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I code like a girl

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Re: I code like a girl

#111

Post by dijit »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #30
dijit wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

interestingly this might be because girls like to retain some semblance of youth. anecdotally my girlfriend (Russian if that makes any difference) absolutely hates when I refer to her as a young woman, or use the word "woman" at all. She much prefers to be referred to as a girl. I have no issues with being called a man.. not saying that this pattern is everywhere but it's very apparent with her and her family.

Yet lots of folks say "Mr. Smith? That sounds like my Dad! Call me John!" Which is much the same thing?

but "Mister" is not "Man" even my girlfriend doesn't mind being called "Miss" or "Ms", she might take exception to "Misses".. but I don't think anybody assumes at her age anyway.

Re: I code like a girl

#112

Post by amyjess »

throwawayaway wrote: post #7

the title is provocative, but the content is better. it's funny how grown women are referred to as girls, yet it's less common that grown men are referred to as boys - in my experience.

I prefer to describe myself as a girl. It's the female version of "guy".

"Woman" is stuffy and formal, and it makes me feel old. When I hear the word "woman", I think either Hillary Clinton or somebody's grandma, neither of which I have any desire to be.

I only use the word "woman" in formal contexts.

Re: I code like a girl

#113

Post by erroneousfunk »

amyjess wrote: post #110
erroneousfunk wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's good to know! It's so hard to tell, having only the direct experience of being a single gender in the industry, what is normal and what isn't. I try to stay away from it, but some days, it seems like I'm filtering all my experiences through Medium blog posts about gender inequality and tech-conference-horror-story-of-the-day BS.

I might have to go back to front end work if that's really the hot thing everyone's clamoring for these days... (kidding! I love what I'm doing right now).

It's always interesting to hear about transgendered experiences in the sciences and programming. We need more points of view with control groups! ;)

Re: I code like a girl

#114

Post by amyjess »

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…

> 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 cases these women were good at what they did, but saw software development as something to do before the real job.

It's been my observation that the bulk of female programmers aren't hobbyists and just program because it's a job and it pays well enough. When they go home, they don't think about code.

There are exceptions (hell, I'm one of them, and I personally know a couple others), but in general, female hackers are much rarer than female programmers.

I'm not sure if it's proportionate to guys or not. There are plenty of male programmers who aren't hobbyists either (think of the legions of VB drones in the '90s). I don't know if the just-another-job to hobbyist ratio is just more noticable with girls because there are fewer of us in general or if the percentages are actually different.

Re: I code like a girl

#115

Post by [deleted] »

ianstallings wrote: post #85
_bfhp wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether or not someone is "act[ing] like [women] need [their] protection" is relative assessment and you haven't even accused anyone of fitting the description.

I reject your new grammatical protocols. RESEND in human format.

[deleted]

Re: I code like a girl

#116

Post by [deleted] »

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...

[deleted]

Re: I code like a girl

#117

Post by vdaniuk »

ianstallings wrote: post #40

On the topic of equality in general - As an old man and a father of a 22 year old woman let me tell you what I've observed - women don't need your help and when you act like they need your protection you're no better than someone who treats them as weaklings. It's a fine line and imho the best bet is to just treat them as you would anyone else.

Ugh. I am considering your intentions good, but your statement sounds evil.

Most human beings need protection and help. Programming is hard. Learning to program is hard. Leaving happily in these crazy times is hard.

Just be empathetic, dont be condescending and bam, your help will be greatly appreciated by men and women. That's what I think one should treat anyone else in this particular regard.

Re: I code like a girl

#118

Post by kazinator »

_bfhp wrote: post #82
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…

Who says that the categorization of CS majors as wimps by engineers is related at all to CS being formerly dominated by women? Social construction of gender will seep into dynamics at any point where something can be argued as "weaker" than another thing.

Indeed, and so how they may be related is through this common cause.

Re: I code like a girl

#119

Post by rmc »

facepalm wrote: post #103
kazagistar wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> So you say yourself that girls don't like nerds.

No many women don't like being hit on constantly by people. That's not the same thing as "not liking nerds".

Re: I code like a girl

#120

Post by DanBC »

dspillett wrote: post #101
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.

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 arena…

> 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.

Research is of varying quality. We see some terrible research comin from actual professors in real universities. Here's one example of someone at a prestigious institution who has anti-science viewpoint: http://wjh.harvard.edu/~jmitchel/writing/failed_science.htm

So, when companies like Mattel (or whoever) do research into the colour pink and girl's toys we should probably be a bit wary about the conclusions they draw, especially when they don't release the full data.

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