girl

#104

Post by ibebrett » Tue, Mar 17, 2015, 2:32 PM UTC

rmc wrote: post #73

mrits wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got basketballs and golf clubs. I had to beg my dad to get me my first amiga 500. He agreed only because he thought I'd might get rich from it one day. So my interest, to the best that I can tell, was self originated.

Exactly. Geeks used to be picked on, and bullied. Maths and science wasn't cool.

there is a difference between it being cool and being acceptable. you had an identity as a nerd. you were accepted as a nerd, and cool people were probably happy that you were because it put you lower on the totem pole.

Re: I code like a girl

#105

Post by toothbrush » Tue, Mar 17, 2015, 2:32 PM UTC

BasDirks wrote: post #25

mrits wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women often refer to each other as girls. Men don't usually to each other as boys.

In Dutch, "jongens" (boys) is very common, even for mixed age and gender. However, jongens taken literally means "young ones", so it's actually very general. Use of "mannen" (men) among a group of adult males is usually actually more ironic than the more general "jongens".

Native Dutch speaker here, and i beg to differ: i would be very surprised if someone said "Daar staat een groepje jongens" (there's a group of jongens) and meant a group of girls. "Jongens" is definitely masculine.

Re: I code like a girl

#106

Post by bkeroack » Tue, Mar 17, 2015, 2:35 PM UTC

slowmovintarget wrote: post #63

rmc wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes people claim that women are biologically, statistically, just not as good/interested as men at programming/technology, and point to current gender balance in tech as evidence of this ("There's a reason there's lots of male programmers, men must be just better!") Remembering some of these women, and the early history like this, is very relevant today to show that that's nonsense.

The interest part is not nothing. Most women programmers I've known were on their way to something they considered better. My wife, for example, slung C++ and Java while getting her MBA in evening classes. For her programming was a path to earn a living until she got her 'real' job on the executive track. Another woman I worked with only wrote code for a while and moved on to run her father's machine shop. In both ca…

That phenomenon is not limited to women. Corporate software engineering is a pretty dead-end occupation. You hit an income and title plateau quickly, and--especially in the startup world--ageism starts to kick in after that.

Re: I code like a girl

#107

Post by ajuc » Tue, Mar 17, 2015, 2:36 PM UTC

sthreet wrote: post #68

ajuc wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not nonsense. Modern women are statisticaly less interested in programming. That's because boys 20 years ago got c-64 or PC because they wanted to play games, and girls 20 years ago got barbies. Turns out barbie doesn't have the same side effects.

I don't know about 20 years ago, but I think now there are pretty even numbers of girls who play games as boys who play games in my experience. I don't know how accurate that is for everywhere, but it doesn't appear to affect interest in programming. Of course, the boys aren't interested either, I think I'm the only one.

And I'd expect number of women in programming catch up in 20 years.

Re: I code like a girl

#108

Post by myself248 » Tue, Mar 17, 2015, 2:36 PM UTC

Tip for anyone having trouble reading this in Chrome: Hit F12, select "elements", go over to "Styles", and scroll down to find the "font-weight" and "color" entries, and uncheck them. This will let the default (readable!) font settings show through. For those of us who spend a lot of time on needlework and other fine tasks, it helps a lot!

I don't know squat about CSS or how to fix this for real, but I've bumbled around enough to be able to override this crap when it makes an article physically uncomfortable to read.

Re: I code like a girl

#109

Post by mechg » Tue, Mar 17, 2015, 2:36 PM UTC

Dewie wrote: post #65

kazinator wrote: post #50

> What is now considered a male-dominated field, was once defined as “women’s work.” Once? It's naive to think that these attitudes do not persist, albeit in somewhat disguised forms, perhaps. At some universities, for instance, engineers regard CS majors as "wimps". Engineering is hard, CS is soft. Moreover, think about how there is an attitude that some "softer" or "easier" programming is lower on the pecking order…

What do they think about math majors? It's similarly "soft" in that it is a study of entirely intangible and abstract concepts - nothing to do with manly machinery or contraptions at all. What do they think about electrical engineers? Circuit board sewers...?

As someone who went to school for ME.

The general opinion was:

ME was harder than CS.

Math majors were unlikely to get a job.

Electrical and Chemical engineering were harder than ME (especially chemical)

Civil engineering was a joke. (Probably because our statics and mechanics of materials classes were so easy in comparison with ME classes).

These aren't my opinions just some observations of general opinions of undergrads.

Re: I code like a girl

#110

Post by amyjess » Tue, Mar 17, 2015, 2:39 PM UTC

erroneousfunk wrote: post #92

kazinator wrote: post #50

> What is now considered a male-dominated field, was once defined as “women’s work.” Once? It's naive to think that these attitudes do not persist, albeit in somewhat disguised forms, perhaps. At some universities, for instance, engineers regard CS majors as "wimps". Engineering is hard, CS is soft. Moreover, think about how there is an attitude that some "softer" or "easier" programming is lower on the pecking order…

I briefly did front end web design work many many years ago. Now I have a masters in software engineering, two books published in web scraping in Python and Java, and years of experience in back end Java, database architecture, data science, and all that jazz. The vast majority of the recruiter spam I get, as a female, is front end web development or UI/UX work. I removed all mention of "HTML/CSS" type skills from Li…

> The vast majority of the recruiter spam I get, as a female, is front end web development or UI/UX work.

I'm transgender, and I can tell you that I got that kind of spam both before and after I transitioned. In fact, most recruiter spam I've ever gotten is wholly irrelevant to my skills.

You're getting that spam because the positions are in high demand, so there are a lot of them, and recruiters will spam all their positions to every single email address in their database.

They just plain have no respect for other human beings. Half the recruiter spam I get uses my old name, even though I legally changed it almost a year ago and changed it on my resume (which I posted to all job sites) a few months before that. I also list on every job site that I cannot relocate and I'm only seeking full-time work. Most of the recruiter spam I get is for positions out of town and for contract jobs. They never get it. I've written scathing emails to recruiters lambasting them for suggesting I uproot my life and move out of state for a shitty 6-month contract. I usually don't get a reply.

One recruiter took the cake. He emailed me about one such position, then called me the next day after I ignored his email, and I told him I wasn't interested in any contract work and that I don't ever want to do business with him. A few days later, he emails me again about the same position. I replied with a Cease & Desist notice making it clear that he is to have no contact with me from now on, and then he calls me again to try and convince me to take the job. I spent the next few minutes shouting at him and berating him for harassment. I planned to contact his firm's HR department about his conduct, but I never got around to it, sadly.