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I know I belong in computer science, but sometimes I wonder.

blog.carolynworks.com

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Re: I know I belong in computer science, but sometimes I wonder.

#51

Post by grammaton »

tarmstrong wrote: post #49
jerf wrote: post #9

Think about how many students were in your freshman level courses. Now think about how many students are in your senior level courses. Add a fudge factor for the larger dispersion in senior level courses if you like, but don't forget seniors are also taking more of the courses per semester as well. The size difference is basically the number of people who dropped out. A few may have dropped college altogether but man…

I see two problems here: one, Carolyn is calling this a gender issue and not doing a good job of explaining why it is; and two, any time 'gender' is mentioned on Hacker News, twenty people defensively write comments dismissing the gender issue. This might be more of a gender issue than we realize. CS is just plain unwelcoming, no matter who you are, but there are fewer women in CS. We are turning women away somehow,…

> CS is just plain unwelcoming, no matter who you are

I think this is the problem we need to address first. Even after working in the industry for years, I'm still constantly struck by how contentious and irritable this industry is.

Re: I know I belong in computer science, but sometimes I wonder.

#52

Post by grammaton »

wyclif wrote: post #25
cyrus_ wrote: post #14

In any competitive field, from computer science to ballet, there are those who practice for hours and hours per day. The author does not want to be a competitive computer scientist, and is happy being a casual one -- skilled enough to make a 40 hour-per-week living with it, to be sure, but not obsessed enough to advance the field itself. She made a great choice going to a liberal arts school. When she compares hersel…

I was with you until you advocated the 80-hour work week. That's a sure recipe for burnout, not necessarily excellence.

You'd be surprised how often those two things go together. I hate to break it to you, but truly excelling in a field - where excelling is defined as being one of the best at it - takes tremendous amounts of hard work, long hours, and more than a little luck.

Re: I know I belong in computer science, but sometimes I wonder.

#53

Post by irons »

jonafato wrote: post #8
SamReidHughes wrote: post #3

In programming most of the variance in ability is explained by intelligence and not effort. You can take, for example, some non-CS student, teach them programming by saying "look, here's how you do it", and if they're the right student, they'll instantly be better than 90% of CS students. (And if they're not, they won't be. Oh well.) A lot of nerdlingtons who "know" programming and argue about Java going into their f…

Doesn't this go against the 10,000 hours thing? Sure, taking someone who is smarter and has more experience than other students and putting them in front of a computer will yield these results. However, someone who is solely smarter and does not normally program will not likely produce good code. Expertise is much more about practice than raw ability. Most of the really good programmers out there are really good beca…

The "10,000 hours thing" isn't a law, or a rule. It's an anecdote. Interpreting it as a fatwa against a personal life, or interests outside of a lab, would be a bad move.

Re: I know I belong in computer science, but sometimes I wonder.

#54

Post by grammaton »

jedsmith wrote: post #4

This betrays a bit of a self-confidence issue on the part of the author, as does http://blog.carolynworks.com/?p=537 (more revealingly). It also plays like a specific issue trying to be painted into a gender issue, which it really isn't. > “Who knows what lexical analysis is? No one? What, don’t you guys do this constantly in your spare time? All right, I’ll show you …” If I may, I believe that the professor was conn…

> This betrays a bit of a self-confidence issue on the part of the author

That, right there, is probably the biggest reason for the low percentage of women in CS. CS - and by extension, software engineering and development - are fields that unrelentingly punish those without the confidence to stick with them. Combine that with the (sadly) endemic lack of self confidence in women in our society, and it's not hard to see why there are so few women developers.

Every time I hear about how we should be doing this, that, and the other thing to lure more women in to tech, one of the thoughts that springs to mind is, why aren't we doing more to address the general lack of confidence in the female population?

Re: I know I belong in computer science, but sometimes I wonder.

#55

Post by araneae »

tarmstrong wrote: post #49
jerf wrote: post #9

Think about how many students were in your freshman level courses. Now think about how many students are in your senior level courses. Add a fudge factor for the larger dispersion in senior level courses if you like, but don't forget seniors are also taking more of the courses per semester as well. The size difference is basically the number of people who dropped out. A few may have dropped college altogether but man…

I see two problems here: one, Carolyn is calling this a gender issue and not doing a good job of explaining why it is; and two, any time 'gender' is mentioned on Hacker News, twenty people defensively write comments dismissing the gender issue. This might be more of a gender issue than we realize. CS is just plain unwelcoming, no matter who you are, but there are fewer women in CS. We are turning women away somehow,…

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2193505

This research concluded that women were not in STEM careers because of this "work" culture, choosing instead other career paths with a better work/life balance,

Re: I know I belong in computer science, but sometimes I wonder.

#56

Post by jerf »

billswift wrote: post #36
jerf wrote: post #9

Think about how many students were in your freshman level courses. Now think about how many students are in your senior level courses. Add a fudge factor for the larger dispersion in senior level courses if you like, but don't forget seniors are also taking more of the courses per semester as well. The size difference is basically the number of people who dropped out. A few may have dropped college altogether but man…

>The size difference is basically the number of people who dropped out. Not hardly. There are a lot of people in other disciplines that take lower level computer science courses. Quite possibly more than are enrolled in comp sci itself.

My school separated comp sci major and non-major tracks. Very few were in the intro comp sci classes who were not intending to be majors for me. YMMV. At any rate the point is there's a very high dropout rate in computer science. Many more switch out than switch in.

Re: I know I belong in computer science, but sometimes I wonder.

#57

Post by asdfj843lkdjs »

The rub for women in computer science is that the dominant computer science culture does not venerate balance or multiple interests. Instead, the singular and obsessive interest in computing that is common among men is assumed to be the road to success in computing.

I no way see this as men or cs specific. It is to me very specific to any extreme performance. Let me rephrase it:

The rub for new entrants in X is that the dominant X culture does not venerate balance or multiple interests. Instead, the singular and obsessive interest in X that is common among X practitioners is assumed to be the road to success in computing.

Extreme tennis players, think kids drilled from a young age to be champions, read Andre Agasi's bio, have exactly the same attitude.

As do piano prodigy's. Any group performing at an extreme has this, because it is TRUE! To be in the top 0.1% you have to devote your life to it, you won't have balance!

Do medical students, those headed towards surgery have balance in their lives? Incidentally, surgery is another one of those male dominated professions.

So please, stop making this about either men or cs, it is not.

Re: I know I belong in computer science, but sometimes I wonder.

#58

Post by strlen »

heresy wrote: post #30
strlen wrote: post #27

As jerf has pointed out, this is Impostor Syndrome. It is present in men as well. Ironically, the better programmer I've become, the stronger it has gotten. The thing is, while scary, it's perfectly normal. The only advise I can offer is just to ignore it. So what if it is true and you "don't belong" or you're a bad programmer: so what? It's still something that you enjoy and can make a career, a rare luxury for most…

So what would you recommend someone self-taught who just bombed his past couple of interviews do? Nothing like failing on elementary math questions to make you feel like a class A idiot, especially if your title is 'Senior Software Engineer', and here I go, bombing on freaking word problems in a numeracy test. I feel like a total fraud, like I'm in the wrong field, I could have done those easily straight out of high…

The other part about "no ego" is being willing to learn from rejection rather than either blindly going through or avoiding all situations where you may be rejected.

I suggest working your way through the lower division mathematics requirement that a college CS major might experience. Course material is one way (just make sure to actually do the homework), taking courses at a local university (or even a good community college e.g., in Silicon Valley De Anza and Foothill Colleges) is another (make sure to find an excellent instructor for Calculus and to take a discrete mathematics course).

The other part to keep in mind is that there's different types of software engineering roles and different kinds of mathematics. Some (e.g., machine learning and data mining) are very mathematically intensive (to understand some papers, you'll need to do integration by parts), others (e.g., graph theory) are more about discrete rather than continuous mathematics, yet others (systems programming, application development) are least mathematics heavy (and where they are, again, the math is mostly discrete rather than continuous).

Re: I know I belong in computer science, but sometimes I wonder.

#59

Post by j_baker »

roel_v wrote: post #29
j_baker wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's a specialist/generalist thing. I think it's a "do you have interests outside of programming" thing. In my experience, the image of the ultimate hacker is someone who eats, breathes, and drinks programming (which used to be me). As I've grown older, I've learned to appreciate the value of learning things outside of programming.

'value' to who? You yourself and your direct environment, presumably. How much did your other interests contribute to your software skills? Maybe a bit, but not as much as other skills would have that you could (with directed effort) have learned in the time you spend on other things. I'm not saying it's wrong, I too live my life for myself, not for others, and not to be the very best developer I could potentially be…

Sure they do. Because if you don't socialize, have a family, and learn macrame, then you'll have a nervous breakdown before you get to be a great hacker.

Re: I know I belong in computer science, but sometimes I wonder.

#60

Post by cyrus_ »

wyclif wrote: post #25
cyrus_ wrote: post #14

In any competitive field, from computer science to ballet, there are those who practice for hours and hours per day. The author does not want to be a competitive computer scientist, and is happy being a casual one -- skilled enough to make a 40 hour-per-week living with it, to be sure, but not obsessed enough to advance the field itself. She made a great choice going to a liberal arts school. When she compares hersel…

I was with you until you advocated the 80-hour work week. That's a sure recipe for burnout, not necessarily excellence.

80-hour weeks amount to less than 12 hours per day if you work every day. That leaves you 4 hours to do whatever else you need/want to do, and you can still get a nice 8 hours of sleep per night.

You'd be surprised how manageable that is, especially for introverts for whom social interaction is more of a chore than a joy.

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