3 ms·

At one point calculators were rows of women performing rote calculations. Early programming was similarly dull/full of detailed work that went through successiv

At one point calculators were rows of women performing rote calculations. Early programming was similarly dull/full of detailed work that went through successive waves of abstraction. This is (also) a sexist stereotype, but maybe just maybe women are drawn to detailed work (say, needlepoint knitting, picking berries) while men are drawn to broad, imprecise work (such as selling insurance policies or chasing antelope). Maybe women are better at punching BCD numerical integrators for problems brought down from Feynman and Fermi, while men like coming up with a whole new language that compiles to PHP. "Women" and "men" meant as generalities and not in the least implying that within-group variation can't be larger than between-groups variation.

kristianc 9y ago
My issue with this is that the classifiers always seem to change, and that no-one can ever seem to agree on what the relevant biological classifiers are and how they apply. If men are drawn to broad, imprecise work, why are more men not marketers (tech or otherwise)? Or, if women are more "creative" as the memo implies, then why wouldn't women be more suited to coming up with a whole new language that compiles to PHP? And, centrally to it, if tech hiring is broken on so many levels, why does it get it right in terms of gender?
- thanatropism 9y ago
  No one knows what is "right in terms of gender".
mcguire 9y ago
"Early programming" was essentially systems and embedded programming.
- kamaal 9y ago
  I think the point is you 'wrote' bulk of the code on paper. There weren't keyboard interfaced computers as common as they are today. So once some programmer writes the code/flowchart, and gives it you on a paper. Its supposed to converted to punch cards/switches/whatever and then fed to a computer. The difference between the former and latter now is huge. The latter job is now nothing more than being a glorified typewriting kind of work. I realized this when I was doing some really complicated GUI work on an embedded system. I was programming all the time on paper, I was doing it a lunch table, during transit, thinking during shower etc etc. After working several papers worth of programming, I converted it to C code, a few hundred to may be a thousand+ lines. The real job of writing C code was largely a ritual that took like a few hours. Working out the algorithm was real programming that spanned a few days. I could see how early programming went. Plenty of algorithm writing and unit testing through induction on paper.

kristianc 9y ago

My issue with this is that the classifiers always seem to change, and that no-one can ever seem to agree on what the relevant biological classifiers are and how they apply. If men are drawn to broad, imprecise work, why are more men not marketers (tech or otherwise)? Or, if women are more "creative" as the memo implies, then why wouldn't women be more suited to coming up with a whole new language that compiles to PHP? And, centrally to it, if tech hiring is broken on so many levels, why does it get it right in terms of gender?

thanatropism 9y ago
No one knows what is "right in terms of gender".

mcguire 9y ago

"Early programming" was essentially systems and embedded programming.

kamaal 9y ago
I think the point is you 'wrote' bulk of the code on paper. There weren't keyboard interfaced computers as common as they are today. So once some programmer writes the code/flowchart, and gives it you on a paper. Its supposed to converted to punch cards/switches/whatever and then fed to a computer. The difference between the former and latter now is huge. The latter job is now nothing more than being a glorified typewriting kind of work. I realized this when I was doing some really complicated GUI work on an embedded system. I was programming all the time on paper, I was doing it a lunch table, during transit, thinking during shower etc etc. After working several papers worth of programming, I converted it to C code, a few hundred to may be a thousand+ lines. The real job of writing C code was largely a ritual that took like a few hours. Working out the algorithm was real programming that spanned a few days. I could see how early programming went. Plenty of algorithm writing and unit testing through induction on paper.