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Aside from the story, I really do think that women write better code. I think it stems from society's tendency to be overly critical of women and the things th

Aside from the story, I really do think that women write better code. I think it stems from society's tendency to be overly critical of women and the things that they do. If an external force is hypercritical of you, then most people would internalize it. I think this logically leads to better outcomes in things that require critique, like code. Now this idea has much farther reaching (and more negative) consequences for women imo, but I think it applies here.

gizmodo59 10y ago
The issue is 'I think women write better code' to 'Women write better code, study suggests'. The latter suggests the author's own opinion without any proper research as they claim to be.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
x1798DE 10y ago
"Women write better code" seems like an ill-defined statement to me, even assuming you agree on "better" code. Does that mean that the average woman writes code better than the average man? Does it mean that the average "programmer" woman writes code better than the average "programmer" man? Is there anything in there about the the variance in female or male programmer ability? There are a huge number of metrics that would fit the statement, some of which may be true and some may not be true, and many of which might have different conclusions about how "actionable" that information is.
camus2 10y ago
> Aside from the story, I really do think that women write better code. It's your opinion, not backed up by any scientific facts, just like this fake article. It doesn't matter what you think, it doesn't make it a true statement.
guitarbill 10y ago
> I really do think that women write better code. Is such a view helpful though? I've found I really can't judge this is advance at all, regardless of gender. Or anything else really. So any generalisation like "x write better code" is going to disadvantage somebody. The best you can do is give everybody the same chance (and obviously you should be doing that already). Fun anecdote: We used to look at degrees, e.g. was it CS or from a "good" university/college. But we crunched the numbers, and it turned out degree-specifics had almost 0 correlation with how good a candidate was. There'll always be one English major who writes kick-ass code. So now we use an online code tests instead to filter out applicants.
ericathegreat 10y ago
I don't think women are more or less capable than men when it comes to coding. There's no particular aspect of the process which could make it strongly gendered. However, I regularly observe a selection bias, which sometimes makes it seem like women _average_ high. Women who are mediocre at coding have no particular motivation to go into the profession. A lot of the messaging about the career is how hostile it is to women. If you didn't have a burning passion and a strong aptitude for coding, why would you opt yourself into that? You'd have to have a serious skill and/or passion for the field to want to even start. For men, though, that hurdle doesn't exist to the same degree. Passionate, skilled developers still follow their professional dreams, but there are also numerous men-folk who ended up in programming simply because it paid well, or because it was a nice indoorsy type job. Without that first cultural hurdle pushing them away from the career, they slouched their way through university and got a mediocre job as a mediocre developer. There aren't as many professional, mediocre female developers, because only because only those who are really serious and passionate bother to push their way into industry. As we approach 50/50 balance, I'm confident we'll see a much more balanced mediocrity as well. :)

gizmodo59 10y ago

The issue is 'I think women write better code' to 'Women write better code, study suggests'. The latter suggests the author's own opinion without any proper research as they claim to be.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

x1798DE 10y ago

"Women write better code" seems like an ill-defined statement to me, even assuming you agree on "better" code. Does that mean that the average woman writes code better than the average man? Does it mean that the average "programmer" woman writes code better than the average "programmer" man? Is there anything in there about the the variance in female or male programmer ability? There are a huge number of metrics that would fit the statement, some of which may be true and some may not be true, and many of which might have different conclusions about how "actionable" that information is.

camus2 10y ago

> Aside from the story, I really do think that women write better code. It's your opinion, not backed up by any scientific facts, just like this fake article. It doesn't matter what you think, it doesn't make it a true statement.

guitarbill 10y ago

> I really do think that women write better code. Is such a view helpful though? I've found I really can't judge this is advance at all, regardless of gender. Or anything else really. So any generalisation like "x write better code" is going to disadvantage somebody. The best you can do is give everybody the same chance (and obviously you should be doing that already). Fun anecdote: We used to look at degrees, e.g. was it CS or from a "good" university/college. But we crunched the numbers, and it turned out degree-specifics had almost 0 correlation with how good a candidate was. There'll always be one English major who writes kick-ass code. So now we use an online code tests instead to filter out applicants.

ericathegreat 10y ago

I don't think women are more or less capable than men when it comes to coding. There's no particular aspect of the process which could make it strongly gendered. However, I regularly observe a selection bias, which sometimes makes it seem like women _average_ high. Women who are mediocre at coding have no particular motivation to go into the profession. A lot of the messaging about the career is how hostile it is to women. If you didn't have a burning passion and a strong aptitude for coding, why would you opt yourself into that? You'd have to have a serious skill and/or passion for the field to want to even start. For men, though, that hurdle doesn't exist to the same degree. Passionate, skilled developers still follow their professional dreams, but there are also numerous men-folk who ended up in programming simply because it paid well, or because it was a nice indoorsy type job. Without that first cultural hurdle pushing them away from the career, they slouched their way through university and got a mediocre job as a mediocre developer. There aren't as many professional, mediocre female developers, because only because only those who are really serious and passionate bother to push their way into industry. As we approach 50/50 balance, I'm confident we'll see a much more balanced mediocrity as well. :)