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Girls and Software

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Re: Girls and Software

#151

Post by belorn »

e12e wrote: post #133

Many good points in this article, but I think it falls short in analysing what's changed (or what's wrong). > Most of all, I'm disappointed. I had a haven, a place where no one cared what I looked like, what my body was like or about any ephemera—they cared about what I could do—and this culture shift has robbed me of my haven. At least I had that haven. The girls who follow me missed out on it. Well, yes. Computing…

> I don't think the best way forward is to throw out years of feminist research.

That sentence gave me a nice smile. feminist research is poor at best, non-existent at worse.

Take affirmative action in education. Give me a single study that shows that it a) produce long-term professionals, b) is better than the base line, and c) if it has any of the negative and well documented long term effects inherent of single-sex education.

There are plenty of feminist research that shows there exist an gender imbalance in STEM, and most studies gives one or other kind of theory around the why. The theories are however rarely if ever tested. The "years of feminist research" has not gotten to that part yet, and won't until we demand more from researchers than summery of latest census data.

Re: Girls and Software

#152

Post by Crake »

shazow wrote: post #39
superuser2 wrote: post #12

>Parents are warned to keep kids off the computer This point cannot be overstated. I'd never have been a hacker without vast quantities of unsupervised, unfiltered internet time around age 9-12. The largest enabling step for me was when I got my own laptop which I was free to break (software-wise) and free to take into my room so I could focus away from the distracting noises of the kitchen/living room. Much of even…

Very yes. Me as well. I got my first unsupervised access to my grandparents' computer at age 7, but with no Internet. Then at age 10-11 some foundation for underprivileged kids gifted me my own computer with free unlimited dialup and a separate phone line. This was definitely a turning point in my life. The fact that my single mother parent trusted me with my independence was a huge amplifier, too.

>Then at age 10-11 some foundation for underprivileged kids gifted me my own computer with free unlimited dialup and a separate phone line.

Nowadays we'd just give a scholarship to a rich PoC female.

Re: Girls and Software

#153

Post by [deleted] »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #141
jseliger wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I became a teenager, I got wind that it wasn't something "cool" and got spooked. For someone as insecure as I was, having a hobby that I couldn't really "explain" to normal people was embarrassing. When I was a teenager, coding or being technical in general wasn't cool either, and most of the people who were involved were or at least seemed insecure and embarrassed. Perhaps the climate in middle / high schools h…

Hard to say for sure, when I was in school I felt like I was banking on technology becoming cooler over time which does seem to be the case. There's also less pressure on men to settle down early. A man can more easily think "fuck it, I won't start dating until I'm 25 by which time I'll be successful, drive a nice car and be an eligible bachelor". With the whole biological clock issue women are often hoping to be mar…

[deleted]

Re: Girls and Software

#154

Post by Crake »

llimllib wrote: post #38
sillysaurus2 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's possible that there are plenty of people out there who care about "ephemera", and yet are also capable of programming a computer or soldering things together? I think it's possible. Sure, Jobs did. On the other hand, Woz was the tech genius, not Jobs. I've never heard of a tech genius who also cared much about the qualities you mention. This seems more than a coincidence. If it were, then there'd probably…

> I've never heard of a tech genius who also cared much about the qualities you mention. How about von Neumann, famous for always being in an impeccably tailored suit? I hope he's genius enough for you. You don't even have to go past the very first hackers to find ones that care about those qualities. There are many, many other examples. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Personal_life > Von Neumann…

Wearing a nice suit != being obsessed with popularity, beauty, and fashion.

Re: Girls and Software

#155

Post by Crake »

bitwize wrote: post #35
timr wrote: post #14

I'm torn. I think she makes some really good points -- particularly about discouraging young girls and the futility of shoving adult humans into foreign social situations -- but I also think she might be rather narrowly defining the personality type of a "hacker", and dismissing behaviors that she doesn't find valuable (in her words: "ephemera -- popularity, beauty and fitting in" ). Maybe it's possible that there ar…

For the longest time I harbored the biggest crush on a girl from my high school. The thing that made me fall in love with her (and it was love -- as much love as a 14-year-old could feel) wasn't that she was pretty or cute or popular -- though she was all these things. (Head cheerleader. Literally. Dated a football player and everything.) It was that I had the good fortune to peek over her shoulder at some BASIC code…

>But the thing about pretty girls is that they often find it is more immediately profitable to be pretty than to be bright.

100% agree with you. I also think a lot of the difference in the gender ratio can be attributed to the fact that women simply have far more options.

Re: Girls and Software

#156

Post by nitrogen »

arrrg wrote: post #131
gwern wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone else on this thread pointed out that Von Neumann was an exceptionally stylish guy, but he's far from the only example. So your solution is to suggest everyone be as smart as John von Neumann so they can master subjects while still being a snappy dresser? Does this seem like something people can do? The proverbial 10k hours of practice have to come from somewhere . Time is limited, activities are zero-sum.

I don’t think anyone was suggesting that. Many hackers I know do have other hobbies besides hacking and they devote lots of time to those hobbies. Beer brewing, coffee making, writing poetry, music, languages, … What if one of those hobbies is dressing fashionably? Or makeup? Or whatever? Beyond a certain point activities are zero sum but do you seriously suggest that to be a proper hacker you have no time at all for…

It’s a heuristic for identifying in-group people that makes no sense and to me seems highly destructive.

I suspect this heuristic started out as a way for the outcast, socially unwelcome hackers to finally find a group to which they could belong, an activity that didn't judge them for their intellect or their appearance.

I further suspect that some of the pushback against lifting this heuristic comes from those same people, who feel that they will lose the only thing that gave them a reason to feel good about themselves in the face of total rejection by their peers. It would be just as tragic to force these people out of programming as it is tragic to prevent others from coming into programming.

Re: Girls and Software

#157

Post by e12e »

belorn wrote: post #151
e12e wrote: post #133

Many good points in this article, but I think it falls short in analysing what's changed (or what's wrong). > Most of all, I'm disappointed. I had a haven, a place where no one cared what I looked like, what my body was like or about any ephemera—they cared about what I could do—and this culture shift has robbed me of my haven. At least I had that haven. The girls who follow me missed out on it. Well, yes. Computing…

> I don't think the best way forward is to throw out years of feminist research. That sentence gave me a nice smile. feminist research is poor at best, non-existent at worse. Take affirmative action in education. Give me a single study that shows that it a) produce long-term professionals, b) is better than the base line, and c) if it has any of the negative and well documented long term effects inherent of single-se…

I was thinking about stuff like the research cited here:

http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/papers/genderbias.html

(I can't find the actual project I was thinking off, but this seems to be a good enough example of what I don't consider to be "poor at best, non-existent at worse".)

Re: Girls and Software

#158

Post by gemma »

ps4fanboy wrote: post #126
gemma wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was 8 or so, a relative gave me a huge pink plastic box full of barbies and barbie accessories. I hadn't asked for it, and I wasn't entirely sure what to do with it, but I said thanks and tried my hand at playing with barbies, because that's what was expected of me. After that, I kept receiving dolls as gifts--plastic dolls, porcelain dolls, dolls on stands, dolls in cases. I tried playing with all of them, be…

But your example says that it doesnt?

It absolutely does. That feeling of abnormality is one of the things that helped push me into tech--I wasn't normal, so I went to a place where I hid my non-normalness in a way I never could (so thought my 15-year-old self) from real people.

Great end result for me, but painful at the time. I'm looking forward to the day when tech isn't something girls like me get punted into by accident.

Re: Girls and Software

#159

Post by [deleted] »

stefantalpalaru wrote: post #42

> Last year, his school offered a robotics class for girls only. When my son asked why he couldn't join, it was explained to him that girls need special help to become interested in technology, and that if there are boys around, the girls will be too scared to try. And that's why we can't use sexism to fight sexism (or mistakenly enforce the same composition of the general population on self-selected subsets).

[deleted]

Re: Girls and Software

#160

Post by nitrogen »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #48

There is a broader point that we no longer have the open source community we once had. It was about filling every thing with good open source software - be it desktop, server, embedded. On desktop there was a variety of DEs, distributions, software and all that stuff. There was hope that open source will win. But nowdays I see open source largely as a server side movement powering large proprietary platforms. Everybo…

There is a broader point that we no longer have the open source community we once had.

I think this may be one of the more tragic results of the 2000-2010 decade. Where have the developers gone, and how could we get them back?

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