4 ms·

First of all..The stereotype is mainly nerdy, socially-awkward male...but is it overall white? No. Actually the percentage of white people in software is lower

by eva1984 11y ago

First of all..The stereotype is mainly nerdy, socially-awkward male...but is it overall white? No. Actually the percentage of white people in software is lower than the overall demographics. I can understand why white is singled out here, because it helps to drive the rhetoric of the discussion to racism and sexism, but fundamentally the problem is much more complex. My 2 cents about why women are underrepresented in software industry is that not too many of them are interested in the beginning. One big drive of male programmers, according to my observation (hundreds of samples), are video games, myself included. It is stereotyping, but it is statistically significant. Gamers are overwhelmingly MALE. That is the a big reason that I got to know different parts of computer hardwares, collecting parts from markets and assemble them, and eventually being thrown into this industry. As to girls, they may not have same level of motivation as the boys had. It was in the days, when computer programming was still kind of niche profession and by no means had that much of influence as it cast on the society today, so self-motivation is important. Fundamentally, if we want to really solve the gender issue in this industry, it is not the duty of those established software companies to force reverse sexism to artificially inflate the gender ratio, it is the early stage education system to introduce programming to wider range of people. Once it becomes universal parts of people's curriculum, the problem will be there no longer. Disclaimer: Male, Asian, not born in US, but works here.

halomru 11y ago
>Gamers are overwhelmingly MALE. This used to be true for decades, but by now the majority of people who play computer games are female. Social games and mobile games were a game changer in this regard. It will be interesting to see how that affects interest in programming in the future.
- azazqadir 11y ago
  True, especially for Facebook games. Majority of them are female. Though hardcore PC gamers and console gamers are still male in majority.
- douche 11y ago
  Yeah, but people aren't tweaking the autoexec.bat files and frigging around with virtual memory settings, tweaking drivers and dealing with crazy work-arounds for their social smartphone games, the way a lot of us did cutting our teeth on PC games. I picked up a tremendous amount of various computer trivia digging around making games work, and basically internalized a lot of debugging techniques before getting out of short-pants, so to speak.
  - rimantas 11y ago
    So maybe it is reversed: the fact that you don't need to tweak autoexec.bat any more draws more females to the gaming?
    - douche 11y ago
      Maybe - getting DOS games to run on weird PC clones back in the day was really only an activity fit for masochists - or ten year old boys that reaaaally wanted to shoot some demons or play Warcraft... The other thing is, if gaming is the gateway drug, for a lot of people the next step is modding, level design, botting, etc. The more black-boxy games are, the harder that is.
pessimizer 11y ago
> My 2 cents about why women are underrepresented in software industry is that not too many of them are interested in the beginning. Women were once the majority of programmers. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/computer-programming-used-to-be-womens-work-718061/ http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/computer-programmin... edit: my 65 year old mother is the only reason why I'm a programmer today. Well, that and William Gibson.
fsloth 11y ago
"My 2 cents about why women are underrepresented in software industry is that not too many of them are interested in the beginning. One big drive of male programmers, according to my observation (hundreds of samples), are video games, myself included." I think you are drawing a false statistical conclusion here. The basic hypothesis you are making is: "In the population of women, there is a lower average aptitude for programming than in the population of males". "This hypothesis is based on sampling my coworkers, and the general population". Let's take as given that the statistical aptitude for programming in the general population is much lower than in the population of professional software engineers. Basically, if all of the women you've met and are using as a basis for your hypothesis are not your co-workers, then you are sampling from completely different sets. If we presume you are familiar with n women (and they are picked randomly from the general population) then yes, it is very likely that they have a lower aptitude for programming than the set of your male colleagues. But this lower aptitude would apply to any random set picked from the general population irrespective of sex, or any other factor. " it is the early stage education system to introduce programming to wider range of people" Yes, this.
- mpweiher 11y ago
  >>is that not too many of them are interested in the beginning. >lower average aptitude for programming than in the population of males How did interest turn into aptitude?
  - fsloth 11y ago
    "How did interest turn into aptitude?" Sorry, poor choice of words. I mean 'A quality which increases the likelihood of being employed as a programmer'- this is just not interest, though. But yeah, not a deeply insightful comment, given I tried to play with back of the envelope statistics and ended up with a low quality scheme myself.
- eva1984 11y ago
  That is not what I saying. Basically hypothesis: back in the day, programming is niche and needs self-motivation -> More boys were interested in video games -> Became programmers latter. And if you really read through my post, the sampling is here not to be about women programmers...it is about gamers population in male programmer.

by eva1984 11y ago

halomru 11y ago

>Gamers are overwhelmingly MALE. This used to be true for decades, but by now the majority of people who play computer games are female. Social games and mobile games were a game changer in this regard. It will be interesting to see how that affects interest in programming in the future.

azazqadir 11y ago
True, especially for Facebook games. Majority of them are female. Though hardcore PC gamers and console gamers are still male in majority.
douche 11y ago
Yeah, but people aren't tweaking the autoexec.bat files and frigging around with virtual memory settings, tweaking drivers and dealing with crazy work-arounds for their social smartphone games, the way a lot of us did cutting our teeth on PC games. I picked up a tremendous amount of various computer trivia digging around making games work, and basically internalized a lot of debugging techniques before getting out of short-pants, so to speak.
- rimantas 11y ago
  So maybe it is reversed: the fact that you don't need to tweak autoexec.bat any more draws more females to the gaming?
  - douche 11y ago
    Maybe - getting DOS games to run on weird PC clones back in the day was really only an activity fit for masochists - or ten year old boys that reaaaally wanted to shoot some demons or play Warcraft... The other thing is, if gaming is the gateway drug, for a lot of people the next step is modding, level design, botting, etc. The more black-boxy games are, the harder that is.

pessimizer 11y ago

> My 2 cents about why women are underrepresented in software industry is that not too many of them are interested in the beginning. Women were once the majority of programmers. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/computer-programming-used-to-be-womens-work-718061/ http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/computer-programmin... edit: my 65 year old mother is the only reason why I'm a programmer today. Well, that and William Gibson.

fsloth 11y ago

"My 2 cents about why women are underrepresented in software industry is that not too many of them are interested in the beginning. One big drive of male programmers, according to my observation (hundreds of samples), are video games, myself included." I think you are drawing a false statistical conclusion here. The basic hypothesis you are making is: "In the population of women, there is a lower average aptitude for programming than in the population of males". "This hypothesis is based on sampling my coworkers, and the general population". Let's take as given that the statistical aptitude for programming in the general population is much lower than in the population of professional software engineers. Basically, if all of the women you've met and are using as a basis for your hypothesis are not your co-workers, then you are sampling from completely different sets. If we presume you are familiar with n women (and they are picked randomly from the general population) then yes, it is very likely that they have a lower aptitude for programming than the set of your male colleagues. But this lower aptitude would apply to any random set picked from the general population irrespective of sex, or any other factor. " it is the early stage education system to introduce programming to wider range of people" Yes, this.

mpweiher 11y ago
>>is that not too many of them are interested in the beginning. >lower average aptitude for programming than in the population of males How did interest turn into aptitude?
- fsloth 11y ago
  "How did interest turn into aptitude?" Sorry, poor choice of words. I mean 'A quality which increases the likelihood of being employed as a programmer'- this is just not interest, though. But yeah, not a deeply insightful comment, given I tried to play with back of the envelope statistics and ended up with a low quality scheme myself.
eva1984 11y ago
That is not what I saying. Basically hypothesis: back in the day, programming is niche and needs self-motivation -> More boys were interested in video games -> Became programmers latter. And if you really read through my post, the sampling is here not to be about women programmers...it is about gamers population in male programmer.