Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Women: Learn to Program This Summer

foundersatwork.posthaven.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 606 posts

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#61

Post by lixtra »

nck4222 wrote: post #50

I'm trying to figure out on what side of the debate I fall on this one. On the one hand, women have obviously been disadvantaged in many ways, for many years, which is wrong. The gender disparity in software development is well documented, and should be fixed. No one should be discouraged from learning, or opportunities denied because of gender. On the other hand, a for-profit company deciding to offer free services…

> On the other hand, a for-profit company deciding to offer free services to individual women, who may or may not be disadvantaged, simply because they're women, doesn't sit well with me either.

Because it’s a for profit organization it makes total sense for them. It has marginal cost but acts as huge marketing factor.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#62

Post by nck4222 »

commandlinefan wrote: post #56
nck4222 wrote: post #50

I'm trying to figure out on what side of the debate I fall on this one. On the one hand, women have obviously been disadvantaged in many ways, for many years, which is wrong. The gender disparity in software development is well documented, and should be fixed. No one should be discouraged from learning, or opportunities denied because of gender. On the other hand, a for-profit company deciding to offer free services…

> 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…

It doesn't have to be overt, or even knowingly done. Children are frequently subtly pushed towards different careers because of their gender, many times by their devoted parents. It's a societal problem.

EDIT: Here's one paper that talks about how "widely shared cultural beliefs about gender" affect early decisions people make wrt to their careers https://sociology.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj9501/f/pu...

"The results of this study show that males assess their own mathematical competence higher than their otherwise equal female counterparts"

"self-assessments of task competence were found to influence career-relevant decisions, even when controlling for commonly accepted measures of ability. For males and females, the higher they rate their mathematical competence, the greater the odds that they will continue on the path leading to careers in the quantitative professions. However, since males tend to overestimate their mathematical competence relative to females, males are also more likely to pursue activities leading down a path toward a career in science, math, and engineering."

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#63

Post by zimablue »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #40

I have several female friends who find Affirmative Action campaigns so off-putting, they decide against joining the industry. One friend recently complained to me that all the AA enthusiasts just want to talk about feminism and women in the workplace, and not about actually writing code. She was incensed because she was invited to a 'Girls Code' meetup, where women would learn about algorithms by modelling their own…

This isn't as rare as it sounds, when I was young and a lot more arrogant+principled, I refused to go to my (not actually paying/good) college's Oxbridge interview prep, also ruled out medicine as a career choice partly because in the UK at the time to get in you had to do charity work/specific extra-curriculars.

Insane reasoning looking back, but hey 17 year olds are often principled nutcases. I can definitely imagine doing what you describe re compsci if I was a 17 year old girl in 2019. Hope any principled girls (in my biased opinion the brightest/best people in the end) we lose from information tech go into something else useful, kind of a sad thought.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#64

Post by rhcom2 »

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.

> I have no idea what I am doing, but I like it.

Talk about relatable. 10 years in and I still feel this way.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#65

Post by nck4222 »

rhcom2 wrote: post #59
nck4222 wrote: post #50

I'm trying to figure out on what side of the debate I fall on this one. On the one hand, women have obviously been disadvantaged in many ways, for many years, which is wrong. The gender disparity in software development is well documented, and should be fixed. No one should be discouraged from learning, or opportunities denied because of gender. On the other hand, a for-profit company deciding to offer free services…

> On the one hand, women have obviously been disadvantaged in many ways, for many years, which is wrong. > If this was targeted specifically to disadvantaged people You already accepted women have been disadvantaged though.

Just because women as a group have been disadvantaged, doesn't mean the women receiving this particular advantage deserve it more than other women, or other men.

There's nothing in this release saying they want to offer this to disadvantaged women, they simply want to offer it to women.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#66

Post by rudedogg »

austenallred wrote: post #18
writepub wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is excellent marketing at best, and nothing to do with values. Lambda school is a YC portfolio company, and this program/post has gotten YC and LS oodles of positive press. The gender of this batch is designed to generate positive buzz, there was never any restriction on admissions before this announcement, no bias in getting into LS. So what exactly is this supposed to achieve? Great marketing, guys and gals! C…

Well, that's one way to look at the world. Lambda School's traffic is down 20% today as compared to yesterday, so if this was a marketing stunt it was a very inefficient and expensive one.

> Lambda School's traffic is down 20% today as compared to yesterday

This seems weird; did you account for the time (since it's only around noon?)

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#67

Post by zimablue »

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…

1. Free market doesn't mean that your choices are exempt from criticism. I was going to say silly but honestly this is a very stupid point. "To people who are criticising me for funding ISIS - FREE MARKET".

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#68

Post by Pfhreak »

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…

> Isn't programming a skill that can be learned alone in a fairly straightforward manner?

No?

Stuff like pointers, for loops, threads, interface design, data structures, idempotency, source control, working on a linux command line, etc. all present reasonably challenging roadblocks for a burgeoning developer, and I think many of us benefited from having someone around to help walk us through this the first time.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#69

Post by dang »

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…

Some people learn well that way while others don't. It seems an area of great variance between individuals.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#70

Post by basura9999 »

rosterface wrote: post #12
fizwhiz wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you leverage your ethnicity to get a competitive advantage in your job search?

Without doxing myself... It’s not apparently obvious what ethnicity I am based on looks. I had already been told there was a focus on diversity at the company I ended up getting an offer at and they “really want to build a diverse team from the ground up”. The conversation had been dragging for months and I resisted bringing up my background out of principle. I saw the hiring manager tweeting about a Latinx conferenc…

I've been in the same situation and I cringe about it. I am a Latino but white because I am from Argentina where people are mostly from European backgrounds. It seems that "Latino" is meant to mean a specific group of Latinos actually and not the whites ones but technically with the word "Latino" I also qualify. But I would like to hear them tell me to my face why I am not a Latino.
Post reply on HN