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Whether you think it's a deserved prejudice or not, doesn't mean it doesn't exist or it isn't problematic. Sure, the vast majority of young people can't progra
by araneae 16y ago
Whether you think it's a deserved prejudice or not, doesn't mean it doesn't exist or it isn't problematic.
Sure, the vast majority of young people can't program. The vast majority of women can't either. Age AND sex are perfectly useful heuristics for determining whether any given person is a good programmer.
The problem with prejudice is it sucks for those people who are young or female who actually are good.
Personally, I look much younger than I am (usually 3-5 years, but as much as 8 in one case) and it means I'm rarely taken seriously. I can imagine it being frustrating actually being young, as well.
- rmc 16y agoThe vast majority of men can't programme either.
- ohyes 16y agoIt isn't a useful heuristic at all. The vast majority of people can't program. If you take a random person from the population I'm going to assume that they cannot program. If we are talking about 'from the population of programmers' I'd wager (a large sum) there are more men who claim they can program, but actually cannot, just given the fact that the field of programming is a male dominated industry.
- SimonPStevens 16y agoOh totally, I'm not advocating prejudice based on age or any other demographic factor. I'm suggesting is that the author needs to somehow distinguish between prejudice because of age, and failures because of actually not being good. My experience is that most people (of all ages) think they are better than they actually are. Some then go on to blame their failure to achieve a goal on some external factor (in this case ageism). I'm just suggesting that the graph showing that 47% of under 18's think they have been a subject of ageism is fairly irrelevant. Wait until those 18 year olds are 35, then ask them if they were subject to ageism at 18, I bet their story changes.