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Women: Learn to Program This Summer

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Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#141

Post by qntty »

nck4222 wrote: post #50

I'm trying to figure out on what side of the debate I fall on this one. On the one hand, women have obviously been disadvantaged in many ways, for many years, which is wrong. The gender disparity in software development is well documented, and should be fixed. No one should be discouraged from learning, or opportunities denied because of gender. On the other hand, a for-profit company deciding to offer free services…

Why would giving any group of people money ever be immoral? It wouldn't be immoral even if she said that it was only open to white, Christian men.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#142

Post by specialp »

grondilu wrote: post #55

Isn't programming a skill that can be learned alone in a fairly straightforward manner? I mean, most programming languages have extensive documentation, tutorials and so on (at least FOSS dynamical languages like Python, Rust, Perl...). From my personal experience and what I can guess about hackers I've talked to for instance on IRC, that's how most guys learned it : the web is full of resources for whoever wants to…

Coding as far as syntax and doing something like codeacademy... yes that is relatively straight forward. But programming like that is not really going to get you anywhere when making a web app for instance. Syntax and programming aside there is a whole stack of stuff you have to know. I did not realize this until bringing a friend to a meetup that was looking to get into software development. He was doing all the online courses and learning Python/JS. But then the rabbit hole of knowledge starts opening up where you realize it takes a whole lot more than that to do anything.

Oh that's easy just send a cURL request with header Accept: application/json ..... OK what's cURL, what's a header? So for us that have been in the game it is easier to "learn to code" another language as there are parallels everywhere and you have that baseline knowledge of how things generally work. Just try to explain something that you feel is "relatively straightforward" to a person not exposed to tech... I made the same mistake and thought it was straightforward, it is not as you are making many assumptions about knowledge. I am at the point where I am familiar with a lot of stuff and can Google things I don't know but what if you had no idea what even to search for? That is where instruction helps.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#143

Post by Ntrails »

tqkxzugoaupvwqr wrote: post #41
seancoleman wrote: post #28

My girlfriend, a nurse of 10+ years, just started learning to code on her own, built her first (basic) website ( https://www.nataliepeterson.dev ) and is applying to Lambda School already. I sent this to her this morning and she was elated. Programs like this really work.

For whatever reason this website feels so personal. Instant flashbacks to the 2000s. I love it. Hint for picking a random image when clicking on the image: The currently shown image should be excluded from the list of images to draw from. This prevents the problem that sometimes clicks appear to do nothing, although in reality the same image was randomly picked again.

I got the same vibe, so much of ones self just thrown onto a page to see what will happen. Super fun to see.

Good luck to the author :)

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#144

Post by Uhhrrr »

decebalus1 wrote: post #123

I'm leaning back and watching our profession go to shit. The liberalization of programming is very profitable for software companies. The wages need to go way down as currently we're the contemporary blue-collar job that didn't get screwed up by the modern corporate machine. This has less to do with gender than with plain-old creating inflation within the profession. Accountants, doctors, lawyers, all managed to clos…

I'm reminded of a Bloom County strip where Steve Dallas, the town lawyer, is bemoaning his lack of clients. "What this town needs", he says, "is two lawyers".

More engineers means more widgets and platforms and shims and other NIH, so I am not worried about the sort of thing you describe.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#145

Post by lawn »

chongli wrote: post #126
lawn wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem for many people isn't the lack of material. It's the difficulty of keeping yourself motivated and do what you need to do. Making a commitment, such as joining a class or education, is massively helpful. > I would argue that maybe those women don't have the intrinsic motivation to do so and trying to force it upon them may be a gross waste of time and resources. It may come as a shock but most people don't…

It may come as a shock but most people don't work with their ultimate passion. The problem is that people learning programming for the first time, who don't have a passion for it, can find themselves in a class with those who do. I have witnessed, first hand, people who were beginners getting left in the dust by their classmates on a group project and ultimately dropping out of CS/SE entirely.

Yes, I've been one of those who knew programming as well.

But the problem isn't that new people join classes. The problem is experienced programmers being in the same class as beginners.

I could often just do the assignments myself and skip the rest of the course. The real problem was when I was forced to partner up with someone new.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#146

Post by montecarlos »

grondilu wrote: post #55

Isn't programming a skill that can be learned alone in a fairly straightforward manner? I mean, most programming languages have extensive documentation, tutorials and so on (at least FOSS dynamical languages like Python, Rust, Perl...). From my personal experience and what I can guess about hackers I've talked to for instance on IRC, that's how most guys learned it : the web is full of resources for whoever wants to…

I think you're missing the point of Lambda school. Students get access to quality classes and a living stipend so they can focus on learning outcomes.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#147

Post by SolaceQuantum »

andonisus wrote: post #86
rubicon33 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The gender disparity in software development is well documented, and should be fixed. No one should be discouraged from learning, or opportunities denied because of gender. I can tell you why. In part, it's explicit sexism and goal keeping from men, sure. But a far bigger reason there are less women in tech? Step into any engineering course at a 4 year university. Come back and tell me how many women where in your…

What if the underlying reason is that women, as a whole, are less interested in Science/Engineering than men are?

Is this actually true? How do we verify this? (Certain portions of engineering have higher women participation rates than men- can we identify a biological cause for this disparity, or that many of the sciences have women on parity or overrepresentation?)

I agree that this is a definite possibility but I struggle to identify a reason to explain the disparities of participation in subfields purely from a genetic point.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#148

Post by dgzl »

I don't think throwing money and free services at women while we sit on our knees begging them to join us the best way to get them interested.

I'm generally against equality of outcome, and support equality of opportunity, which this is not.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#149

Post by dang »

zimablue wrote: post #118
ajiang wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to think HN is a place where people can have debate without resorting to saying things like "very stupid point" ;) You're absolutely right that free market doesn't mean your choices are exempt from criticism. That isn't my point, nor where I applied 'Free Market'. My point was: If you're going to argue against this donation, saying that it fuels the trend of reverse racism / sexism that makes the free market…

Yeah I comment a lot and pretty much never insult people. No-one is arguing that this is wrong because it's a government market distortion, they're arguing against it because it's injust, and proceeding from incorrect principles. So you invented an argument that's invalid by it's own definition as a straw man to rebut. It's stupid, there's no other word for it.

There are plenty of other words, and you're breaking the site guidelines. Please read them, especially the one about calling names: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#150

Post by kazinator »

decebalus1 wrote: post #123

I'm leaning back and watching our profession go to shit. The liberalization of programming is very profitable for software companies. The wages need to go way down as currently we're the contemporary blue-collar job that didn't get screwed up by the modern corporate machine. This has less to do with gender than with plain-old creating inflation within the profession. Accountants, doctors, lawyers, all managed to clos…

> 'it's cute' when the janitor learns how to write web pages

All that matters is the quality of that web page. This is no different from the janitor also being a novelist or accomplished musician.

I wouldn't worry if I were you; most people will only ever learn enough to program themselves into a corner they can't get out of in a small number of lines of code, in some scatter-brained scripting language for imbeciles.

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