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82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding

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Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding

#191

Post by tyleraldrich »

cup-of-tea wrote: post #190
tyleraldrich wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The comment is essentially saying that if I do great things and become a role model then I'm not welcome because we already have plenty that "look like me". The comment isn't about you at all. The OP said we need more role models like Grace Hopper and less like Jobs, Woz, etc. Reading this as "White men should stop aspiring to become future role models" is silly, it's about a desire to increase the diversity of tec…

Come on. If the post wasn't about that then why does it specifically call out four male role models? It could have just left it at Grace Hopper, but no. The post contains more negative than positive by far.

Have you heard of "examples." They are things you provide in order to make your point more clear. Seriously.

Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding

#192

Post by fouric »

olingern wrote: post #135

I just moved to Japan, and it's fascinating that connotations (including my previous) with Japan are "High tech, futuristic, efficient" when in reality it is, "slow moving, traditional, and (frequently) inefficient." I can comment more as to why / how. This woman is not only fighting cultural norms of the _world_, but also Japan. Software engineering, in general, lags so far behind the rest of the world, save robotic…

Why Grace and not Jobs/Gates/Woz? Please elaborate - I'm curious.

Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding

#193

Post by Pete_D »

hellofunk wrote: post #163
olingern wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from the south in the US, specifically the Appalachia (`app-uh-lai-chuh` for us) region. The culture I grew up in and Japan aren't so dissimilar. That's partly why I live in Japan. Aside from people being on time and getting food to you -- "things" (for lack of better term) move slow here. Some examples: - It took me three weeks to get a debit card from one of the national banks here. They have a web login and se…

A couple weeks ago, a popular post here on HN was how U.S. culture was actually lagging Japanese culture by about 10 - 20 years, while much of the rest of the world lags U.S. culture by a few years, and how things that were trendy in Japan quite a while ago are just now getting popular in the U.S. and then they will spread to Australia and other places in a few years. So it's interesting to see your opinion that is c…

Do you have a link to that post?

Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding

#194

Post by TangoTrotFox »

sireat wrote: post #183
TangoTrotFox wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coming from the chess world, I suspect your hypothesis is correct. I've taught adults and children and all else being equal adults learn and improve vastly faster than children. But the all else being equal part is the catch. Adults often don't put as much effort into the work as children and a big problem is preconceptions that people have difficulty letting go of. I also consider myself some slight degree of proof…

Tango you might be another fantastic exception to add to the small list of late starters who got to GM level such as John K. Shaw and Jonathan Hawkins. However I suspect that everything else being equal children do have a higher skill ceiling because there are very few late achievers in chess. An experiment would be needed, take a group of 10 year olds, 20 year olds and 30 year olds and immerse them in intensive 5 ye…

I'd absolutely love to see that experiment. It's something that I think would be applicable to so many other fields as well. But you'd also need to strictly control for everything. As Botvinnik said, chess cannot be taught - only learned. If the adults are just phoning it in, the result is of course preordained.

In my opinion, I think anybody (of at least 'normal' mental capacity) has the potential to make master. Will any of my adult students do so? Absolutely not. They want to improve at chess, but want to do so in a way akin to taking a pill. Like you obviously know there is an immense amount of work to improvement and chess improvement is extremely weird. For instance extensive tactics study are key for improvement, but it's not like you'll see it instantly reflected in your rating - and after some time of diligent work and effort, it's entirely possible that somebody's rating might have even decreased. Something I experienced, as well as most other stronger players I know, is the 'stair step.' You don't improve steadily and linearly, there's these weird huge jumps where it seems like somehow you wakeup one day and are just xxx points stronger.

People understandably expect proportional rewards to proportional work, but that's just not how chess improvement works. I also think this is how so many adults get trapped in opening study - there the rewards can be immediately visible, even if it's not really all that helpful to your overall improvement. Kids don't really think about these sort of things and often just enjoy learning about the game and solving the problems. But adults are generally doing it as a means to an end and have much more difficulty dealing with the nature of improving at the game. And it can also directly lead to self doubt in them as they use this as an indicator that they've plateaued, lack talent, or whatever else. And lacking confidence in chess is a great way to kill your results.

Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding

#197

Post by annabellish »

cup-of-tea wrote: post #190
tyleraldrich wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The comment is essentially saying that if I do great things and become a role model then I'm not welcome because we already have plenty that "look like me". The comment isn't about you at all. The OP said we need more role models like Grace Hopper and less like Jobs, Woz, etc. Reading this as "White men should stop aspiring to become future role models" is silly, it's about a desire to increase the diversity of tec…

Come on. If the post wasn't about that then why does it specifically call out four male role models? It could have just left it at Grace Hopper, but no. The post contains more negative than positive by far.

The point is that when _anyone_ thinks about role models in computer science and programming, all of the options fit into a pretty small niche. It _is_ relevant to have those examples, because there's a world of difference between nobody having any role models at all, and every role model being from one group.

Think about how much the existence of these role models obviously matters to you, and realise that nobody wants to take that away from _you_, they simply want to give it to other people as well. When I look at the field of programming, I don't see people like me. Things are getting better, but we still live in a world where if you aren't a white man then you have no examples to point to and say "look, I can do this!"

And you might say, "well, I never needed that", and that might be true - I obviously never needed it either - but appreciate that whether you needed it or not, you _had_ it, and a lot of other people do need it, whether white man or not. We all need role models to aspire to. Stop acting like other people getting the things you've always had is taking anything away from you.

Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding

#198

Post by logicallee »

laurieg wrote: post #179
discordance wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I attended a Microsoft developer event in Tokyo today and was surprised that all of the keynote engineer speakers were female. Might have been a bit of a marketing exercise, but nonetheless it’s a really good thing to see.

Interestingly, I've was unable to attend a developer event in Japan last year due to my gender. I find all sorts of different types of sexism in Japan, but also lots of young hardworking people who have no time for it.

Can you elaborate? What happened exactly and how were you informed?

Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding

#199

Post by minicoolva »

olingern wrote: post #135

I just moved to Japan, and it's fascinating that connotations (including my previous) with Japan are "High tech, futuristic, efficient" when in reality it is, "slow moving, traditional, and (frequently) inefficient." I can comment more as to why / how. This woman is not only fighting cultural norms of the _world_, but also Japan. Software engineering, in general, lags so far behind the rest of the world, save robotic…

I am in Japan, too How to contact you?

Re: 82-Year-Old Japanese Woman Finds Success in Coding

#200

Post by brianpan »

padthai wrote: post #6

What does it mean "oriented to old people"? Old people can play anything, they just have slower reflexes. Silver Snipers are 60-80 years old and play Counter Strike: https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/20/16800924/silver-snipers-...

It means there's nothing about being woke, backpack kid, or Nirvana. The games do feature songs from Barbra Streisand, mornings walks, and coffee from McDonalds.
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