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Women: Learn to Program This Summer

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Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#221

Post by [deleted] »

grondilu wrote: post #200
DoreenMichele wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 learn. I would love to learn to code. It's the reason I originally joined HN closing in on a decade ago. (Proof: my first post, the day I joined: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=713015 ) But I have found that one barrier to me getti…

> Men can talk to other men casually and get loads of useful information that is simply not accessible to me. That is just hard to understand. If your gender is an issue, why even make it public in the first place? I mean, ever heard of the saying "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_...

[deleted]

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#222

Post by ddayz »

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…

Similar scenario that was sadly disturbing. It is quite advantageous to have an ethnic origin as a Pacific Islander.

However some people I have met from southern Asia coming from a farming family background likely have had much worse conditions growing up. But they get lumped into the Asian mass where you must truly excel to get noticed.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#223

Post by gabbygab »

40acres wrote: post #182

Some of the comments in this thread is a master class of how discrimination and gatekeeping work not just in our industry but in society as a whole. How can we simultaneously be an industry built on free an open source software and yet try to put up walls around our industry when efforts are made to make it more accessible to others? The barriers to programming are being lowered and this is an excellent thing. More d…

And some of the comments on this thread is a master class of virtue signaling as well. All sides seem well represented here.

Also, who is putting up walls? Be specific please. I too come from a low income "unprivileged" family and got my first computer in high school.

And the tech industry has always been diverse. It has been the most diverse and the most meritocratic industry for a long time. It's the industry where minorities and immigrants like Jerry Yang and Sergei Brin can thrive unlike more establish industries like news, media, oil, finance, transportation, etc.

Why are you painting a false image of what the tech industry is like? There are no barriers to programming. It is the most available and meritocratic and fair industries around.

Also, your entire comment had no relevance to the article. You just went on a stereotypical virtue signaling rant.

Also, do you really want diversity, or do you want a "diverse" group of people who all think like you?

I just can't handle the hypocrisy. All over HN, you support H1-B visas and claim the tech industry's success is due to diversity provided by H1-B visas. And elsewhere, you claim the tech industry is not diverse and the problem with the tech industry is the lack of diversity.

Which is it? You can't have it both ways just to suit your agenda. Be consistent.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#225

Post by crumpets »

jschwartzi wrote: post #201
commandlinefan wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> arbitrary euphemisms for gender / racial bias like 'bad culture fit'. You make it sound like there are people out there saying to themselves, "I know I should stop discriminating against under-represented minorities, but I just can't seem to stop myself" as if discriminating were addictive like smoking. If somebody used to discriminate and wants to stop, the solution is to stop discriminating, not discriminate in t…

That's not exactly what OP means. What's actually going on is that we have certain expectations around candidates' behavior and the wording they use on their resumes and the way that they respond to technical interviews. These are behaviors that are ingrained for most white men but tend to be less ingrained for women and non-white men. So our hiring processes are subtly biased against anyone who isn't like us. The in…

>non-white men

I assume Asian men are actually "white men" for the purposes of your example?

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#226

Post by tomp »

UncleMeat wrote: post #132
commandlinefan wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> discouraged from learning, or opportunities denied because of gender. Is there any evidence that this is happening, though? I've never seen anybody, even anecdotally claim "I'm a woman (who is qualified) and I've been unable to find employment". Mostly what I see is people trying to work backwards and say, "if group X makes up Y% of the population and only Z% of programmers, that in itself must be evidence of discr…

I was once sitting on a plane wearing a shirt branded with a major tech company. The person next to me asked if I was a software engineer and I said yes. They excitedly started telling me about how they were doing all this work to groom their young son (age like 6) to go into tech. This person also had a similarly aged daughter and he was doing none of this for her. Perhaps the son really did love this stuff and perh…

> They excitedly started telling me about how they were doing all this work to groom their young son (age like 6) to go into tech.

Does this actually work though? My whole life, I've been weakly encouraged, mainly by my parents, to study economics and/or law, and discouraged (weakly by my parents, and strongly by society and bullies) from being a geek / programmer / mathematician... But in the end, I picked the latter.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#227

Post by seancoleman »

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.

Since it was brought up by @CydeWeys, here is Natalie's GitHub repository of this website: https://github.com/nataliepeterson/coconut. PR's (and issues) are welcome :)

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#228

Post by sickygnar »

Hello Michael,

Thank you for applying to the Summer Hackers Program. We’ve received your submission.

In the first week of April, we'll be selecting the 40 students who'll receive a scholarship to our immersive 15-week course and a living stipend. We'll invite students to a 10-minute interview by April 5, and by April 15, we'll be able to send out acceptances. Then, you'll have until 8am PST on May 21 to complete our precourse work. You can get started on that today:

PRE-COURSE WORK To be admitted to Lambda School, you must pass the Lambda Challenge: https://challenge.lambdaschool.com, a timed (45-minute) three-question test on JavaScript.

If you're comfortable with JavaScript, you can take the Lambda Challenge today. If you don't know JavaScript yet, that's fine! We teach what you need to know in our precourse work, which you can access on your student profile at https://apply.lambdaschool.com.

If accepted to Lambda School, the Lambda Challenge must be completed a week prior to your start date. You should expect to spend 20-30 hours completing the precourse work, and you can get help with it by signing up for our Web Development Prep Slack: https://lambdaschool.com/web-prep-slack.

Thank you and have a nice day!

Karen Zachary Director of Admissions Lambda School

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#230

Post by tomp »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #189
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The basic answer is we don't know, hence why this is such a contentious issue. There are many known physical[1] and psychological[2] differences between the sexes[3]. Boys tend to play with inanimate objects while girls tend to play with dolls and role play. Women tend to be more social, while men are less so. Men with higher testosterone tend to be more aggressive overall[4]. Some think many of these differences are…

Intuitively, I don't understand why computer science engineering would have a lower ratio than engineering in general from a biological perspective. Or physics vs chemistry. Or structural engineering vs electrical. Which of the above fields have to do with playing with dolls vs playing with inanimate objects (are dolls not inanimate objects)? Which of the above fields is more aggressive in the academic pursuit? (I've…

> Intuitively, I don't understand why computer science engineering would have a lower ratio than engineering in general

If this graph is real, that's not actually true.

https://cseducators.stackexchange.com/questions/2875/why-did...

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