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

Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

blog.hackerrank.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 144 posts

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#81

Post by davezatch »

jlg23 wrote: post #60
jacalata wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of it may be traceable to the enormous number of Soviet men who died in WWII, prompting intense state support for single mothers and allowing the remaining men to avoid responsibility and be spoiled, essentially. This is mentioned briefly in this article if you're interested - http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/all-the-...

Maybe, or maybe it was the basic understand that the communist dream can only come true if everyone, men and women, equally work towards it. In my parents' generation (I'm born in the GDR) there was no debate about feminism. Women were expected to work, childcare was available, it was free and it catered to people who had to work 40h/week. Sometimes I was in kindergarten from 8am to 8pm. I still remember how I did no…

I can't find the link now, but I remember reading about a paper (probably through Marginal Revolution) that showed that, in the GDR, because men and women worked equally and earned equally (in the general case, party leaders aside), a lot of cultural gender equality just became the norm. E.g. men couldn't impress women with nice cars or any of the other status symbols that are so common in the West, and had to 'convince potential mates' through their personalities and actions.

So a lot of the gender roles of the West were basically obliterated, i.e. there was no real stay-at-home mother in the GDR, all mothers were working mothers. Seems to fit your experience, and the GP as well.

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#82

Post by qb45 »

jlg23 wrote: post #60
jacalata wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of it may be traceable to the enormous number of Soviet men who died in WWII, prompting intense state support for single mothers and allowing the remaining men to avoid responsibility and be spoiled, essentially. This is mentioned briefly in this article if you're interested - http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/all-the-...

Maybe, or maybe it was the basic understand that the communist dream can only come true if everyone, men and women, equally work towards it. In my parents' generation (I'm born in the GDR) there was no debate about feminism. Women were expected to work, childcare was available, it was free and it catered to people who had to work 40h/week. Sometimes I was in kindergarten from 8am to 8pm. I still remember how I did no…

> there was no debate about feminism. Women were expected to work

There is something to it. In the soviet era, those three girls would have been praised for their success and presented as a proof that the world (or at least the commie world :)) is a fair place where everybody can succeed with enough determination and work. This was intended to send the message that women are expected and welcome members of the workforce and made for a reasonably sane atmosphere.

OTOH, the author here starts with complaining how the world isn't fair, despite having a counterexample at hand, and then follows with bitching about Y chromosomes and discrimination before even naming those girls. WTF. I certainly wouldn't want to go into environment where nobody cares about my work and I'm basically a tool used by sad people to make others feel sad.

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#83

Post by phillc73 »

rdtsc wrote: post #63
toomanybeersies wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smallbore is the sport you're talking about. The Soviets were very good at it and made some fine rifles, I used to use an old Vostok in high school, cheaper than a German Anshutz, and almost as good.

Ah yes. Thanks! Remember the arm belt. And a bunch of other technques we learned (the full breath then stopping at a half breath, etc...) Found a picture even: http://d2dt9vg05qkweq.cloudfront.net/media/1534055/web_joe-f... (notice the arm belt). We had a nice facility. When it rained we used air rifles inside for practice.

First thing I noticed in that picture was that the rifleman is left handed. As a casual marksman, using club rifles, I'm often frustrated by the bolt being on the wrong side (catering for all the right-handers).

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#85

Post by jacalata »

jlg23 wrote: post #60
jacalata wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of it may be traceable to the enormous number of Soviet men who died in WWII, prompting intense state support for single mothers and allowing the remaining men to avoid responsibility and be spoiled, essentially. This is mentioned briefly in this article if you're interested - http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/all-the-...

Maybe, or maybe it was the basic understand that the communist dream can only come true if everyone, men and women, equally work towards it. In my parents' generation (I'm born in the GDR) there was no debate about feminism. Women were expected to work, childcare was available, it was free and it catered to people who had to work 40h/week. Sometimes I was in kindergarten from 8am to 8pm. I still remember how I did no…

This isn't exactly my theory, this is something fairly well documented that I have come across in general reading.

>men died on all sides in WWII

I'm not sure if you're aware of how far the scale of deaths in the Soviet Union exceeded any Western country - East Germany was probably close, which is an interesting correlation: were there any communist countries without major gender imbalances?

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#86

Post by kriro »

jlg23 wrote: post #60
jacalata wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of it may be traceable to the enormous number of Soviet men who died in WWII, prompting intense state support for single mothers and allowing the remaining men to avoid responsibility and be spoiled, essentially. This is mentioned briefly in this article if you're interested - http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/all-the-...

Maybe, or maybe it was the basic understand that the communist dream can only come true if everyone, men and women, equally work towards it. In my parents' generation (I'm born in the GDR) there was no debate about feminism. Women were expected to work, childcare was available, it was free and it catered to people who had to work 40h/week. Sometimes I was in kindergarten from 8am to 8pm. I still remember how I did no…

As someone who has lived in western Germany all his life but has relatives that lived in the GDR I have come to a similar conclusion. The system of the GDR was horrible but there was an inherent gender equality (mostly due to pragmatic concerns of extending the workforce imo). The west had the "luxury" of role-casting women as the stay at home mom. Married women used to require their husbands permission for quite a lot for quite some time in western Germany (they couldn't open a bank account until the late 60s for example iirc).

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#87

Post by thaumasiotes »

ae_keji wrote: post #53
user_0001 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Equally as important, perhaps they do not have it drilled into them that beauty is all they should aim for. Everything they see is that women should be (model level) beautiful. Should flaunt their women-ness. Advertising, makeup, dolls, television, films play a bigger part than the so called sexism that exists in engineering cultures

The fact that makeup exists speaks a lot about our culture and how it views women.

Since it exists in every culture that has ever been known to man, it's not actually possible to draw conclusions in the normal way, by comparing a culture with makeup to one without. You can make claims about what it would mean for a culture not to use makeup, but if you do you should realize that those claims are, in their entirety, just some random junk you made up.

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#88

Post by huhtenberg »

rdtsc wrote: post #63
toomanybeersies wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smallbore is the sport you're talking about. The Soviets were very good at it and made some fine rifles, I used to use an old Vostok in high school, cheaper than a German Anshutz, and almost as good.

Ah yes. Thanks! Remember the arm belt. And a bunch of other technques we learned (the full breath then stopping at a half breath, etc...) Found a picture even: http://d2dt9vg05qkweq.cloudfront.net/media/1534055/web_joe-f... (notice the arm belt). We had a nice facility. When it rained we used air rifles inside for practice.

We had a shooting range in our school basement (and it was a bog-standard Soviet school). Those were the best lessons ever.

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#89

Post by tomp »

jacalata wrote: post #85
jlg23 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, or maybe it was the basic understand that the communist dream can only come true if everyone, men and women, equally work towards it. In my parents' generation (I'm born in the GDR) there was no debate about feminism. Women were expected to work, childcare was available, it was free and it catered to people who had to work 40h/week. Sometimes I was in kindergarten from 8am to 8pm. I still remember how I did no…

This isn't exactly my theory, this is something fairly well documented that I have come across in general reading. >men died on all sides in WWII I'm not sure if you're aware of how far the scale of deaths in the Soviet Union exceeded any Western country - East Germany was probably close, which is an interesting correlation: were there any communist countries without major gender imbalances?

I don't think many people were killed in e.g. Slovenia (and the rest of ex-Yugoslavia). Yet we had communism and almost perfect sex equality.

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#90

Post by S4M »

Basically they are the Polgár's of programming competition (for those who don't know, Susan, Sofia and Judit Polgár are chess players who were during their teens chess prodigy and some of the strongest women in the world. Judit Polgár retired last year, but she is still the only woman chess player who made it to the top 10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r).

In both cases they were exposed very young to their respective crafts, and I wish there was during my teens (in the nineties) an option at school to learn programming. That was in France and I don't think it has changed since then.

Post reply on HN