Project Euler

I can't adequately express how great of a resource Project Euler is to someone learning about programming.

The way I learned to code was working my way through Project Euler problems in Python, eventually getting to a score of about 55 before I was at the point where I decided to try making "real" programs like Android apps.

When you learn to code people tell you that X or Y is bad for performance, and you should do A or B instead. The problem is that most beginner-type programs run in a few milliseconds and there is no way to see the performance either way. When you're doing a PE problem, a performance tweak can change your answer from a 1-minute runtime to a 1-second runtime. That's something anyone can appreciate, and it lets you experiment with performance on interesting math problems.

Another advantage of Project Euler is it makes you realize just how powerful a computer can be in the right hands. These are problems that nobody in their right mind would try to solve by hand, but they're so tractable with programming knowledge. That was a very exciting realization to me and it pushed me towards a career in software.

Right, sure. So pick n of them, say any n, or a list of problems you think are suitable (enough to act as a filter, not so much that they'd take too much time). I interviewed with a company last year that wanted any 10, and resolved to steal their technique for my own use. Did well enough to get to the next stage, tho' ultimately didn't end up working there.

really weird. I saw that post and your reply too when I was browsing the 'new' section after posting this.

For those interested I keep a list of these sorts of things at https://github.com/technoskald/coding-entertainment.

As a female math grad and CS postgrad, I would like to say firstly that you have successfully trolled me. I do hereby take your bait.

Now for the points I would like to make, primarily for the benefit of the few who actually think as you claim to think:

Women are actually similar to men in a number of novel ways.

We have eyes, and those eyes are intricately connected to very powerful and compact organic computers—capable of independent thought—called brains.

That's right, men and women can both have brains.

And those of us women fortunate enough to be blessed with brains are quite capable not only of independent thoughts, but even decision-making. And yet another way in which we women are similar to men is that each of us, as individuals, comes to have certain aptitudes, preferences and values.

Some of us, like myself, discover to their amazement that they can understand mathematics and even think mathematically about pretty much anything, and develop an interest in technology and computation because of the possibilities it opens up for mathematics and because of the ways mathematics can reflexively provide insights into computer science and programming.

Other women have an aptitude/preference for: polishing nails; answering telephones; designing cute little things that men can give to women at Christmas; and so on. Are women like myself a minority? Perhaps, but it isn't because we have to be shown things like maths and programming with striking adverts, responsive websites and pretty flyers.

I'm not going to pretend that society has been engineered into a patriarchy, over thousands of years, as part of a sinister plot by the Illuminati to preclude the success and independence of the children of the mother-goddess.

I'm likewise not going to pretend to think that there are men with power who purposefully keep women from rising up, or give preferential treatment to male candidates for scholarships/whatever without even realising it. Because ultimately I have no proof of such things and neither do I care about some male-dominant society, because in my experience, what matters is the talent; if you have it, if you have an original idea, a way how to implement it, or if you're simply the best at what you do, you will succeed if you want to, male or female. I do not care why my boss, my clients or my investors choose me, I just want the opportunity to do what I do best, what I like doing.

If you think women simply haven't been exposed to the magical and fun possibilities of mathematics and computers, think again. If women were ignorant to these fields and what they involve, they wouldn't laugh at you for being a "nerd" or date muscular/rich guys instead of you.

They know what maths is, and they know what programming is, and they'll never want to visit a forum and tell everyone how awesome it was when they elegantly solved some mathematical problems or came up with a new proof for some random theorem. They will on the contrary yearn to talk about shoes, interior design, literature, art, perfume, TV shows, movies, diets and so on.

The select few women who prefer mathematics/compsci and find it genuinely fun and inspiring were already posting on newsgroups, were already on IRC, were already subscribed to ars technica and slashdot on google reader, were already here; and they are already here; or they will be here in the future, or wherever else that such subjects can be discussed in the future.

It is not a case of marketing the idea to a mass of women who have no idea what makes their iPhone so useful, or how their cars' brakes are engineered. Women do not go to fashion forums and tell everyone about how much I wish I could expose men to the glories of haute couture. Women do not tell their nutritionists how much they wish they could entice their male friends with raw food diets and veganism.

There are the lost, unwashed masses who will never amount to anything, who will become a carbon copy of their parents and aspire to nothing beyond some repetition-of-basic-tasks job in an office or in retail, and the members of these masses are of both genders. You will fail to "market" math/compsci to these people, regardless of gender, because they cannot do it. Women who aspire to something and want to succeed do not generally want to do it with math and programming.

So, to all of you who think women need to have math/compsci marketed to them: kindly stop talking crap and just ignore the gender issue. It doesn't do you any credit. Women are here. We don't typically scream that we're women because why should we? We're just professionals or students trying to succeed and learn, no different to you gents.

If you want to encourage women to get into math/compsci, have a daughter and buy her a cheap laptop and "The C Programming Language" when she's young. If she takes to it, bang, she had an aptitude that would have gone unnoticed and you saved her from a life of instagram and film studies.

If she deletes some system folders she doesn't think she needs, watches make-up tutorials on youtube and checks facebook every 2 hours, you know you've got yourself a typical woman.

Protip: I don't think the statistics of how many women study math/compsci will be much different in the aforementioned compsci-introduced generation of daughters.