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Women: Learn to Program This Summer

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Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#411

Post by wsy »

manfredo wrote: post #398
wsy wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. If a man and a women apply for the same primary school teacher position with the same skill level, they will hire the man.

But do they explicitly deny women jobs for a position where they would have hired a man? As in do men get two chances to pass an interview when women get one? Do they have blanket policies to not hire women of certain backgrounds where they do hire men of those backgrounds?

I don't know that. But even what I described disadvantages female teachers, and rightfully so.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#412

Post by giantsloth »

leereeves wrote: post #403

I honestly do think this is a good idea. She saw a need, identified a way to help, and is generously contributing. And if some women feel more comfortable or learn better in a boot camp for women only, I wish them the best. And yet it makes me and many others angry, not for what it is, but because of the social context in which it occurs. There's an all too common attitude these days that success for white people, me…

The world is not divided by efforts like this. There’s an extremely complicated economic/political/cultural circumstance that is dividing the world. To reduce current cultural divides to reactionary simple binaries is beyond silly.

No one is opposed to white men succeeding, it’s just not interesting because that’s the status quo. While the interests of all working class people need to be addressed (including white men), getting angry over some random millionaire rolling out cash to 40 girls who are also most likely going to be of a socioeconomic status that is at least smart, articulate and aware enough of our bubble is absurd.

The real issue is we have to fight over the crumbs of some out of touch millionaire rolling out private grants like we’re children so that we can ultimately provide cheaper labor for people like her to make herself more wealthy and continue the cycle.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#413

Post by isabella_r »

camelNotation wrote: post #271
ajross wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the evidence that women aren't coding because they aren't "interested"? If you want to make that argument, don't you need to go and refute all the anecdotal evidence that women aren't entering tech careers because they don't feel welcome? I cite as evidence the fact that women in med schools have not, in fact, always been well represented and that the same kind of rhetoric about their "interests" was used to e…

It blows my mind that so many people are still unaware of the gender equality paradox. People constantly bring this up, constantly ask that same question, constantly get the same response. Women self-select into certain fields at higher rates than others, men do the exact same thing. Can we move on now? There is no problem to solve.

Totally agree. The question should be about restriction not equality. If I am restricted from being a female coder, that is a problem. Otherwise, nothing wrong with the sexes sorting themselves out according to their own pursuit of happiness.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#414

Post by danso »

gridlockd wrote: post #127
dzink wrote: post #4

Spreading this as far and wide as I can. Coding is as critical as literacy for the next 20 years and there are too many programs and teachers that teach it poorly, alienating large segments of the population. Lambda is among the best. I hope they can scale past 40 students for this in the future.

> Coding is as critical as literacy for the next 20 years... I think this is an absurd and tired meme. Most shops who employ coders also employ about 75% non-coders. You need sales, marketing, accounting, management, HR, legal - and even the IT guys often truck along fine with little to no coding skills. If you need code written to perform your task that usually just means the UI of your application isn't powerful en…

Charlemagne reportedly ruled his empire despite being illiterate [0]. Christians were able to worship before they could read or even have access to printed Bibles. Literacy allows for creation and understanding beyond what can be attained via delegating the ability to read and write. It’s the same with coding, and I think you aren’t seeing how coding — or rather, being able to think the way code requires — is an ability that goes beyond building a web app. Here’s a good write up from author Clive Thompson about how he learned to code, and how it helped him, when he was writing a book:

https://tim.blog/2019/03/21/learn-to-code/

0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_litteris_colendis

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#415

Post by wsy »

Grustaf wrote: post #399
wsy wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Society still has an immense effect on what children and teenagers prefer to do, via instilling role models. There is an amazing small experiment with primary school children. First, no girl in the class even has the idea she could become a pilot, because this is seen as a boy's/men's profession. Then a female pilots and a female car mechanic visit the kids, and explain what they are doing. Afterwards, half of the gi…

Ok, for how long did this wish remain? Of course society has an effect on people, but you really have to ask yourself, if it is known that even newborns show these tendecies, can’t you at least entertain the idea that women actually on average prefer medicine to programming? At some point, with enough scholarships, free code schools for women, female founder conferences etc, you need to just accept that there is a pr…

I'm working in tech as a man, and spend more than half of my work time in talking to people. Actually, the higher you go up in your career, the more you will spend time interacting with people, and the less with things. So should we aim to keep male coders, and foster female tech managers, because that fits the biological tendencies?

I definitely would like to see more male kindergarten teachers, because the fact that there are no role models for boys in kindergarten and primary school also has detrimental effects on boys and girls.

Finally, let's first agree that society still has a big impact. Then, we can discuss if it's worthwhile to do something about it or not.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#416

Post by wsy »

mywrathacademia wrote: post #402
wsy wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which underpriviledged groups are never supported?

Isn't it obvious? Poor people. The politically favored are women but by opening this to all women you only help women who are already privileged not poor women living in ghettos or from other poor backgrounds

There are so many initiatives out there supporting poor people. True, this one does not. But it seems a bit far-fetched to conclude from this one example that the poor are not supported at all.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#417

Post by giantsloth »

This whole discussion is missing the forest through the trees.

People are fighting over the scraps being dolled out by some out of touch billionaire, who ultimately wants to increase her network and drive up her labor supply to increase her profits.

This program will effect 40 people (who cares about their gender) out of many 100s of millions of Americans. 40 people who are in a socioeconomic class to know about this program and to have had the education to articulate themselves well enough to be admitted.

If this woman actually wanted to help women she’d be striving and advocating for public policy that actually looks to provide universal programs across socioeconomic backgrounds (which would include white men and women and also poor black people).

But she’s not, she believes she should have unilateral control over who gets to be successful through access to programming training, because she’s fundamentally anti democratic.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#418

Post by UncleMeat »

commandlinefan wrote: post #115
ajiang wrote: post #58

EDIT: To clarify that the money is going directly to private individuals, as per Austen. Incredible, thanks for putting your money where your values are @jl. As for the numerous comments in this post around reverse sexism / reverse discrimination: 1. This is a private individual giving personal capital to other private individuals, supporting a personal cause. It is hard to both claim principles of free market and ra…

> 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…

Rarely are people deliberately discriminating. Instead they have erected systems that, for one reason or another, lead to biases. You cannot stop discriminating while continuing to use these systems.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#419

Post by fzeroracer »

malvosenior wrote: post #130
fzeroracer wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you can actually. These sort of arguments remind me of the transgender bathroom fears: What's stopping a man from pretending to be transgender in order to enter the woman's bathroom? Well, the answer is that people that are transgender will have a history of being transgender or acting in such a way that confirms they consider themselves that gender. So any lawsuit as a result of this would look into your past,…

You either accept that people can choose their own gender or you don't. People don't get to police the reason someone may identify as female or male. History on social media should have nothing to do with it. Do you think everyone makes this choice at an early age and broadcasts it publicly?

It's weird that you bring this up in a comment thread about someone literally advocating for lying about their gender for the sake of some perceived competitive advantage.

Do you believe this to be ethical? Because to me I find it rather offensive considering it harms actual transgender candidates.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#420

Post by yep8883 »

manfredo wrote: post #373
CptFribble wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are in a privileged position, and then that privilege is reduced, it can feel like a barrier is going up. It's not. When you rebalance scales, the side that was too high has to go down a little.

Over 35% of my company's tech hires we're women in Q1, as compared to an industry representation of 20%. 39% of new grad hires we're women when tech grads were about 20% women. When women join the company they received additional mentorship and leadership opportunities that are exclusive to women. They are also promoted at higher rates than men (albeit slightly). This is in addition to the explicitly discriminatory h…

Many studies have found significant bias in favor of women" which studies?

I think you are basing your opinion solely on anecdotes from your company/bubble.

Women are underrepresented in tech - just go any tech conference and see for yourself.

Are women not as smart as men when it comes to tech? Or are there barriers to entry for women?

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