Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Women: Learn to Program This Summer

foundersatwork.posthaven.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 606 posts

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#161

Post by ajiang »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #133
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…

> 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 more distorted, I would argue that this donation is very much a part of the free market. Private donations to private organizations for private causes. This is trying to eat your cake and still have it though. If you ask a staunch free market person whether we should hav…

That's a very intriguing point!

Can you help me understand it better? Are you saying that it is currently against the law for @jl to donate to Lambda School to sponsor 40 men to attend for free? I don't think that is your point, but I'm having trouble interpreting it any other way.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#162

Post by krapp »

grondilu wrote: post #131
krapp wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Now, if for some reason women don't take this road and "need" someone to hold their hand in order to learn programming, 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. Why would you assume that a programming course amounts to "hand holding" just because a single gender is involved? For that matter, why woul…

> would you still be casting the same aspersions only on the women, Gender is not important here. As a matter of fact, I wanted to edit my post and talk about people in general, but I did not bother. This article was about women. My point is that I have the feeling that programming is something most people learn more or less for free with the documentation available online and with the help of online programming comm…

I don't think having someone fund a class or taking "IRL" classes are signs of a lack of intrinsic motivation. Plenty of motivated people have taken student loans to get through CS courses in actual colleges.

Nevertheless, the classes being offered here appear to be online, through Lambda School[0].

[0]https://lambdaschool.com/about/

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#163

Post by ringaroll »

dang wrote: post #160
ringaroll wrote: post #158

This is an excellent thing! More women should be encouraged to code as there are too many men in the field already. I hope this sets the trend so that colleges mandate 60% quota for women in CS. Companies should pay women more then men to encourage more women to join the field. Laws should be made so that companies have to hire women because the bosses are misogynist. Destroy the patriarchy! You go girl!

Please do not take HN threads even further into ideological hell. In addition to destroying this place, it's tedious.

You're a far right misogynist woman hating person. In other words are a part of the problem!

Don't you see a problem with too many men in CS? Don't you want more women to succeed?

I just checked your profile. You should be fired for being a woman hater.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#164

Post by malvosenior »

Townley wrote: post #155
rosterface wrote: post #3

I recently completed a very difficult job search where I unfortunately had to lean on my ethnicity (I’m Mexican) to pass through very overt screening against white men. I was shocked to hear from multiple companies, large and small, that they did not want men and white men in particular. Now we see a YC co-founder giving 40 women $9000 to learn to program. Where does it end? I was really sad that while I personally c…

I'm sympathetic to anyone who's had a challenging job search, and am glad that you found something. Society is worse off for having barriers that prevent anyone who wants to code from being able to do so. That includes the inefficiencies of the job industry not placing you into a productive coding role faster. But it also includes the lower salaries, lack of support/representation, belittling, and near-universal camp…

Women are in extremely high demand in the tech industry. This post is just another example of a benefit women get but men don't. As a hiring manager I can say I've definitely been encouraged to pay women more than equally equipped men because their presence on the team is deemed so valuable.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#165

Post by jxub »

seancoleman wrote: post #60
tqkxzugoaupvwqr wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Great suggestion. I will pass along the feedback to the developer :)

A carrousel could work as well

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#166

Post by yertletheturtle »

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.

"I have no idea what I'm doing, but I like it." This sums up pretty much the entire field ;)

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#167

Post by dogsgobork »

grondilu wrote: post #151
mayankkaizen wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned programming on my own. Sure there is a lot to learn in programming. Often you are stuck with a problem for long and there is simply nobody, except online forums, to help you out. Nobody around me is into programming. I am married and have 2 kids. My regular job has nothing to do with programming. I have to spend 3 hours in daily commute. Saturdays are working day. But I still manage to learn programming. I…

> I don't understand why women in general need special help or guidance. I do, but my explanation is not PC.

You don't need the P there.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#168

Post by dang »

All: there's room on HN for good-faith debate, but not for ideological flamebait (regardless of which flavor), so can you please not post that? It's tedious, off topic, and boy does it suck the oxygen out of a thread.

Here's a test: ask yourself how much intellectual curiosity there is in your comment or your motivation for posting. If you don't find much, please hold off until you do. Intellectual curiosity is the reason this site exists [1], and it's a fragile factor nowadays amid the rage and hysteria online. Keep HN curious.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#169

Post by jxub »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #87
mettamage wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so if you have to do it, you'd better love it in the first place. Depends on how much you think anything else sucks. Compared to physical labor you're not breaking your back over things. Compared to other jobs you get paid relatively ok (EU centric view). Compared to some jobs the hours aren't that crazy: hey McKinsey folk! How are you doing? :D Really, it isn't that simple. It depends. It helps if you like it, but…

> Depends on how much you think anything else sucks. Compared to physical labor you're not breaking your back over things. Not always true, sometimes you have to help lift boxes (100lb) carrying hardware with your software preinstalled / ready to be shipped because you work in a small office and paying someone off to do the same task 1 day randomly throughout the different quarters of the year is not worth the hassle…

Just work in SaaS ;)

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#170

Post by rudedogg »

jpfed wrote: post #136
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…

Think of it like this. Linear models in statistics break out the prediction for a given case in terms of main effects and interactions. All women get hit by the main effect of being a woman; it just so happens that some women are buoyed by other main effects like wealth, whiteness, etc. Now, it may turn out that you might want to evaluate an aggregate measure of disadvantage per person, so you can sort people by leve…

> doing less good than a perfect-information solution, will still almost certainly do more good than harm.

This thread, and past threads on this subject turn into an absolute shit-show and cause tribalism/division. I feel like that is evidence enough that these policies are harmful.

When you do/don't get a job there's uncertainty around the reason. Was it my experience/skill-set, or race/gender/sexual orientation/religion? It feels like we're trying to fix discrimination by forcing everyone to feel like they might be experiencing it.

Post reply on HN