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Jewelbots – A Friendship Bracelet You Can Code

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Re: Jewelbots – A Friendship Bracelet You Can Code

#121

Post by KGIII »

klipt wrote: post #112
KGIII wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can argue that but, out of curiosity, I just sent my daughter a text. Me: 'How long do you think you kept friendship bracelets for?' Her reply: 'Maybe two weeks. I still have one from [redacted] somewhere.' As I said, it surely isn't universal but she and her friends all fit that pattern. It didn't keep her from STEM, she's an MD.

> It didn't keep her from STEM, she's an MD. That's not out of the norm; roughly half of medical students are women: https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/ The "shortage of women in STEM" mostly refers to engineering and computer science.

I'd call medical a science, but that's just me.

Re: Jewelbots – A Friendship Bracelet You Can Code

#122

Post by dogruck »

dragonwriter wrote: post #117
dogruck wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was at a conference this weekend. A female grade school teacher, at a private school, tried to explain to me how "girls brains are wired differently from boys" and therefore "we need to teach girls to be more like boys." I am open minded. I've met and worked with women who are just as strong or stronger than men. I don't understand how we can simultaneously argue that men and women are fundamentally different but s…

> A female grade school teacher, at a private school, tried to explain to me how "girls brains are wired differently from boys" While an oversimplification, this seems to be generally true; females are biologically different than males and those differences seems to have psychological/behavioral manifestations. Its still difficult to isolate socialization effects from biological ones, but the indications seem to be t…

I personally agree that women are biologically different than men. But, I don't know what the correct next conclusion is. (Not to mention when you extend it to gender self-identification.)

One of her specific examples was "because of that different wiring, boys will typically try to win a game, but many times girls will not try to win, because, for example, winning might hurt the other player's feelings."

All I could say in response was, "well, I'm a guy, and to me it sounds like those girls are thinking at a higher level -- who cares about winning some artificial game, if it's going to hurt another person." And that's where the bulk of the conversation ended.

I struggle to find the right path when discussing gender -- especially about kids.

Re: Jewelbots – A Friendship Bracelet You Can Code

#123

Post by adamsea »

sudosteph wrote: post #57
sarajo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi! We talked to over 200 girls when making this product, rest assured that every design decision was made with their feedback in mind. Boys also love playing with Jewelbots, but there are already a lot of coding toys aimed at boys!!! Our market primarily identifies as female, but we'll broaden down the road.

I think this is where we disagree a little. I don't think most coding toys actually are mostly aimed at boys. How would that even work? Do they require a Y chromosome to operate or something? They're just marketed to boys (and parents of boys), and parents and children alike buy in. The toy market today is highly segregated in marketing to boys vs girls, and toys that were not specifically "gendered" in the past are…

> I don't think most coding toys actually are mostly aimed at boys ... They're just marketed to boys ...

Aren't "aimed at boys" and "marketed to boys" pretty much the same thing?

Re: Jewelbots – A Friendship Bracelet You Can Code

#125

Post by DigitalJack »

atomical wrote: post #119
DigitalJack wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we weren’t “that” different, gender reassignment would not be a thing.

If gender reassignment was performed on 40% of the population I would agree with you.

That makes no sense.

There is a segment of the population that is physically one gender but feels they are actually the other. If we weren't that different, nobody would go through the massive physical alteration.

The size of the population that has gender dysphoria is irrelevant.

Re: Jewelbots – A Friendship Bracelet You Can Code

#126

Post by dang »

johnm1019 wrote: post #100
rapsacnz wrote: post #83

As a proud dad of 3 incredible girls, I am very glad this product exists. I understand the argument that it would be great to not have gendered products at all meaning kids could choose what they want without any outside influence. Unfortunately, we don't live in that world yet (and it could be a while off) In the meantime, I can now buy a product that: 1. Encourages my girls to get into STEM. 2. Is not a hard sell.…

Why do men and women need to be the same? Isn't it ok to be different?

Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. The site rules specifically ask us all to avoid them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

The reason for this is that they're (a) always the same and (b) always degnerate. (a) makes threads unsubstantive and (b) makes them uncivil. Civil, substantive conversation is the whole idea of HN threads—however rarely we may actually achieve it—so you could hardly do anything that more violates the site's values, even if you didn't mean to. Not meaning to makes it more insidious in a way.

Re: Jewelbots – A Friendship Bracelet You Can Code

#127

Post by jacalata »

sudosteph wrote: post #70
rtpg wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're both actually agreeing. The other coding toys are marketed towards boys ("aimed at boys"). That means that it's less likely for girls to get exposed to them overall, because media aimed at them is different, teacher's behavior towards them is different, even their own parents' behavior towards them is different. I get that marketing "for girls" might give credence to the "for boys" marketing... but if…

Oh, I definitely think we're more in agreement than disagreement and am happy this product exists. But you're right that the crux of my argument hangs on explicit "for girls" implying other toys as "for boys" The reason I interpreted the "for girls" thing as explicit because: 1. When I first clicked the link, the HN title did say "for girls" in the title. It was edited by the time I had submitted my comment. 2. The G…

I don't understand why you would expect anyone to say "this is for boys" when producing a toy that is generally considered to skew male. Try looking at Meccano, for instance - I've never seen them say "boys" but I'd bet money that most Americans see a racecar/truck/etc kit and think boy.

Re: Jewelbots – A Friendship Bracelet You Can Code

#128

Post by fjcksdnfbh »

sarajo wrote: post #21
kdamken wrote: post #8

Holy moly that website does a bad job of describing what they actually do. Apparently you can program the lights and vibrations? I looked up a YouTube video, apparently they can be programmed for notifications from your phone? Marketing team really dropped the ball on this one.

Thanks so much for your feedback! Sounds like we have some things to add to the FAQ! Jewelbots can be programmed just like an Arduino using C++. Real code! Because we believe that kids are super smart (Also, I starting writing C++ at 11).

While I tend to agree with you—I started with C++ around that time as well—I do wish they included some type of safer language to play with as some c++ errors/warnings took me days to work around and may have put me off entirely had I a strong social life at the time :) I seem to remember logo working well for mindstorms when I was also that age. Why not support something a tiny bit friendlier than possibly the most complex language in active professional use?

Re: Jewelbots – A Friendship Bracelet You Can Code

#129

Post by fjcksdnfbh »

substack wrote: post #66
sarajo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks so much for your feedback! Sounds like we have some things to add to the FAQ! Jewelbots can be programmed just like an Arduino using C++. Real code! Because we believe that kids are super smart (Also, I starting writing C++ at 11).

I think the real C++ part is so important because it respects the abilities and intelligence of children to participate in the adult world using a real (yet approachable) technology that is also used in industry. This also makes these skills earned poking around with a fun toy transferable to solving their own problems, doing coursework at university, and later on entering the technology labor market. Other programmi…

Some kids can see through anything, but I think it’s hugely naive to think many kids won’t struggle with it. Do you remember how hard kids find algebra? That syntax is downright trivial compared to explaining why you need to insert a space between angle brackets when composing templates, or why calling your method overloaded for pointers might sometimes call an integer one instead when passed a null literal, or how to debug e.g. memory alignment errors, which are often presented with cryptic segmentation faults.

I think it’s great for a certain crowd, but this could be quite frustrating for many pre teens and ultimately put them off of casual coding.

Besides, kids aren’t exactly leaping at micro controllers. And why should they? Software programming is applicable to more and more prospective jobs every year.

Re: Jewelbots – A Friendship Bracelet You Can Code

#130

Post by spoiler »

rapsacnz wrote: post #83

As a proud dad of 3 incredible girls, I am very glad this product exists. I understand the argument that it would be great to not have gendered products at all meaning kids could choose what they want without any outside influence. Unfortunately, we don't live in that world yet (and it could be a while off) In the meantime, I can now buy a product that: 1. Encourages my girls to get into STEM. 2. Is not a hard sell.…

There's nothing worng with liking girly stuff and being into STEM.

I'm a pretty "masculine" (for a lack of better expression) guy who likes a fair amount of girly stuff. My best friend is a girly girl who's in STEM and she's brilliant at her job.

If your girls want to be girly, there's nothing wrong with it! I don't understand the recent "trend" of people being against girly girls or or boyish boys. People will choose to be what best suits them. And if your girls decide they don't want to be girly at one point in their life, also great.

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