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How A 17-Year-Old Girl Won a Hackathon

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Re: How A 17-Year-Old Girl Won a Hackathon

#61

Post by ahoyhere »

gradstudent wrote: post #29
noonespecial wrote: post #3

However, she points out that “women in tech” stories are also simply “tech stories.” Good point. As I always whisper to my own daughter, "the computer can't tell you're a girl."

I get what you're trying to do, or at least I think I do, but I also simultaneously think there's something not-quite-right with your statement. I think you need to be careful that you're not reinforcing to your daughter that being a girl is a kind of disability. One that she doesn't have to try and hide from the computer, only people.

Just like "girls can do anything."

Re: How A 17-Year-Old Girl Won a Hackathon

#62

Post by ahoyhere »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #11
flootch wrote: post #4

“This is a terrific story, and proof that young girls are an untapped resource of innovation,” said Change The Ratio co-founder Rachel Sklar, when we told her the news. It seemed this young woman acted identically to any young individual interested in tech. Learned about tech. Lived tech. Talked tech. Practiced, practiced, practiced. Didn't need any self-victimizing pink ghetto look at me give me an advantage because…

There's always those that can succeed despite the odds against them. Let's not hold up these people as evidence that outreach isn't necessary. For every male kid who programmed his comodo TX-whosits before he could walk, there are a hundred kids who get in it through high school, or take it up in college, etc. Similarly, for every girl who isn't turned off by the male-dominated culture or anti-social stereotypes, the…

You know what I find tiresome… pink, Audrey Hepburn, shoes. These are the things other "women in tech" assume I am interested in.

I like GitHub and believe it's full of good people. But when they invited me to speak as part of their Passion Project, the invitation package included a hoodie with a pink octocat logo on it, and stickers: Audrey Hepburn octocat wearing pearls, and some other girlie octocat I didn't recognize. Now there's a culture I am turned off by.

Fact: Everybody discriminates against everybody, all the time. Assuming women hate whatever "male-dominated culture" means is just as bad as assuming they like Breakfast at Tiffany's.

To be good at programming (not even great), you need to love it, and to love it requires a special kind of perversity. Your "hundreds of women who could make it" -- do they have that special kind of perversity?

Actually building software is an epic and enormous pain in the ass. You have to love controlling, beating and dominating the computer. Otherwise you'll come to a point where it simply won't be worth the time and aggravation to proceed.

Probably the best way to attract a more diverse set of programmers is to change what programming means, not try to reform the Trekkies who were drawn to the way programming currently is. (Or the women who assume woman programming = wants pink hoodies.) It is the mold that shapes the pot, not the other way around.

Re: How A 17-Year-Old Girl Won a Hackathon

#63

Post by icambron »

taroth wrote: post #6

Anyone else find the tone of this article to be condescending? "Let’s focus on how one teenage girl, Jennie Lamere, defeated a room full of smart, motivated, experienced, full-grown men. This would seem to be instructive to the greater argument about women in technology, and besides, it has the added bonus of being -> based in fact rather than opinion As if the argument for women is based primarily on opinion. “It’s…

I think this misreads the tone in several ways.

> As if the argument for women is based primarily on opinion.

I'm not sure I buy the article's notion that hackathons aren't based on opinion, but your swing misses the mark in the other direction. It's pretty silly to fault someone for pointing out that the evidence is especially strong for a point you agree on. A lot of people really do have question about women in tech, why they're in the position they're in, what could be done to improve it, what successes really count, etc. So inasmuch as this is an objective measure of one girl's ability to succeed on an even playing field, it's pretty interesting. The article isn't expressing shock or anything, just promoting the strength of the data point it's presenting. It's a bit like an article came out saying, "discovery of additional irrefutable evidence that evolution happened" and you're like, "Ha! As if the theory of evolution was based on refutable evidence..."

> “It’s also important to note that Jennie’s idea is a completely universal, gender-neutral one"

I read that to mean that she competed with the men on their own terms, not by building something in a different category that had to be compared apples to oranges. She was running the same race. If she built a system for tracking Barbie dolls, she'd be in the position of, "isn't that cute, she made something no else here cares about..." like it's really the Best Woman Project award. The quote is preemtively shooting down potential "that wasn't real" counters.

Re: How A 17-Year-Old Girl Won a Hackathon

#64

Post by EdJiang »

zachlatta wrote: post #48
EdJiang wrote: post #15

Having run almost a dozen hackathons for high school and college students, I'm not surprised at all to hear this story. At our last CodeDay in Seattle, a 17-year old HS student built an app that's received over 175,000 downloads on Google Play. http://www.geekwire.com/2013/student-programmer-creates-succ... We've run CodeDay in five cities so far, with 30-100 students attending each event. If anything, it's a good si…

Hey! I went to the first CodeDay in LA a few weeks ago and it was quite fun! I'm looking forward to future CodeDays!

Awesome! Feel free to contact me or the local organizers if you want to help us host more of them!

Re: How A 17-Year-Old Girl Won a Hackathon

#65

Post by hmsimha »

hmsimha wrote: post #35
noonespecial wrote: post #3

However, she points out that “women in tech” stories are also simply “tech stories.” Good point. As I always whisper to my own daughter, "the computer can't tell you're a girl."

yet...

I was making a quip about data science techniques being more frequently applied and/or computers becoming self-aware, not a judgment on females in programming.. I apologize if this was not appropriately placed.

Re: How A 17-Year-Old Girl Won a Hackathon

#66

Post by zachlatta »

EdJiang wrote: post #64
zachlatta wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey! I went to the first CodeDay in LA a few weeks ago and it was quite fun! I'm looking forward to future CodeDays!

Awesome! Feel free to contact me or the local organizers if you want to help us host more of them!

Can you shoot me an email at zchlatta (at) gmail.com? I can't seem to find your email anywhere online.

Re: How A 17-Year-Old Girl Won a Hackathon

#67

Post by jbackus »

stmchn wrote: post #31
Jun8 wrote: post #18

Let me tell you a story: The FIRST Robotics Competition high school team (Mechanicats, from Chicago) and I were testing our robot late one night this February. While we were munching pizza, exhausted, a girl from the team came to me and asked if I enjoyed what I do (I'm the software mentor for the team). The reason for the question, she said, was that she was torn about what to study in college. She told me that her…

I'm still not sure how I feel to be getting these advantages though. I feel like, the more advantages like this are offered, the more it dilutes my actual accomplishments. I feel like there's a subtext of resentment and doubt saying "Well, she only accomplished that because she received certain privileges." I recently won a competition, which is great and all, but I always wonder in the back of my mind if I won it be…

If you are in a better position then others then I'd argue that an accomplishment may very well deserve less recognition than a less privileged counterpart of yours may deserve. That's fine though! Achievement is limitless and a better starting point is a scaffold for achieving greater things.

Re: How A 17-Year-Old Girl Won a Hackathon

#68

Post by hackinthebochs »

ahoyhere wrote: post #62
hackinthebochs wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's always those that can succeed despite the odds against them. Let's not hold up these people as evidence that outreach isn't necessary. For every male kid who programmed his comodo TX-whosits before he could walk, there are a hundred kids who get in it through high school, or take it up in college, etc. Similarly, for every girl who isn't turned off by the male-dominated culture or anti-social stereotypes, the…

You know what I find tiresome… pink, Audrey Hepburn, shoes. These are the things other "women in tech" assume I am interested in. I like GitHub and believe it's full of good people. But when they invited me to speak as part of their Passion Project, the invitation package included a hoodie with a pink octocat logo on it, and stickers: Audrey Hepburn octocat wearing pearls, and some other girlie octocat I didn't recog…

To each their own. A lot of girls do like pink and will be drawn to an environment that makes them feel comfortable. This environment may be repulsive to you, but then again you already fit in with the "mainstream" programming culture/environment, so its no great loss. On the other hand, I'm sure there are girls that are in the middle and who are turned off my the extreme girly-ness these events try to push. I can agree that its an unnecessary assumption that all girls would be attracted such a caricature of femininity, and they would be better served by avoiding this trend.

I disagree that one must "love" programming to be decently good at it. There are many programming jobs in this country that don't require supreme levels of talent, passion, or dedication. Those of us in the HN bubble tend to forget there is a big world of software development out there. The majority of it does not require knowledge of lisp, or that one programs on the weekends, or spends hours a day reading tech blogs, etc.

Re: How A 17-Year-Old Girl Won a Hackathon

#69

Post by mnicole »

mnicole wrote: post #25
flootch wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See http://www.thepowerbase.com/2013/04/github-graciously-helps-... Women aren't frail damsels that need your condescending efforts, or need your overly protective assumptions that are mainly patriarchy disguised as a cape to help them cross a puddle that you can manage. The key to more women in tech is outreach and education, not patronization and tales that they are frail, and need protection and special treatment.…

No one's saying women need to be coddled; the problem is that people recognize that the current state of the industry/the internet are jerks . You can only tell people to ignore bullying so long, especially when those doing the bullying aren't being punished, but those that are being victimized by it are being told to instead change this perceived weakness about themselves . People should not have to worry about bein…

Instead of feeding the trolls responding to one aspect of my post that nobody actually has any evidence of either way (David brings it up with the weak defense that he thinks people are too quick to rush to sexism and that's a "problem" -- as if being quick to be an unnecessary asshole isn't the overarching issue to begin with), here are some relevant quotes from her initial post that illustrate why the private repos are important:

> I’m lucky to have friends in this industry that know me in person and through my work, and thus feel more compelled to speak up.

> I evangelize open source whenever I meet new coders or go to meetups. I tell them to make something that they would find useful and put it out there. Can you imagine if one of these new open sourcerers took my advice and got this response, without the support I had. Can you imagine?

And her follow-up:

> The emails I got really stuck out to me. Some people had their own stories that were way worse than mine. Sadly, several said that this is why they’d never open sourced anything.

Re: How A 17-Year-Old Girl Won a Hackathon

#70

Post by ahoyhere »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #68
ahoyhere wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what I find tiresome… pink, Audrey Hepburn, shoes. These are the things other "women in tech" assume I am interested in. I like GitHub and believe it's full of good people. But when they invited me to speak as part of their Passion Project, the invitation package included a hoodie with a pink octocat logo on it, and stickers: Audrey Hepburn octocat wearing pearls, and some other girlie octocat I didn't recog…

To each their own. A lot of girls do like pink and will be drawn to an environment that makes them feel comfortable. This environment may be repulsive to you, but then again you already fit in with the "mainstream" programming culture/environment, so its no great loss. On the other hand, I'm sure there are girls that are in the middle and who are turned off my the extreme girly-ness these events try to push. I can ag…

> A lot of girls do like pink and will be drawn to an environment that makes them feel comfortable

"Pink it & shrink it" is a big fat steaming pile of bullshit: https://www.google.com/search?q=pink+it+and+shrink+it

> but then again you already fit in with the "mainstream" programming culture/environment

What makes you say that? I would certainly disagree.

> Those of us in the HN bubble tend to forget there is a big world of software development out there…

Not me. I'm not in the HN bubble -- I dive into it for entertainment purposes and to reach the handful of lurkers who are in my audience. I don't know LISP (and don't care to), don't program on the weekend, don't read tech blogs. Looking back, I don't think I ever coded on the weekend except for pay. But, for a while, I was definitely into the minutiae. And the whole reason I got into programming was because I got a thrill out of making the computer do what I wanted, the control aspect, the power, the thrill of beating it to a pulp.

Which is not a set of traits you can instill in a person by pinking and shrinking.

And that's why I said you can't become even a decent programmer without being pretty damn into it. Or even half-way decent. I never said a thing about "supreme levels" of talent or anything else.

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