Women: Learn to Program This Summer • Hacker News Board

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#531

Post by black-tea » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 9:10 AM UTC

wsy wrote: post #381

Grustaf wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people get interested in computers early on in life, when there is nothing at all stopping them. You can’t blame society that many more 12 year old boys than 12 year old girls are obsessed with computers. It is a fact that even at birth, girls are more interested in people where boys are more interested in things. This is even true for newborn chimpanzees. You can’t really blame society for this. Surely this is…

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…

All these kinds of studies just expect me to believe that the result is a good thing. Girls want to become pilots? Why is that good? Do we have a shortage of pilots? Would having a female pilot improve your flying experience?

How about making more women want to do manual labour? There is a huge shortage of women in those industries.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#532

Post by black-tea » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 9:13 AM UTC

jrs95 wrote: post #471

Grustaf wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, since medicine is so much more prestiguous than programming, and probably at least as well paid, why do you even want women to go into programming? Why not let ambitious women study medicine, law and whatever else they do, and be rich and happy?

Because any male dominated space is seen as a threat and must be eliminated, even if men initially gravitated into that space partly due to social rejection outside of it.

It's sad how far down you have to go to find the truth in these comments, even if it's only for a moment while the drones downvote it out of visibility.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#533

Post by Const-me » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 9:26 AM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #177

grondilu wrote: post #55

Isn't programming a skill that can be learned alone in a fairly straightforward manner? I mean, most programming languages have extensive documentation, tutorials and so on (at least FOSS dynamical languages like Python, Rust, Perl...). 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…

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…

I'm a guy and no, I don't have more access to support. And I never had. I've self learned programming with very little help, mostly books and internet. Then at 18 I've found my first job as a programmer.

> small comment here and there by someone knowledgeable can save you hours and hours

Sometimes it can. But if you're just a beginner, you don't need the expert advice you're talking about. Hours and hours of what? If you're already programming even at very entry level, you can get very similar advice on stackoverflow.

> If it were, I think I would already be a coder with several published projects.

I don't think you lack expert advice. I think you lack interest.

I remember since pre-teen, I was obsessed about computers, first videogames, then computers in general. I've spent hundreds of hours tinkering with them, trying to make them do what I wanted them to. I wasn't motivated by money, it was fun.

Vast majority of exceptionally good programmers I know can tell similar stories about themselves. There're a few women among them, too.

When you have interest that strong, you spend hundreds of hours of your time, unpaid, doing what you like. Especially when you're a teen with no kids. That's what helps with learning programming. Also reading good books. Expert advice only becomes relevant much later, and by that time, if you pick jobs well, you'll be surrounded with smart people willing to answer your questions.

If you don't have that kind of interest in computers, you won't become exceptionally good. You probably can still learn the trade and make a living off it, but will require substantial time and efforts. I think that's the target audience of that summer school.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#534

Post by leereeves » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 9:35 AM UTC

renholder wrote: post #467

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…

> That cruelty toward men is acceptable. To be fair, in more socially progressive countries, this is actually being countered/fought against[0]. The article linked is in Swedish, so you can use your choice of translator to decypher the text; but this is a demonstration of not only your point but the fact that people are actually starting to take a stand against the narrative that cruelty towards men is anywhere near…

Psychologists telling a man who is being abused that he should change?

Was the widespread social justice outrage lost in translation? Where are the public calls to revoke the psychologists' licenses and shut down the website where they give advice?

All I see is one article that doesn't mention any significant public response at all. While it's nice that someone is speaking against it, it's not nearly enough, and only confirms my point that abusing men is still generally tolerated.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#535

Post by sqrt17 » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 9:44 AM UTC

wsy wrote: post #422

sqrt17 wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "They are not interested in computers" is a huge cliché. So which non-cliché reasons do you see? Motivation goes beyond "being interested" in something. If you ask why there aren't more men studying art history it would be rather silly to say that men are less interested in art history. Then again, if you said that men don't pursue art history because they (most often) wouldn't be able to sustain a family on an art…

It's also only anecdotically, but I think your art history example doesn't fly: https://art.stanford.edu/people/faculty

My art history example does fly if we're talking about students. The question then would be - what about faculty? Why is faculty still mostly male when students are mostly female.

And the answer is that the faculty selection process is - for art history as much as for other faculties - skewed towards a narrow sub-demographic that is predominantly white and male from a well-to-do background. If you call that discrimination I'll agree with you, but it's not a kind of discrimination that would be specific to either art history or computer science.

Even if you look outside Stanford https://art.vassar.edu/bios/ you can see a definite difference in gender distribution between adjuncts (poorly paid, mostly female) and full professors (mostly male).

At least in Germany, this is being changed by rules that give female applicants preferential treatment when there are (as is common) more male than female applicants for a professorship, and at least in female-dominated courses of studies we now see more female professors.

So we seem to have gender (+other, less visible) discrimination in many cases where managers, professors and other roles are selected in a competitive manner. And we have ways to change this if universities and private enterprise play along. But this has nothing to do with females not choosing CS as a major, and it has nothing to do with females not entering programmer jobs.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#536

Post by leereeves » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 10:11 AM UTC

wsy wrote: post #519

leereeves wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only 4% of Stanford students come from the bottom 20% of family incomes, while 66% come from the top 20%. That's 15 times as many students from wealthy families as poor families.[1] The numbers are similar at other top schools, and feed into everything beyond, including startups. 1: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobilit...

I also see balancing out the disadvantages of children, teenagers, and young adults from poor families as way more important than balancing out the disadvantages of well-off women. I totally agree that we have a long road ahead of us in this respect, as the Stanford numbers clearly show. Still, your claim that nobody cares about the poor is not justified. Also, there are many just causes, and we can work on all of th…

I didn't make the claim that nobody cares about the poor, that was a response to my comment and I added some relevant information.

The groups I was talking about, the ones that "nobody cares about" might not come to mind immediately, precisely because one rarely hears about them, but there are so many examples of disadvantaged people who are never the beneficiaries of such efforts.

For example: numerous physical traits other than sex or skin color. Invisible minorities like eastern Europeans or middle eastern Christians. People who grew up in rural areas.

It's probably absurd to expect to define categories and provide special help to every group that could be defined. Instead, people should be judged as individuals, each of whom has faced a variety of obstacles and benefited from a variety of privileges, and whose potential can only be evaluated by considering the whole person, not a few checkboxes.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#537

Post by leereeves » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 10:13 AM UTC

tth3uoku wrote: post #457

leereeves wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only 4% of Stanford students come from the bottom 20% of family incomes, while 66% come from the top 20%. That's 15 times as many students from wealthy families as poor families.[1] The numbers are similar at other top schools, and feed into everything beyond, including startups. 1: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobilit...

I'm not sure how Stanford's economic disparity supports that there are no programs to assist people who are economically disadvantaged. Harvard, Stanford, and Yale offer free tuition for students with family income below 65,000 a year, Princeton for below 54,000, and Cornell, Brown, Columbia and Duke for families with income below 60,000. There's no data in the article about the income level of the students applying.…

I didn't make that claim. I explained what I was talking about here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19469850

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#538

Post by krastanov » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 10:29 AM UTC

Grustaf wrote: post #520

krastanov wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly, that is a big part of it. But this should be carefully compared to the "background signal" in these cultures. To take it to an extreme: how certain are you that men go into STEM for reasons different than boys being told "STEM is for boys". Both young boys and young girls have that "common sense" imposed on them by our culture, so it is very unreliable to claim that any choice is unrelated to that cultural…

Nobody says “STEM is for boys”. Maybe in the 50’s, but certainly not when I grew up in the 80’s.

Maybe that is true where you are. But I have seen it first hand in parents and teachers in the US, France, and Bulgaria.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#539

Post by pbhjpbhj » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 11:00 AM UTC

criddell wrote: post #307

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So "only whites may apply for this scholarship" is fine then? Clearly not IMO, there needs to be a morally defensible reason for restricting the field by physical characteristics; sex and skin colour/race are not good reasons in general.

You don't think women are underrepresented in the software sector?

Underrepresented is a funny phrase, it's a job, not a debating chamber. There are less women in some sectors, less men in others. Provided boys and girls aren't being unnecessarily inhibited from any career options then I don't see a problem -- if we stop discriminating in unrelated characteristics then ratios of the sexes in particular roles will find an appropriate level. That level will not be 50:50 in any sector I'd warrant.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#540

Post by Grustaf » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 11:30 AM UTC

wsy wrote: post #525

Grustaf wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think we should “aim” to do anythinf, that’s the whole point. We should just trust grown up educated people to make their own choices. Even women!

Ok, then let me ask differently: if upper management in all companies were mostly women, and they would justify this fact with the argument that they are naturally better with people, would it be ok for you if these women would prefer other women for open manager positions? Nobody argues against letting people make their own choices. This whole discussion is about equal opportunities. And it starts in kindergarten, n…

I’m not saying hiring managers should favour men for developer jobs. I’m saying many more men are into computers, so it’s natural that people hire more male developers.

You are aware that men are much more likely to be autistic, right? Don’t you feel that it’s at least conceivable that men are also more likely to be interested in spending their day writing instructions to computers?