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Currently, boys are more culturally inclined to have had previous exposure to technology and programming than girls. This leads to an uneven starting point when

Currently, boys are more culturally inclined to have had previous exposure to technology and programming than girls. This leads to an uneven starting point when they arrive in college. Now this is fine in a vacuum, but when you put students with different experiences into one room, the ones with prior experience will naturally tend to do better. This relative lack of experience is often misinterpreted as a relative lack of ability or aptitude by the students with less experience, even if their potential is equal if not better than their more experienced peers. Since gender currently correlates with experience, one way to help balance things gender wise is to even the field wrt experience. This is something Harvey Mudd has done well. (Granted, their stats will be inflated since Harvey Mudd is an excellent STEM school that attracts some of the most technology inclined female students in the country to apply).

tw04 10y ago
>Currently, boys are more culturally inclined to have had previous exposure to technology and programming than girls. I guess I would ask for your basis for this comment. Unless I'm completely off-base on current teenage culture, kids who sit at their computer to program all day are pretty much universally shunned in high school whether a girl or boy. At least at my high school, the advanced math classes were pretty much 50/50 split between boys and girls and I'd argue passing AP calc in high school is 90% of the battle. If you can tackle that the basics of programming are nothing. >This relative lack of experience is often misinterpreted as a relative lack of ability or aptitude by the students with less experience, even if their potential is equal if not better than their more experienced peers. I guess I don't get where you're going with this. The teachers will expect you to complete homework and tests. If you're saying professors are somehow making girls feel bad if they go in and ask for help on problems, you should be reporting that to the university. I appreciate the opinion but it feels like a huge reach. CS101 is literally as basic as it gets. If you've passed advanced mathematics and are lost in basic programming, CS probably isn't the best profession. I REALLY am struggling to believe the next Diane Greene missed the boat because they couldn't make it through intro to programming. I cannot for the life of me grasp this insistence that we have equal representation across all professions from both genders. It turns out males and females literally have difference chemical make-ups and gravitate towards different professions naturally. If there are women truly being discriminated against, as insinuated above, by something like a professor not giving them the help they need - let's absolutely address it. Fire the professor, sanction the school, throw the book at them. If the issue is "there's way more boys than girls applying for X degrees" - who cares? If they aren't being actively discriminated against, stop trying to force the issue. Let people pursue the professions they enjoy and stop being so caught up in the breakdown of what they naturally drift towards.
- projektir 10y ago
  You appear to have already made up your mind about the issue. It's going to be rather hard for you to see why there may be a problem when it depends on some assumptions you've already rejected: > If you've passed advanced mathematics and are lost in basic programming, CS probably isn't the best profession. I think you're vastly underestimating the benefit of preparation, especially an advanced form of thereof. CS may also require more preparation than other fields do due to its inherent unintuitiveness. The gap between those who dabbled enough to get the basics and those who have never seen it before is rather large. CS 101 is not basic. Even a high school CS class is not basic. Especially at some places. You're lacking perspective here. > I cannot for the life of me grasp this insistence that we have equal representation across all professions from both genders. It turns out males and females literally have difference chemical make-ups and gravitate towards different professions naturally. Many people are not ready to simply accept the latter conclusion because of recent history. Most of those people are similar to the same people who have found that kind of conclusion to be false previously.
  - tw04 10y ago
    >CS 101 is not basic. Even a high school CS class is not basic. Especially at some places. You're lacking perspective here. I had literally 0 CS prior to college. I am not a programmer and have no desire to ever be one and I would likely be a mediocre programmer at best if forced to do so for a living - CS101 was literally the easiest class I had in college. If you're claiming it's not basic I guess we're just at an impasse. I have NEVER met a person who failed out of CS101 and had any place trying to become a professional programmer. I assume you have statistics backing up this wide swath of the population who have failed out of CS101 due to a lack of previous experience who have gone on to be successful programmers? If not, you are making such a massive leap of faith - you're right, I can't get there. As for the conclusion, based on what? You've got scientific evidence proving the chemical make-up of men and women are identical? You're rejecting... reality? I assume you're advocating millions of dollars be pledged towards the funding of a program to increase the population of male nurses, correct?
    - 10y ago

tw04 10y ago

>Currently, boys are more culturally inclined to have had previous exposure to technology and programming than girls. I guess I would ask for your basis for this comment. Unless I'm completely off-base on current teenage culture, kids who sit at their computer to program all day are pretty much universally shunned in high school whether a girl or boy. At least at my high school, the advanced math classes were pretty much 50/50 split between boys and girls and I'd argue passing AP calc in high school is 90% of the battle. If you can tackle that the basics of programming are nothing. >This relative lack of experience is often misinterpreted as a relative lack of ability or aptitude by the students with less experience, even if their potential is equal if not better than their more experienced peers. I guess I don't get where you're going with this. The teachers will expect you to complete homework and tests. If you're saying professors are somehow making girls feel bad if they go in and ask for help on problems, you should be reporting that to the university. I appreciate the opinion but it feels like a huge reach. CS101 is literally as basic as it gets. If you've passed advanced mathematics and are lost in basic programming, CS probably isn't the best profession. I REALLY am struggling to believe the next Diane Greene missed the boat because they couldn't make it through intro to programming. I cannot for the life of me grasp this insistence that we have equal representation across all professions from both genders. It turns out males and females literally have difference chemical make-ups and gravitate towards different professions naturally. If there are women truly being discriminated against, as insinuated above, by something like a professor not giving them the help they need - let's absolutely address it. Fire the professor, sanction the school, throw the book at them. If the issue is "there's way more boys than girls applying for X degrees" - who cares? If they aren't being actively discriminated against, stop trying to force the issue. Let people pursue the professions they enjoy and stop being so caught up in the breakdown of what they naturally drift towards.

projektir 10y ago
You appear to have already made up your mind about the issue. It's going to be rather hard for you to see why there may be a problem when it depends on some assumptions you've already rejected: > If you've passed advanced mathematics and are lost in basic programming, CS probably isn't the best profession. I think you're vastly underestimating the benefit of preparation, especially an advanced form of thereof. CS may also require more preparation than other fields do due to its inherent unintuitiveness. The gap between those who dabbled enough to get the basics and those who have never seen it before is rather large. CS 101 is not basic. Even a high school CS class is not basic. Especially at some places. You're lacking perspective here. > I cannot for the life of me grasp this insistence that we have equal representation across all professions from both genders. It turns out males and females literally have difference chemical make-ups and gravitate towards different professions naturally. Many people are not ready to simply accept the latter conclusion because of recent history. Most of those people are similar to the same people who have found that kind of conclusion to be false previously.
- tw04 10y ago
  >CS 101 is not basic. Even a high school CS class is not basic. Especially at some places. You're lacking perspective here. I had literally 0 CS prior to college. I am not a programmer and have no desire to ever be one and I would likely be a mediocre programmer at best if forced to do so for a living - CS101 was literally the easiest class I had in college. If you're claiming it's not basic I guess we're just at an impasse. I have NEVER met a person who failed out of CS101 and had any place trying to become a professional programmer. I assume you have statistics backing up this wide swath of the population who have failed out of CS101 due to a lack of previous experience who have gone on to be successful programmers? If not, you are making such a massive leap of faith - you're right, I can't get there. As for the conclusion, based on what? You've got scientific evidence proving the chemical make-up of men and women are identical? You're rejecting... reality? I assume you're advocating millions of dollars be pledged towards the funding of a program to increase the population of male nurses, correct?
  - 10y ago