42 ms·

Being a “dumb” girl in Computer Science

• bobbles 11y ago
  Who would have thought that asking for help in class would help you out
  • chroma 11y ago
    For many students, it's not easy to be the first one to speak up. It interrupts the lecture and tells everyone you don't know what's going on. Of course, a lot of people might be just as lost as you, but none of them can be sure that others are lost.
    • imron 11y ago
      I used to ask loads of questions during lectures - feedback I got from my classmates was half saying "thanks for asking the question, I was wondering about that too" and the other half was "why do you ask soo many questions". I just liked making sure I understood things properly.
• aklemm 11y ago
  This is an excellent story. Really getting over the fear of ignorance and learning to manage how much the opinions of others get in our way are real life improvements.
  • trill1 11y ago
    Very true. I tried to jump into some higher-level math classes in college after finishing my major, and though I didn't completely fail, I would have learned much more if I had gotten over my fear of looking "dumb" by asking basic questions, or by talking to the professors during office hours.
• kaitai 11y ago
  That's real bravery. As a prof, I meet so few students who are willing to back the the very bottom of what they don't understand and work up from there. It's not what we're taught to do. How many of us have skated on over something without really getting it? This is a great and honest post.
  • agumonkey 11y ago
    Very timely I was having a personal dilemma about keeping regressing to basics and building backup from blank page or not. Very timely.
• brad0 11y ago
  Great post. A good thing to remember: no one knows what the hell they're doing, no matter what stage of life they're in.
  • bbcbasic 11y ago
    Spoken like a true parent
    • jamiepenney 11y ago
      Not to be that guy, but I've become a lot more comfortable with not knowing what the hell I am doing since I had a kid. Most people are winging it, you just don't get to see their failures.
      • taneq 11y ago
        As a counterpoint, I've become far more worried about life in general since I realised that medical and legal professionals are just winging it too.
        • brational 11y ago
          Well, doctors are just "practicing medicine" after all...
        • bbcbasic 11y ago
          Even Mathematicians. Proofs are just formalised human intuition.
  • agumonkey 11y ago
    Should we keep the whole education lie about choosing a career early on ? [1] or admit that things are the way they are and make people have a broader intellectual view about things so that they can jump whenever the times require it ? [1] I understand the value of picking one thing and going deep. Versus breadth / jack of all trade say.
  • 11y ago
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• resist_futility 11y ago
  Literally see this every year in the lab
  • cmrx64 11y ago
    In the CS lab at my uni as well.
• deadowl 11y ago
  I'm particularly infamous among my peers for asking questions, and most of the time I'm not asking on my own behalf. Asking a question because you don't understand is what you can do for yourself. Asking a question because you don't expect others to understand is something more. This pretty much applies to all disciplines, particularly when a subgroup of people are more likely to feel intimidated by the learning environment.
  • matt_wulfeck 11y ago
    That sounds dangerously close to "asking a question because you want to look smart" I like people like you in principle, but not in meetings.
    • tdfx 11y ago
      I can't speak for OP but I would say asking somewhat obvious questions and making peoples' mental gears go through the effort of thinking things through has been beneficial for me. There is a guy on our team, possibly the smartest one, who constantly asks what could initially be construed as "dumb questions", only to later uncover some flaw in our reasoning or potential pitfall we hadn't thought of. I've come to deeply appreciate his dumb questions.
      • csense 11y ago
        It's the same principle as rubber duck debugging: It's harder to take shortcuts in your reasoning when you're trying to explain something.
      • simoncion 11y ago
        Right, but examining the fundamental assumptions of a plan is -subtly- different than asking a question (whose answer you already know) because you expect that other people want the answer to the question but are too intimidated or whatever to ask. :)
    • voltagex_ 11y ago
      ...or at conferences. I can't find the flowchart I've seen before but it's definitely a problem at linux.conf.au (although better moderated this year!)
• bbcbasic 11y ago
  This isn't gender specific. As a guy I have worked in teams where asking for help is terrifying. To the point I stared at code for hours lest I ask how the uber-abstraction and hack soup worked.
  • oh_sigh 11y ago
    Would you have thought it was gender specific if the title was "Being a 'dumb' guy in..."?
    • Archio 11y ago
      I absolutely would, if it included a line like "...the continued and constant emphasis in taking pride in failure is EXACTLY what men need to be exposed to in order to let down their walls..."
    • Zyst 11y ago
      Yeah the title and the article expressly talk about gender.
      • vacri 11y ago
        The gender part of the article is about the author leveraging her knowledge to help her peers, but the bulk of the article is about how asking honest questions is not just okay, but highly desirable.
    • Maken 11y ago
      I don't think the title matters as much as the actual content. The writer seems to think her issues were quite gender specific, when they are actually what have happened to pretty much every student who cares more about what she/he actually learns than how the other people see her/him.
  • cookiecaper 11y ago
    Gender and race are hot-button topics because those who claim to be victims of discrimination always fall back to an impossible-to-falsify assumption of impure intentions, if not in the individual specifically, in the amorphous "institution" behind "institutional bigotry". Every time someone brings it up, the discussion is one person saying "I bet that wouldn't have happened if the victim were [white/male]!", another person saying "Uh, I think it would've happened", and the original person saying "Well you're just ignorant", and then a cacophony of voices supporting or opposing the side they're more inclined to agree with, seemingly never calling out the absurdity or futility of it. This happened with me in real life when I expressed some questions about the veracity of the clock kid case to an associate. "You think that [being charged with possessing a hoax explosive device] would've happened to a white kid?!" - "Uh, yeah. I was almost arrested for installing VNC on the school computers..." - "That's such an ignorant white thing to say!" No way to win. Maybe we can stop allowing these conversations here, because this is an infinite loop that I don't see us escaping any time soon.
• lotharbot 11y ago
  I wonder if about 10 years from now, we're going to see a lot more young women entering CS and similarly technical majors, and sticking with it through a degree and a career, because they've grown up watching Twilight Sparkle and the other ponies expressing vulnerability -- "I don't understand" and "I need help" and similar sentiments. I don't think girls necessarily need mentors they can identify with (which, for many girls, means "women") in their exact chosen fields, in order to choose those fields. But I do think they need mentors they can identify with who display the character traits needed to be successful in those fields -- the sort of confidence and perseverance expressed in this article.
• matt_wulfeck 11y ago
  > When he started to explain the assignment it quickly became aware that I wasn’t grasping a thing he was saying. He tried again, and again, and again to explain basic concepts to me. He started to become visibly frustrated and impatient with my lack of understanding and everyone in the room kept looking at us. This is sort of the unspoken problem in computer science. Most people aren't doing it for the first time. It's not uncommon for many people to have started programming on their own in middle school or even earlier. First year computer science is more of a refresher. Then there's everyone else starting an entry-level class as beginners and getting completely demolished. "How does everyone get this so much better and faster than me?" The answer is because they're not beginners.
  • deelowe 11y ago
    Exactly. This is why it's important to teach the general concepts of computing, logic, and programming in grade school.
  • Trill-I-Am 11y ago
    Do you think it's possible to major in computer science in college if you have absolutely no prior experience in programming?
    • dietrichepp 11y ago
      Absolutely yes, and if it doesn't work at your college then it's a failure of your college.
    • MawNicker 11y ago
      Absolutely yes. But you'll definitely want awareness of the reality the GP presented. The environment you're in is likely to make you dissatisfied with your own performance... at first.
    • nostrademons 11y ago
      Absolutely. A number of my coworkers at Google had never done it before college (and some had never done it until after college, going back to CS as a second career). You have to be okay with being "behind" compared to your peers, but if you'd like to be successful long-term in anything, you need to become okay with that anyway. Fashions change, whatever you were good at before becomes obsolete, and you relearn things. Slope is more important than Y-intercept.
• latenightcoding 11y ago
  Great post. You go Cat!
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• jkot 11y ago
  Is this really a problem specific to computer science? Medical, biology, physics.. all subjects have some harder parts. There is always someone who does not understand.
  • chroma 11y ago
    It might be a bigger problem in fields where there's a bimodal distribution of skill. That is: There's a group that "gets it" and a group that doesn't. In subjects that mostly require acquiring knowledge, that's not likely to happen. Individual students might not know the answer to a specific thing, but they won't be completely lost for the entire lecture. But if a subject requires learning new ways to think, I could totally see this happening. These are just some preliminary thoughts, so I wouldn't give them a ton of credence. Still, I could totally see different specialties having different distributions of comprehension.
  • crispyambulance 11y ago
    In an academic environment, there is nothing special about CS that makes it different from any other subject as far as the experience of the OP is concerned. In the field, however, I have found more than a few "computer professional" environments which are clearly hostile to beginners/newcomers. I suspect this is because people tend to think that the way they learned is the "best way" to learn a topic. In computer-related professions you have a lot of self-taught folks who got to where they are by hard knocks and constantly facing a profound lack of guidance. These same people often feel that newcomers should undergo the same suffering they did. It's human nature, but it doesn't have to be way.
• lindseya 11y ago
  Great article! In it you mentioned the Laramie Robotics Club. As the founder of a social robotics company, I'm wondering if there is something specific about robots that makes them a good medium for learning to code. I have some ideas about this but I would like to see what others think.
• parr0t 11y ago
  I study through a uni in Melbourne but purely online (minus exams) so this is an interesting side of on-campus study that I had not thought of much. I have found collaborative learning via the student forums is a great way to help people out, and there are lots who do seek help which is great (myself included). I'm just over halfway through my CS degree and now wandering how different my progress & grades would be if I studied on-campus.
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• pnathan 11y ago
  I have long chosen to own asking dumb questions. It's helped me, no doubt about it. This girl will go far with the attitude of looking to understand.
• cs2818 11y ago
  I guess I don't fully understand the scenario being described. She writes that the T.A. tried to explain "again, and again, and again", then after she said "I DON’T UNDERSTAND", he was "eager to help us". It seemed like the T.A. was already aware she wasn't grasping the concept because he explained it repetitively. I'm just wondering what feedback she was giving up until that point. Regardless, clear communication from everyone in any learning setting is essential. Saying "I don't know" and "I don't understand" are a huge part of that.
  • DigitalJack 11y ago
    I think the point she was making was being very public about the fact she didn't understand. Stating it loudly, rather than sheepishly speaking with the TA and being ashamed. Being upfront about it and basically letting everyone in the room know she was having a problem broke the ice. There can be a palpable pressure in social situations to conform, like being in a library... the silence of everyone almost has a presence of its own. In a computer lab, it can be like that. Who knows why the TA changed their tune, maybe they were themselves shamed by their own lack of ability to convey understanding. But for the rest of the lab, once the taboo was broken, apparently the innate desire many people have to lend a hand surfaced. I can't say why, I wasn't there, but in this case it worked out. People act differently in the anonymity of a crowd, and that is what you basically have in a hushed lab environment. Her plea for help / public admittance of vulnerability was apparently enough to shatter the crowd psychology and the innate desire of individuals to help other individuals came forward.
  • vacri 11y ago
    The TA assumed she had knowledge that she didn't actually have, and was basing responses off that faulty assumption - plenty of students are lazy and ask questions that they could answer themselves if they would just bother. In my experience, if you ask questions and it's clear you're trying, most people will engage with you. But if it's a short form for getting a lazy, spoon-fed answer, that's when people disengage My best brain-not-engaged story when I was a TA was a student who had to multiply 2 by 0.4. She reached for her calculator and I forbade her from using it (she was doing a major with a statistics component, so she could do this). She just stared dumbly at me until I couldn't bear it anymore and 'helped' her with "well, what's 2 by 4?". People like that will drain you until you don't care anymore. But a student who shows that they are trying, and you'll be more interested in going the extra mile.
• qopp 11y ago
  To offer a counter point, why does the girl seem like she needs or wants someone to guide her along in each class? Asking people to help is one resource, but so is reading the textbook, doing introduction tutorials, looking stuff up online, etc. The author doesn't mention she spent time doing these sorts of activities. > Not only that, but other people in the room jumped in to help explain I've definitely seen guys line up to help people in labs. Maybe the take-away is that CS is traditionally taught in a very individual way and should be more group-oriented.
  • kibwen 11y ago
    > why does the girl seem like she needs or wants someone > to guide her along in each class Probably for the same reason that people enjoy personal assistance with questions on IRC or discussion forums. Sometimes you literally don't know enough to know what you don't know well enough to know where or how to look it up.
    • rickhanlonii 11y ago
      That seems like a cop out to me. Textbooks are by far the best resource you have available for your class work and even though they take the most effort, they tell you exactly what you need to know enough to know what you don't know.
      • lotharbot 11y ago
        > "Textbooks are by far the best resource" for people with certain styles of learning. I've always found lecture with some degree of interaction to be of much higher value than the textbook for me.
        • rickhanlonii 11y ago
          So I didn't mean that the textbook is the best resource for the concepts, just for the coursework. Side note, though, learning styles are a myth [1]. [1]: http://www.wired.com/2015/01/need-know-learning-styles-myth-two-minutes/ http://www.wired.com/2015/01/need-know-learning-styles-myth-...
• achow 11y ago
  > I would like to create learning software that emphasizes pride in failure over success. That the end is not the goal – continuous effort to try again and fail again, and try again and fail again is. This reminds me of a study by Claudia M. Mueller and Carol S. Dweck of Columbia University - ‘Praise for Intelligence Can Undermine Children's Motivation and Performance’ [1]. They said praise for the effort and not results. They found that children who were praised for their intelligence, as compared to their effort, became overly focused on results. Following a failure, these same children persisted less, showed less enjoyment, attributed their failure to a lack of ability (which they believed they could not change), and performed poorly in future achievement efforts. Children praised for effort chose problems that promised increased learning, they had continued interest in mastery by preferring to receive strategy-related information. [1] PDF: https://psychology.stanford.edu/sites/all/files/Intelligence%20Praise%20Can%20Undermine%20Motivation%20and%20Performance_0.pdf https://psychology.stanford.edu/sites/all/files/Intelligence...
  • visarga 11y ago
    Praise is just a factor, and not even the most important one. You usually won't turn a lazy child successful by just switching from praising intelligence to praising effort. If the child is hardened in his/her intention to avoid effort, then you can't reach them with or without praise, until they develop an internal motivation. Nowadays school work has to compete with mobile games and other super addictive stuff that just overflows on the internet.
• rickhanlonii 11y ago
  I'm sorry, but I think this just has to do with bad study habits. I may be wildly off base here (I don't know the author's habits) I just have the quotes in the article: > I just couldn’t understand a word that the teacher was saying > T.A.’s had to explain over, and over, and over again the simplest concepts > I wasn’t grasping a thing he was saying > He tried again, and again, and again to explain basic concepts to me > I DON’T UNDERSTAND. As a student, understanding terms and basic concepts is your responsibility. The professor and TA's are there to enhance and solidify the basic concepts, they're not there to explain basic concepts to you over and over again until you get it. That's the job of reading and studying. If you don't do the reading and study the material you need to know before the class it's covered in, then of course you won't understand what the professor is on about and of course you'll fall behind. You're starting from behind and don't have any way to catch up. I saw this over and over as both a TA, teacher, and classmate. Lecture is not the time to learn terms and concepts for the first time. Lecture is the time to connect newly learned terms and concepts to your existing knowledge and reinforce and enlighten it. If you get to the class on class instantiation and you don't know what a constructor is already then you're going to have a bad time--and you should. So you must study beforehand and you just have to study it until you know it. I appreciate that it's harder for some than others, and commend the author for aspiring to inspire, but at some point there needs to be some personal responsibility.
  • dgacmu 11y ago
    Let me gently disagree with you. First, much of what she comments on (TAs, etc.) happens in recitations or office hours, which are the time to go over things until they're clear. (She mentions this: "Being hopelessly lost in lab"). Labs are typically smaller and are often taught by less-experienced people - grad students or even senior undergrads. Second, while it's possible to take it too far, I love it when students are forthright about not getting it, even in the primary lecture session. First, because for every student who asks the question, there are a dozen sitting there being quietly confused -- and often feeling like crap about it (c.f., impostor syndrome). Second, because it gives me an excuse to explain the same concept in a different way -- which may reach some of the other dozen students who incorrectly think they get it, and won't figure out they've missed something until they sit down to do the homework. And third, because that's what learning is about - learning the things you don't know. Any experienced teacher should be able to defer when the questions are getting in the way of the material, and _holy cow_ is it better to have a classroom of students asking you to explain something than to have a bunch of drooling post-lunch zombies. Your point about when to study & learn things depends a lot on the class. In my intro class, I don't expect the students to have done the reading beforehand, because we don't have any reading. I expect them to have worked through all of the stuff resulting from the previous lecture, however. Other classes operate in the way you mention. But it varies highly from class to class. The author was taking personal responsibility by being forthright about what she was having a hard time understanding. It's harder to do than it seems.
• alexchantavy 11y ago
  The author's courage in admitting that she doesn't understand is admirable, although I think it would have added more to her story to talk about what made her more willing to put this level of effort into CS as opposed to her original major. As an aside, I think hacker culture extends itself into university CS culture in the sense that it's pretty much mandated to figure out a problem on your own and RTFM before asking IRC/forums. I guess that kind of thing works on the internet but not so much in real life - I struggle from time to time at work to admit that I need help.
  • fapjacks 11y ago
    An approach worth trying here is to find a friend at the office who knows more than you about things generally, then ask them privately. You can spur this on by offering your help when they seem to be stuck, but doing so without making a big scene or talking loudly about it. If you are seen as someone that quietly helps people when they need it, you will reap immediate rewards when you run into problems.
• Artoemius 11y ago
  It's almost as if there are two separate types of people. People who learn by reading books and people who learn by asking questions. They do not always understand each other and maybe it's bad. However, I can attest that reading books (also, googling these days) and never asking basic questions is a perfectly valid way to learn.
• krstck 11y ago
  Full disclosure: I'm a working female software developer, blah blah blah... > I want to be that girl who no one thought she could, who had all the odds against her, that everyone thought was dumb, and yet she becomes incredibly successful in computer science. Then I want to turn that success around and use it a pedestal to expose every wound, every failure, every painful vulnerability I have, even with my hands trembling, because that is what I believe is what motivates women and gives them the strength and personal recognition of ‘if she can do it, so can I’, which then lights the spark to explore the field and helps women find their inner-strength to go for it. I think this is a great sentiment, but....and maybe I'm just not hanging out in the right parts of the internet or whatever...but I see women writing about these meta-topics of "being a female programmer" far, far more often than any actual technical aspect. Maybe they just aren't upvoted to the top of HN or r/programming, heh. I've had a hard time articulating why I feel so prickly about promoting specifically "getting more women into tech", because I feel like it's starting to become this giant show pony. I think it's great that this lady is going into this field, but I feel really weird about this characterization that CS is supposed to be so super scary and women need special hand-holding and encouragement to attempt it. I started programming when I was a kid because I wanted to make stuff. Nobody told me it was supposed to be hard or supposed to be for boys or whatever. I think we're doing a huge disservice by promoting this idea that programming is some super elusive thing - if we want more women in programming, then let's talk about how cool it is to build stuff, instead of how we can be role models or whatever. Just the opinion of one "woman in tech", I don't speak for anyone else but myself.
  • ma2rten 11y ago
    I agree, but I feel this post is not really about that. It applies to guys equally. It's just that the author happens to be female. At least it was very relatable to me.
    • fossuser 11y ago
      Yeah the core of the article is that it's good to admit ignorance and ask questions - that's how you learn quickly. Paradoxically people will actually think you're smarter for it anyway - it's often when you pretend you know something you don't that you appear dumb. The gender commentary is a distraction.
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• shruubi 11y ago
  From experience, I can say that university is a place that creates an atmosphere of fear in asking questions. Ask a question in a lecture? The 100+ other people in the room are now staring at you like you're an idiot, despite the fact that most probably have the same question. Ask for clarification on something the lecturer said? You've interrupted their flow now, and want you to sit down, shut up and ask after class. Go to ask after class? 12 other people have questions they were too afraid to ask during class or couldn't and the lecturer doesn't have time to attend to all of you, and tells you to send them an email they won't read. Ask a TA? Most of them are overworked and underappreciated which leads to them having a very low tolerance for "I don't understand" questions, which can lead to a brush-off answer like "just re-read the lecture material." Ask other students? They either don't know themselves or cannot explain it in an appropriate or correct manner, or simply cannot be bothered to help you because "this is too easy, why don't you get it!?" Now of course, not every lecturer/TA is like this, and I had some wonderfully helpful and open teachers while I was in university, however, both myself and other people I know from across many different schools have had numerous experiences like this. And here's the other thing, as a student I've been guilty of doing the exact things I describe above, either out of arrogance or simply down to the fact that I was slammed with other classes I just didn't have the time or patience to help others. Is it something I am proud of? Of course not, looking back now I can safely say I was a dick. It gets even worse for women, when you differ from the majority of others in your class simply by genetics, it creates a feeling of not wanting to stand out or give other people a reason on top of their sub-conscious bias to think you "don't belong here" or "aren't as good as the rest of us."
  • cyphar 11y ago
    > Ask a question in a lecture? The 100+ other people in the room are now staring at you like you're an idiot, despite the fact that most probably have the same question. I always ask the question anyway. The lecturers don't mind answering questions -- they're there to teach you (though since I talk to them outside lectures, I might have a different view of how lecturers feel about students). Even if it's a dumb question, just ask. People who judge you for asking a question are assholes and aren't worth your time.
• euske 11y ago
  As a teacher, a bigger problem that I have is not that people don't understand it, but that people don't care when they don't understand it. Many students seem to be just attending to a class because of peer pressure or something. They can just glide it when it doesn't click. If you feel sad when you don't understand something, I'd say you're already very motivated. Very rarely, a teacher can press a student's button to make them actually interested in the subject (or anything related to the subject), but I feel this mostly happens only randomly.
• JDiculous 11y ago
  Why do women in CS constantly seem to feel the need to tell everybody else they're a woman? Nobody cares.
  • junto 11y ago
    > Why do women in CS constantly seem to feel the need to tell everybody else they're a woman? Nobody cares. Because there is a fair amount of inherent sexism in many companies when it comes to female programmers. My ex was the brightest (by a long way) on our undergraduate CompSci course. She topped the class of 250 students and got a 1st with honours. She received one of the highest grades in the department's history. She was invited to start a Phd directly after the BSc. No masters was required. The university could see her potential and decided to embrace it. She published a number of papers related to script and language identification from document images, primarily focused on Asian writing systems. After her Phd she went to work for a large US automotive company. It was a nightmare for her. Shitty sexist comments on a daily basis. A real toxic work environment and after 1.5 years she quit. She had no desire to go back into job in computer science. To me that is a huge waste of talent and resource.
    • tdkl 11y ago
      So she just gave up and threw 30 years of her life down the drain ? Where's the persistence ? It's like "geeks" weren't ever ridiculed and harassed decades ago, before CS got "trendy and cool". That's also a price of equality, sometimes you just eat shit at a certain job.
      • fao_ 11y ago
        It's not equal if someone is the butt of jokes, and comments and jabs are directed at one person because of a feature that they have.
        • mason240 11y ago
          Because people in tech have never been the butt of jokes from the rest of society.
• yorkvillemint 11y ago
  It seems like the author is at risk of breaking an arm patting herself on the back too hard. Yes, computer science can be a hard field. There are many hard fields. These require hard work. Sometimes you don't understand the material in class. Sometimes you need to work really hard. Sometimes you feel silly or need to ask your prickly, overworked TA a bunch of questions when he or she would probably rather be doing other things. I'm not sure why the author seems to think this makes her deserving of special commendation, or what her experiences have to do with gender, but most of all the incredibly self-serving, west-wing-horn-section-playing-in-the-background tone in which this piece is written really grinds my gears.
  • wonnage 11y ago
    Lemme guess, you got by without needing a lot of handholding and now watching this girl pat herself on the back for figuring out how to get tons of help while your accomplishment goes unheralded has you rattled?
    • leshow 11y ago
      or he just read the story and that's his opinion of the situation. i feel the same way and i didn't have an easy time in school.
  • Latty 11y ago
    Different people have different things they struggle with - this was clearly an important breakthrough for her and many others, she wants to share that with the world. That's a positive thing, and I think you are unfairly characterising it as some kind of self-glorification.
• retrogradeorbit 11y ago
  When I was younger I worked at a top private secondary school for a number of years in the IT department and one of the Social Studies teachers there was very good and had an effect on me. She would tell people who had that attitude of dismissing people's questions as stupid: "There is no such thing as a stupid question. Only stupid answers." When you think about it, it is both completely obvious, but also very profound. It has stuck with me to this day.
  • autarch 11y ago
    I often tell people that the only stupid question is the one you didn't ask. In other words, it's stupid to not ask questions when you don't understand something.
• sgentle 11y ago
  I have found that embracing being dumb can be very useful even later on. I don't struggle with programming anymore, to the point where that "out of my depth" feeling is surprising and scary. Occasionally I run into some new concept I have no experience with and I sit there staring at it like an idiot thinking "why do I not get this?" It takes a little while to remember that I'm comparing many years of experience and study to something I just started learning, and the feeling of being overwhelmed is natural. I suspect many people get used to feeling competent once they've developed competence in one area. The problem is that, as described in the article, the need to feel competent gets in the way of developing competence in anything new. I think one reason children learn so well is that they haven't yet developed competence in any area, so it's hard for them to expect competence in every area. I have no end of admiration for the way a child will look you dead in the eye and say "I don't know what that means" like it's the most natural thing in the world.
• Godel_unicode 11y ago
  Here's the thing. While there are absolutely some pervasive, sneakily awful female-specific problems in computer science, this is emphatically not one of them. The experience described in this article has exactly nothing to do with being a woman. Computer science is an extremely difficult subject, and everyone sucks really hard at it when they're getting started (or very shortly thereafter). That experience is universal to computer scientists. I will absolutely guarantee you that there were plenty of men in that class who were going through the exact same thing at some point in their academic career, if not right then. The Problem in computer science education is a combination of the spotlight problem (once you know something, especially something abstract, it's hard to imagine what it's like to not know it) and the No True Scotsman problem (if you ever struggle with anything in computer science then you'll never be a Real computer scientist). In situations like this, where a large percentage of the population is at a fragile stage of development, we need to be very clear that we're addressing the actual core problem. Namely, that everyone feels that they're the dumb one in a room full of brilliant effortlessly successful people, and that if the coursework is not easy and a little boring you should quit because it only gets worse from here. This needs to be a large chunk of lecture time early in the semester. You are going to hit The Wall. Everyone does, there's no shame in it. When (not if) you do, ask for help. Say "I don't know". This is an important life skill, and a large part of being a functioning adult.
  • brational 11y ago
    > Namely, that everyone feels that they're the dumb one in a room full of brilliant effortlessly successful people, and that if the coursework is not easy and a little boring you should quit because it only gets worse from here. So I self-learned CS, my degrees were in applied math, and it was similar in the math world. Although more like: "everyone feels that they're the dumb one in a room full of other dumb ones... " But where I studied, we did receive that sort of lecture early on. That "a wall" as you've described it is normal, get used to it. It's served me well, being comfortable with "not knowing" something. You could argue that it's something every student of ANY subject should be told but I guess many subjects are easy enough that simply working at X% effort is enough to never get stumped.
• jondubois 11y ago
  People are scared to sound stupid but there is no stupid question. Even after 10 years of software engineering, I still learn new things everyday. Whenever I join a new company, I'm the dumbest person there at the beginning... Until the next recruit arrives :) Putting yourself in the position of always being the dumbest person in the room is the smartest thing you can do. You never want to be the smartest person in the room... EVER. Sure, it feels great, but you don't learn anything. By always putting yourself in difficult situations, you become more adaptable and better rounded as an engineer.
• sosedoff 11y ago
  When i read something like this it always brings up some memories back from the college times. Back then i had some interesting experiences and knowledge, while most of the students were interested in fields different from anything CS-related. To my surprise, when i got into assembly class i had a very weird feeling of being dumb just because it was not always clear to me how the this whole machine world was operating. Other students got it right away. But i was confused. I wasn't really interested in speaking up, so i just studies, but it took me some time to finally "get it" as in really understanding how the machine worked. But it took more than that. A lot of students were still confused even though they understood the basics, so i took i tried to help out and it turned out to be so much fun. It does not have to be that hard, it all about your interests and intentions.
• slavik81 11y ago
  > The T.A.’s had to explain over, and over, and over again the simplest concepts. As a TA, I want to say that this is literally my job. If that's what it takes, then that's what it takes. My entire purpose is to help students. If other people need my help, I might be limited in the amount of time I can spend, but I'll give you every bit of help I can in the time I have. When I was an undergraduate, I worried about the TA judging me for not knowing things. I'd even skip tutorials if I was too far behind. Now as a TA, that seems so silly. My goal is to just get you the best mark I can, regardless of where you're starting from. Anyways, this was a well-written post. Lots of great stuff in there. I think the issues it touches on are also something a lot of students can relate to. I would caution, though, there's also 'that guy' who speaks instead of thinking. There is a balance to be struck. In lectures, at least. Listen, think, ask.
  • adwn 11y ago
    You say: > As a TA, I want to say that this is literally my job. If that's what it takes, then that's what it takes. My entire purpose is to help students. And: > If other people need my help, I might be limited in the amount of time I can spend, but I'll give you every bit of help I can in the time I have. But that's the point – you don't have infinite time. I think it's unfair to the faster to students if the majority of your time is spent on the slowest ones. Unless it's your explicit goal to teach the lowest common denominator, the better students also have a right to get help and support in their learning.
    • Latty 11y ago
      Sure, but that assumes that the extra time being taken here came at the expense of someone else's time. The original article showed two people gaining from this at the same time, at least. If they require more time than can be allocated and it cuts into time other students need, then alternative arrangements need to start being made, sure. Just assuming that taking more time than others to get something makes you unworthy of getting that help isn't right.
• keypusher 11y ago
  While this is a very moving story and I hope the author finds a rewarding career in CS, one big problem I have with this is that there is going to come a point in time where she has to figure out a hard problem on her own. It might be in grad school, it might be on the job, or in an interview, or for a side project. But there is going to come a time when there's a very difficult problem to solve and there is nobody there to turn to for advice because you are doing something new. And if you haven't built up the resources to research the problem on your own and work it out, that might be a very difficult experience.
  • Latty 11y ago
    Sure, but if you fail at the beginning, how are you meant to build that skill? If the author continued to require in-depth explanations of the core concepts again and again over the entire length of their education, sure, that could be an issue. The reality is that over time, most people are going to learn how to approach the issue, how to best self-teach, etc... and get past it.
• turdz 11y ago
  It is really important to abandon your ego when learning programing. The "smart" students who get everything immediately have spent hours on their own learning the material. That probably is the best way to learn the basics but the next best thing is to do as the author did.
  • pbhjpbhj 11y ago
    Some subjects are just intuitive to some people without them secretly spending hours of extra study on them.
• leichtgewicht 11y ago
  To me this article relates to the idea of pair-programming. In pair-programming you should also pair lower-skilled with higher-skilled people to lift the beginner's skill. Empathy and Patience required. The problem with teamed-up programming is that it is very much relying on the groups culture and switching between cultures might turn into a hard challenge.
• Nr7 11y ago
  I like the article, but one thing caught my eye there. "Right then and there, I said loud, confidently, and clearly so everyone in the room could hear me, “I DON’T UNDERSTAND.”" I don't understand why this would make people more eager to help you. If I was trying to explain something to someone and they started to raise their voice, I would just get irritated and probably refuse to help anymore. But then again I have to admit that I'm not always the most patient person in the world.
  • Latty 11y ago
    I think you are reading a more hostile tone into that - I read it more as a slow paced, clear 'I. Don't. Understand.' - not shouting in the guy's face - to try and get the point across that they didn't get the core concept, and the explanations being given were not helpful. I could see how that would cause you to shift your attempt to another tack, see more success and therefore the explained scenario.
• glangdale 11y ago
  It's difficult to separate out the all-important "I did/didn't spend a bunch of time in my teens programming" factor, and if she is getting some attention to fix the temporary deficit that this causes, so much the better. As someone else points out, a lot of people come into CS with a huge head start (often one that stops working some point in 2nd or 3rd year, in my experience on both sides of the classroom). The question becomes: when does the strategy of being the one person in the class saying "I don't understand. Please explain again/better" start to be problematic? When you're still consuming 40% of the attention of your TAs in a 2nd or 3rd year course? When you're asking questions about things all of the rest of the class understands and things are grinding to a halt for everyone else? When you're the team member who needs someone else to design your algorithm for you for every single task? There has to be an end to it somewhere.
  • douche 11y ago
    I have been in classes with that person that asks questions constantly, because they "don't understand". After a half-dozen sessions, you're about ready to chuck your laptop at the back of their head. Sure, dude, suck up 25% of the lecture time asking questions about things your should understand if you read the assigned reading. It's not like the other 40 people in this class aren't paying through the nose to be here - take your damned questions offline, and let the professor give their lecture, so we might actually be able to cover the material we're here to cover.
• Nimitz14 11y ago
  Comeon. This is pretty shit.
• ordbajsare 11y ago
  >I wanted to burst out in tears What are you ? An child?
• mibrah 11y ago
  We need more babes in CS
• KaiserPro 11y ago
  Neatly sidestepping the gender issue (not understanding is non-gender specific) Publicly saying I don't understand, in a room full of people that appear to understand is incredibly difficult. However clearly knowing your limits, and crucially being honest about them makes you a much better programmer. There is nothing worse than someone who bullshits or FUDs they way through things. Most arguments on t'internet/programming office can be summed up as: Person 1: I don't think this is a good idea Person 2: This is an attack on my knowledge LIES YOU ARE RUBBISH, HERE IS SOME FACTS, SOME OF WHICH ARE MADE UP/OVERHEARD etc etc etc. More people need to say "I don't understand" women or not.
• tszymczyszyn 11y ago
  > I strongly believe that the continued and constant emphasis in taking pride in failure is EXACTLY what women need to be exposed to in order to let down their walls and break through the well-known façade that ‘you need to be a genius to be a computer scientist’. Maybe that's my poor understanding of English but I feel that "taking pride in failure" is a strange choice of words. I would say you can be proud of making the effort but why be proud of failing? OTOH you shouldn't be ashamed of failing to understand something straight away, and more importantly you should not be afraid of asking loudly for a better explanation.
• coaching123 11y ago
  I don't see anything specially related to females. The author is just offering couching and suggestions like ask in class.
  • lucb1e 11y ago
    I do. If I as a male would pretend to be dumb in class, I doubt all males would jump to help me.
    • Maken 11y ago
      In my experience the response depends much more on the person being asked than on who is making the question. In general, the people who actually understand the subjects will try to help others, while those who are hiding their own ignorance will look down on whoever is asking "dumb" questions.
• justaaron 11y ago
  one thing I noticed about just about any industry, and this is not gender-related, is a tendency to live in a bubble and to expect that other people live in this same bubble and speak the same particular bubblese language. I recall my high-school math teacher was very methodical, but even he "cruised over a few points" or wasn't completely explicit about all the mechanics of a given transformation/equation/formula, or perhaps wasn't clear about what the desired product was of the particular set of manipulations we were studying. It's all fine and good if YOU understand what you are explaining, or of a couple top students can follow you and nod, but perhaps the bulk of the class isn't getting it, and it would be extremely helpful for someone to stand up and say exactly what this author said "I don't understand" as this would provoke the necessary review and examination of the subject in question. I think that closed cultures can be more welcoming of outsiders by being willing to re-examine the basics often. too often we scorn basic questions that would also be helpful in determining areas for future optimizations, or would provoke the needed work to overcome pain points. For example: inventions and optimizations often come from naive outsider questions applied to "solved known done finished" problems
• cced 11y ago
  Not sure that this only applies to women, but for people in general. Also, those TAs at the begining of the article don't seem to understand the learning process – going from not knowing to knowing.
• iuguy 11y ago
  There's nothing wrong about being dumb as long as you want to do something about it. Here's a couple of women that have made me feel exceptionally dumb (and want to do something about it) with the fascinating things they've had to say: [1] - https://vimeo.com/109380788 https://vimeo.com/109380788 [2] - https://vimeo.com/109380802 https://vimeo.com/109380802 (disclaimer: I co-run the con these talks come from, but I still think they're great talks)
• mcnamaratw 11y ago
  Being unafraid to ask the 'dumb' questions is very powerful for anyone.
• danielrhodes 11y ago
  Reading through the comments on here, it seems as if the post has been misunderstood: It is not about being a girl in computer science, it is about overcoming your own fears of being perceived as dumb for not understanding, and then being open about not understanding. When the author got over those fears, she clearly states there were benefits for her and others for whom she taught this technique.
  • brational 11y ago
    Title: Being a ‘Dumb’ Girl in Computer Science Contents: What you said Title should be: Being ‘Dumb’ in Computer Science
• bitL 11y ago
  Why would girls voluntarily submit to development drudgery with zero status from management amongst people they don't find attractive at all (more like stupid nice ones that can be taken advantage of)? They have other options given to them by nature, especially when they are younger that men don't have. I known an entrepreneur who sold his company to one of the most known brands in the world and his wife immediately quit her job, that she doesn't want to deal with that nonsense anymore as her husband is now super rich. How many guys can afford to do the same? Many women really perceive developers as weirdos they don't want to have anything with, only if they are forced to settle down by their age.
  • pkd 11y ago
    What you say might be true for a few but, "Many women" does not mean "all women". A lot of women I know would not marry if they had to leave their jobs afterwards, they love what they do.
• Kenji 11y ago
  Breaking news: Woman realizes that she has to get over her own ego to admit difficulties and learn stuff, which is a good but obvious insight. However, she has not let go of her ego fully since she cannot prevent herself from letting her feminism flow into the blog post despite it being completely unrelated.
  • dang 11y ago
    Please don't be uncharitable. This thread managed to be fairly civilized despite the strongly divergent views HN users have. Posting comments like this only tears the community back into war of all against all, and to quote my son from when he was two, "that what we not do".
    • Kenji 11y ago
      My apologies. My affinity for sarcasm got the better of me. I will contain it in the future.
• justaman 11y ago
  >Right then and there, I said loud, confidently, and clearly so everyone in the room could hear me, “I DON’T UNDERSTAND.” The room became instantly quite and the T.A. had a look on his face as if a spell that had been cast over him was broken. After that his whole demeanor changed. He became eager to help us. Not only that, but other people in the room jumped in to help explain and even the girl grew visibly more comfortable and started asking questions. Everyone became so eager to help – it was rowdy, exciting – people left and right were neglecting their own work to try to help us, it became a major group effort and everyone was so passionate to jump in and help. The field may be "male-dominated". That does not mean it is unfriendly to women, generally speaking.
• js2 11y ago
  I earned perfect scores on my CS classes at a large state university. I was also a T.A. for a computer architecture lab where students had to write 68000 assembly. (Aside: when I took that class, the T.A. was a woman.) Now this was the mid-90s and there were not many women in my classes. I search my memory for the experiences described in this article, of T.A.'s mocking students, of getting frustrated with students, of "dumb" girls. I just can't remember anything like that. There were a handful of students like myself for which certain subjects just clicked. And there were a handful that it seemed like they just were never going to get it. But for most, it was this middle ground of having to work hard to understand. Not everyone of my classes was a breeze either. I must've pulled my hair out in my compilers class three times over. Mostly, this just sounds like the struggle of being a student. But I guess everyone focuses their experiences through a certain lens. I hope I'm not criticising here... mostly just thinking out loud.
• j45 11y ago
  This was a great read and applies to as many comp sci / tech heads who are more comfortable behind a keyboard than interacting with others. Faking it till you make it always comes out in the wash. Saying I don't understand, and acting on it in a "I want to understand' by putting in the required work to ask, and learn is what makes a developer - someone who is able to develop their skills, forever, as needed.
• clavalle 11y ago
  Great post and great advice for anyone studying anything difficult. We are trained to get everything right and be embarrassed if we don't know something. This makes it hard to practice pushing the boundaries of our own knowledge. It comes to the point where people can't even recognize when they don't know a thing! I don't know what the solution is but I think that schools should become better at pushing people to the edge of their competency. To do so we must become more tolerant of ignorance so the teacher and the student can learn strategies to find the shape of it strategies on how to push themselves into that unknown. Right now we generally wait until grad school to really do such things and it is holding us back as a society.
• presto8 11y ago
  "Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing" (by Margolis & Fisher) is an excellent book on this topic. MIT Press page: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/unlocking-clubhouse https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/unlocking-clubhouse Amazon page: http://www.amazon.com/Unlocking-Clubhouse-Women-Computing-Press/dp/0262632691 http://www.amazon.com/Unlocking-Clubhouse-Women-Computing-Pr...
• coaching123 11y ago
  I think the title is misleading, you say dumb girl but then you get into the top level, not an easy jump. Also if I was a professor I would like those asking questions to be prepared before hand in basic concepts, just to no slow down the class. There are certain type of questions that can arise naturally when discussing certain topics, but if you ask many times and your questions are of basic topics or greatly miss the topic you are giving a disservice to your class. I think being a girl give you the opportunity to coach other girls, and help them, if you can prove that your personal experience can motivate others. But not everyone is ready to put the necessary effort to get to the top level. I think that mastering a subject requires some passion or being interested and excited by the subject and to be prepared to put in the effort.
• Cthulhu_ 11y ago
  Disregarding gender, I think this story is more about people that weren't into computers and tech trying to get into it. Comparing it with my own experience, my dad got our first computer when I was 3, we grew up with it; I got computer basics (besides what I already knew by then) and skills like typing between ages 12-16; I learned how computer hardware and software and operating systems and networks and such worked age 16-19 in school, then at the end of that started with basic software development, which was another (bachelor degree) education from age 19-23. I don't know what exact path the author followed, but judging by the opening paragraphs, it had nothing to do with computers until she tried to get into software development. I'm also going to assume that her classmates were not completely new to the subject - or were afraid to admit they didn't get it. What I'm saying is / TL;DR, getting into software development will be hard for anyone if they don't have much prior experience; you can't just join up with a class and expect to catch up on half a lifetime of prior knowledge. That's probably also why the schools I attended had a wide range of classes, going from history to hardware to operating systems to networks to office tools until finally going to e.g. browsers and the web and the basics of software development. TL TL;DR, programming isn't easy
  • chippy 11y ago
    You are correct most people in software development have had an interest and experience for long before adulthood. However that prerequisite doesn't have to be that compulsory. We teach rocket science and brain surgery in universities, and don't expect the students to have experience in such before entering the course. Art, however, may be an exception (see below). I think it's about how Computer Science is taught. A subject can be taught effectively and learnt by enthusiastic learners. Anyone should be able to turn up to a university and get taught how to program, with no prior experience. What is essential is an enthusiasm and dedication to learn, and the skill of being able to learn to learn. Now - the above standing, Fine Art degrees and such often require the learner to do a Foundation Year. This year (from my limited understanding) is mainly a year of technical skills to bridge the gap between art at school and art at university level, and a year where the student tries all forms and mediums to choose the one they want to specialise in. If educators at university level see that there is a need for such basic education, perhaps a foundation level in basic computing could be an option.
• micahbright 11y ago
  "I strongly believe that the continued and constant emphasis in taking pride in failure is EXACTLY what women need to be exposed to..." I'm gonna disagree. It seems like you were so close to understanding "the secret sauce". I'll lay it out for you explicitly: Learning requires humility. You succeeded because you had the humility to admit you weren't understanding, not because of pride.
• tenken 11y ago
  It sucks when someone is not naturally gifted at something, and can't just grok it. On the other hand, neither lab time or class time is the place to learn something. That's the place to be exposed to new concepts and theories, and work on something in a controlled environment with peers. Most real learning is supposed to be done through homework and self motivation to apply (new) skills to creative tasks. So while someone is floundering in class to grasp the material -- I ask, how much _extra_ time outside of class time are you spending to fully grasp, ingest, and understand concepts through-and-through the stuff you find so impossibly difficult. All kungfu is hard to master -- but with enough practice, blood, sweat and tears and perseverance anyone can acquire great kungfu. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIieUmp0aZ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIieUmp0aZ0
• jeffdavis 11y ago
  Tangent: if you want to tutor someone, don't tell them things, ask questions. Tons and tons of questions. A majority of the sentences you say should end in a question mark. Answer questions with more questions. It's annoying, but it works.
• AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  I am male, and I am (too often) an arrogant jerk. If I'm trying to learn something, I assume that I'm smart enough to learn it, no question. If I don't understand it, it's because you didn't teach it well enough - it's your fault, not mine. So I have no problem saying "I don't understand", because I have no self-image at stake. It's not enough to penetrate my arrogance. And when I say "I don't understand" in a group, I'm often not just speaking for myself. There are others there who don't understand. That's what this lady is doing, only (hopefully) without the arrogant jerk part. She's decided that she can admit when she doesn't understand, without it threatening who she is. It's very freeing. I got it as a side effect of being arrogant, but she got it by being brave. More power to her.
• dfrey 11y ago
  > I made the decision to raise my hand in class and admit publicly that I was completely lost. To my surprise, I found that not only the teacher, but also other students in class were eager to help and went out of their way to speak to me. So I decided that I would try the same thing in lab. Nothing gets the attention of neck beards like a woman in need of computer science help.
• gumby 11y ago
  Man or woman, this is an awesome story.
• sonabinu 11y ago
  https://www.ted.com/talks/reshma_saujani_teach_girls_bravery_not_perfection?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/reshma_saujani_teach_girls_bravery...
• aws_ls 11y ago
  Would have been nicer, if she had given specific details in the article e.g. languages, specific algorithmic examples. Almost everything she learnt (overcoming her struggles) is just termed as computer science, the only other detail is of a 'robotics club'. That said, generic lesson of overcoming fear of being seen as not-understanding-dumb holds very well.
• leshow 11y ago
  tl;dr claims to have a solution, writes 5 paragraphs about feelz