31 ms·

Women: Learn to Program This Summer

268 points by jl 8y ago

dzink 8y ago
Spreading this as far and wide as I can. Coding is as critical as literacy for the next 20 years and there are too many programs and teachers that teach it poorly, alienating large segments of the population. Lambda is among the best. I hope they can scale past 40 students for this in the future.
- alexashka 8y ago
  What? The average IQ is 100. Computer science is not a 100 IQ field. Science is not a 100 IQ endeavour. Coding at 100 IQ level will be automated away very soon the same way anyone can have a facebook account without knowing HTML.
  - dictum 8y ago
    At what IQ does one act upon the opportunities and circumstances available at present time?
  - dang 8y ago
    Who (else) said anything about IQ? Could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html? They include: "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." Also, please stop posting flamebait, especially ideological flamebait, to HN. It fuels flamewars, which destroy what we want to preserve here: thoughtful conversation and intellectual curiosity. Assuming those are things you also want, you're welcome to post here in that spirit.
    - alexashka 8y ago
      Coding was compared to literacy here. Literacy is taught in schools because people of average IQ (100) are capable of literacy and find it helpful in their everyday lives. Literacy is one of the few things taught in schools that actually has any utility in people's everyday lives. Coding is nothing like literacy. It is more like chemistry, physics or Shakespeare - something the vast majority don't care about and will quickly forget. If you have any doubt - poll the population on Newton's three laws of motion and why they matter. Regarding idealogical flamebait - I don't even know what that is - I'm simply expressing my opinion, that the above has hopefully clarified. If you find my stance on the school system offensive, rest assured I'll no longer reply on the matter in this thread, seeing how quick others are to judge others in a negative light.
      - dang 8y ago
        That is a much more substantive comment! there wouldn't have been a moderation issue if you'd posted that to begin with. One way to think of flamebait is low-information comments on provocative topics. Ideological flamebait is the same, on topics where the provocation tends to be ideological.
- gridlockd 8y ago
  > Coding is as critical as literacy for the next 20 years... I think this is an absurd and tired meme. Most shops who employ coders also employ about 75% non-coders. You need sales, marketing, accounting, management, HR, legal - and even the IT guys often truck along fine with little to no coding skills. If you need code written to perform your task that usually just means the UI of your application isn't powerful enough. So get a coder to add that feature to the UI. You don't need to become a coder yourself. Here's why we really need "more coders" all the time: - the web frontend is getting reinvented every year - the latest trends in infrastructure design ("terascale micro-micro-micro-services as a service") need attention - the latest devices and platform SDKs need to be dealt with - the insane amount of technical debt accumulated through all this churn needs to be paid off Which is all fine only as long as the money keeps rolling in.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > > Coding is as critical as literacy for the next 20 years... > I think this is an absurd and tired meme. Most shops who employ coders also employ about 75% non-coders It would be absurd if coding skill were only useful to people whose job title and central role is “coder” (just as viewing literacy as central would be absurd if measured by the number of people employed as “writers”.)
  - jimbokun 8y ago
    Jessica made a really good point, that female founders without any coding knowledge can't even assess whether a coder is any good before hiring him or her. Getting the fundamentals in an intense summer course will not only enable someone to develop a prototype on their own, but also assess who is a good potential hire and who is just good at bullshitting.
    - gridlockd 8y ago
      > Jessica made a really good point, female founders without any coding knowledge can't even assess whether a coder is any good before hiring him or her. If I followed this line of reasoning, then I couldn't hire a lawyer without knowing law, I couldn't hire a marketing person without knowing marketing, I couldn't hire a sales person without knowing sales, and so on and so forth. I would argue that knowledge in law, sales and marketing are far more important to a founder, yet people obsess over coding. > Getting the fundamentals in an intense summer course will not only enable someone to develop a prototype on their own, but also assess who is a good potential hire and who is just good at bullshitting. I don't think that's true. To accurately judge someone else's competence, you have to be at least on their level. Secondly, it's credentials like work experience and education that you go by when hiring. I'm aware that a lot of software developers are often forced to pass lots of silly programming tests, but that's known to not result in better hiring. If you are a founder and non-technical, you shouldn't hire a random developer anyway. You should have a technical co-founder that you can trust and you should focus on literally everything else. You'll need to do a thousand things, but writing code isn't really one of them.
chasingthewind 8y ago
I think this is really commendable. When you put your money where your mouth is you really show that you're serious about your values. All the best to the forty future winners of this grant!
- writepub 8y ago
  This is excellent marketing at best, and nothing to do with values. Lambda school is a YC portfolio company, and this program/post has gotten YC and LS oodles of positive press. The gender of this batch is designed to generate positive buzz, there was never any restriction on admissions before this announcement, no bias in getting into LS. So what exactly is this supposed to achieve? Great marketing, guys and gals! Cheers
  - austenallred 8y ago
    Well, that's one way to look at the world. Lambda School's traffic is down 20% today as compared to yesterday, so if this was a marketing stunt it was a very inefficient and expensive one.
    - rudedogg 8y ago
      > Lambda School's traffic is down 20% today as compared to yesterday This seems weird; did you account for the time (since it's only around noon?)
      - dang 8y ago
        Fridays are lower traffic on HN too. Maybe that generalizes.
  - dang 8y ago
    Jessica's posts explain exactly what exactly this is supposed to achieve.
rosterface 8y ago
I recently completed a very difficult job search where I unfortunately had to lean on my ethnicity (I’m Mexican) to pass through very overt screening against white men. I was shocked to hear from multiple companies, large and small, that they did not want men and white men in particular. Now we see a YC co-founder giving 40 women $9000 to learn to program. Where does it end? I was really sad that while I personally can survive in this environment (if I abandon my ideals of not being judged by my genetics), many good men who are passionate about their work are being pressured from all sides. I honestly don’t see how any of this is legal but it’s such a taboo to talk about that fixing the problem seems impossible without a major shift back to valuing skills above demographics.
- jordigh 8y ago
  > I honestly don’t see how any of this is legal Let me help you, fellow Mexican: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2017-title29-vol4/xml/CFR-2017-title29-vol4-part1608.xml https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2017-title29-vol4/xm... The reason it's legal is because there are laws that explicitly allow this for certain underrepresented or disadvantaged groups. Espero que esto aclare tus dudas.
  - atom-morgan 8y ago
    A legal justification doesn't make something right. It's also worth mentioning why the term "underrepresented minority" or "underrepresented group" is need in the first place. Considering how sexist and racist people claim tech is Asians seem to be doing perfectly fine which is exactly why the term URM is needed in the first place.
    - jordigh 8y ago
      The question was just about the legality of it. It's not a mystery why it's legal and people should be aware of what the laws actually are.
      - commandlinefan 8y ago
adenadel 8y ago
Here's the blog post explaining why Jessica is doing this http://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/why-i-started-the-summer-hackers-program http://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/why-i-started-the-summer...
seancoleman 8y ago
My girlfriend, a nurse of 10+ years, just started learning to code on her own, built her first (basic) website (https://www.nataliepeterson.dev https://www.nataliepeterson.dev) and is applying to Lambda School already. I sent this to her this morning and she was elated. Programs like this really work.
- tqkxzugoaupvwqr 8y ago
  For whatever reason this website feels so personal. Instant flashbacks to the 2000s. I love it. Hint for picking a random image when clicking on the image: The currently shown image should be excluded from the list of images to draw from. This prevents the problem that sometimes clicks appear to do nothing, although in reality the same image was randomly picked again.
  - seancoleman 8y ago
    Great suggestion. I will pass along the feedback to the developer :)
    - jxub 8y ago
      A carrousel could work as well
      - fokinsean 8y ago
        carrousels are so passé
  - Ntrails 8y ago
    I got the same vibe, so much of ones self just thrown onto a page to see what will happen. Super fun to see. Good luck to the author :)
  - quickthrower2 8y ago
    This is what the web would look like if everyone learned to program and got off Facebook. I can only dream! It's https and 100 speed score on https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nataliepeterson.dev%2F https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=.... I'm guessing this is on something like Netlify, as it's fast and there is HN hug of death.
mettamage 8y ago
If it's an online programming class, then why not extent the offer to people based outside the US? This US protectionism thing is driving me crazy. I'll offer my services to Lambda School and/or YC for free if that means I can extent this offer to EU people, provided that my living expenses are covered. I'm in between jobs so I have the perfect schedule for it. I'm from the EU.
- adingus 8y ago
  It says why in the article. You should read it.
  - dang 8y ago
    Could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html? They include: Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that." (This is nowhere near the worst guideline violation in this thread, but it's such a precise one.)
    - adingus 8y ago
      Are you insinuating I didn't read the guidelines?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
yakshaving_jgt 8y ago
I have several female friends who find Affirmative Action campaigns so off-putting, they decide against joining the industry. One friend recently complained to me that all the AA enthusiasts just want to talk about feminism and women in the workplace, and not about actually writing code. She was incensed because she was invited to a 'Girls Code' meetup, where women would learn about algorithms by modelling their own menstrual cycles[0]. She was (understandably) frustrated, saying that her interests extend beyond what comes out of her genitals. This is anecdotal, sure, but amongst my social circle, this seems to be the rule rather than the exception. I sense a bazillion downvotes coming my way. You may think these opinions I am passing along are incredibly incorrect, but they are the opinions of women. [0]: https://imgur.com/a/jFLU0C8 https://imgur.com/a/jFLU0C8 EDIT: It took no time at all for the downvotes to arrive, as expected. There is no such thing as the sisterhood. Feminists will immediately cast out any woman who doesn't hold the "right" opinions.
- zimablue 8y ago
  This isn't as rare as it sounds, when I was young and a lot more arrogant+principled, I refused to go to my (not actually paying/good) college's Oxbridge interview prep, also ruled out medicine as a career choice partly because in the UK at the time to get in you had to do charity work/specific extra-curriculars. Insane reasoning looking back, but hey 17 year olds are often principled nutcases. I can definitely imagine doing what you describe re compsci if I was a 17 year old girl in 2019. Hope any principled girls (in my biased opinion the brightest/best people in the end) we lose from information tech go into something else useful, kind of a sad thought.
- tyrust 8y ago
  >Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- exolymph 8y ago
  I am also a woman and feel similarly, although it didn't deter me from working in the industry (or at least adjacent to it).
sisu2019 8y ago
you wont change fewer women programmers because, wait for it, women tend to have personality traits that do not go well together with coding. Of course, feel free to waste your money and your reputation doing this pointless virtue signaling anyway.
TheAdamAndChe 8y ago
There will be benefits to this program for those who participate, and I wholly wish those women who have the opportunity to participate the best of luck. However, I also worry about the motives behind the program. A huge part of feminism is a push towards gender equality[1]. Discriminating against half of the population while aiming for equality is an odd way to behave. I know the blog post did not mention gender equality as a goal, but I just completely fail to see how discrimination like this will lead to anything but increased inter-gender conflict and the persistence of stereotypes in the field. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism
- rubicon33 8y ago
  I don't understand why you're getting down voted for this comment. Isn't the goal equal opportunity? Providing artificial silo'd environments seems at odds to the goal of an unbiased, fair workplace. But I guess I'll just get down voted too.
  - manfredo 8y ago
    In much of silicon valley, the goal is equal outcomes not equal opportunity. Often times explicitly unequal opportunity is necessary to achieve equal outcomes.
    - grondilu 8y ago
      Equal opportunity? How often do men get free programming lessons IRL?
  - krapp 8y ago
    The premise here is that opportunity wasn't equal to begin with. To accept this premise, you have to also accept the premise that societal restrictions on the roles permitted to women, culturally imposed limits on womens' ability to gain power and authority (the "glass ceiling") and persistent beliefs about women being intellectually inferior to men in regards to certain fields, would lead to a status quo not of meritocracy or equality but prejudice against women in an otherwise 'unbiased' system. And so, to further the goal of equal opportunity, one must balance an already unbalanced set of scales. Not to do so is merely to accept its bias as the status quo.
alexashka 8y ago
'breaking into the startup world' - sigh... How do you break into being a domain expert via 5-10+ years of experience? What do people think start-ups are exactly? Random people with no domain expertise coding their way to great products?
- immad 8y ago
  Someone might have 20 years of relevant domain experience and no coding experience. Also one can't get to 5 years without doing the 1st year. So I don't really see your point.
- austenallred 8y ago
  1. Who said you have to have 5-10+ years of experience to start a startup? That's likely an advantage, but certainly not a prerequisite 2. Perhaps there are domain experts with 5-10 years of experience in _something_ and them learning to be technical is impactful?
- jimbokun 8y ago
  Jessica explicitly says in her blog post that many of the women who consider applying to YCombinator have a lot of useful business skills and domain expertise for the business they want to start, but are held back because they can't code an initial version of the product.
  - alexashka 8y ago
    My comment was in regards to a young daughter asking how she could break into the start-up world. The author suggested that coding was a good idea. The author went on to mention that learning in the span of a summer would help pick a good team member or even build a prototpe him/herself. We know from both studies and personal experience, that tech interviews just don't work all that well. This is tech interviews done by professional programmers and managers. We don't know how to pick people who are good vs talk like they're good! This is not anecdotal - it is well known via studies, done by top psychologists. Given that - how would a summer coding bootcamp help pick a co-founder? It's certainly better than nothing. It is also not clear how much one would benefit from 3 months versus taking one of the many excellent online courses and working at your own pace, such as Harvard's CS50, freely available on youtube. Regarding building your own prototype after 3 months of programming - I just want to throw my hands up in the air of this wishful thinking that 3 months is anywhere close to enough time. You will need someone who's tech savvy, and then you're right back to the same difficulties.
nck4222 8y ago
I'm trying to figure out on what side of the debate I fall on this one. On the one hand, women have obviously been disadvantaged in many ways, for many years, which is wrong. The gender disparity in software development is well documented, and should be fixed. No one should be discouraged from learning, or opportunities denied because of gender. On the other hand, a for-profit company deciding to offer free services to individual women, who may or may not be disadvantaged, simply because they're women, doesn't sit well with me either. Frankly, it seems likely that anyone who applies to lambda school (either gender), probably lean towards the more advantaged end than the less advantaged end. So it seems likely this is going to result in women with plenty of advantages already, receiving $9000 worth of education for free, while explicitly denying this opportunity to men, and continuing to disadvantage members of both groups. So, I guess my question is, why is this morally OK? If this was targeted specifically to disadvantaged people, or disadvantaged women, or if it was a non-profit, it seems like this would be an easier call for me.
- creaghpatr 8y ago
  It's ethical as long as they don't target journalists.
- commandlinefan 8y ago
  > discouraged from learning, or opportunities denied because of gender. Is there any evidence that this is happening, though? I've never seen anybody, even anecdotally claim "I'm a woman (who is qualified) and I've been unable to find employment". Mostly what I see is people trying to work backwards and say, "if group X makes up Y% of the population and only Z% of programmers, that in itself must be evidence of discrimination".
  - nck4222 8y ago
    It doesn't have to be overt, or even knowingly done. Children are frequently subtly pushed towards different careers because of their gender, many times by their devoted parents. It's a societal problem. EDIT: Here's one paper that talks about how "widely shared cultural beliefs about gender" affect early decisions people make wrt to their careers https://sociology.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj9501/f/publications/gender_and_the_career_choice_process-_the_role_of_biased_self-assessments.pdf https://sociology.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj9501/f/pu... "The results of this study show that males assess their own mathematical competence higher than their otherwise equal female counterparts" "self-assessments of task competence were found to influence career-relevant decisions, even when controlling for commonly accepted measures of ability. For males and females, the higher they rate their mathematical competence, the greater the odds that they will continue on the path leading to careers in the quantitative professions. However, since males tend to overestimate their mathematical competence relative to females, males are also more likely to pursue activities leading down a path toward a career in science, math, and engineering."
grondilu 8y ago
Isn't programming a skill that can be learned alone in a fairly straightforward manner? I mean, most programming languages have extensive documentation, tutorials and so on (at least FOSS dynamical languages like Python, Rust, Perl...). From my personal experience and what I can guess about hackers I've talked to for instance on IRC, that's how most guys learned it : the web is full of resources for whoever wants to learn. Now, if for some reason women don't take this road and "need" someone to hold their hand in order to learn programming, I would argue that maybe those women don't have the intrinsic motivation to do so and trying to force it upon them may be a gross waste of time and resources. Not to mention that programming can be a tedious and lame job (sitting in front of a computer all day is often mentioned as a genuine nightmare), so if you have to do it, you'd better love it in the first place.
- Pfhreak 8y ago
  > Isn't programming a skill that can be learned alone in a fairly straightforward manner? No? Stuff like pointers, for loops, threads, interface design, data structures, idempotency, source control, working on a linux command line, etc. all present reasonably challenging roadblocks for a burgeoning developer, and I think many of us benefited from having someone around to help walk us through this the first time.
  - grondilu 8y ago
    > working on a linux command line, That's an interesting example. Sure, I was initiated to the Unix command line at the University, but it was just that : an initiation. I got hooked quickly though so I was driven to learn the rest all by myself (or rather, with the help of the linux community online). I'm sure it's more or less the same for most linux nerds. I may have bought one or two books about linux though, but buying a book about a subject you're passionate about is something normal. You're right that once you want to get into the important technical details, free documentation on the web may be insufficient and you may need to invest in proper textbooks. I still think my point stands, though.
    - Pfhreak 8y ago
ajiang 8y ago
EDIT: To clarify that the money is going directly to private individuals, as per Austen. Incredible, thanks for putting your money where your values are @jl. As for the numerous comments in this post around reverse sexism / reverse discrimination: 1. This is a private individual giving personal capital to other private individuals, supporting a personal cause. It is hard to both claim principles of free market and rally against this. 2. Private companies making hiring decisions are correcting for an indefinite history of bias. That doesn't mean they're hiring unqualified individuals, simply that they're making sure they put in measure to correct for biases and can identify individuals with the great qualifications that in the past would have been past up due to arbitrary euphemisms for gender / racial bias like 'bad culture fit'. 3. None of this is to say that you personally are not experiencing a challenging time or are not subject to bias in any way. None of this should diminish your personal challenges in the work environment. That should be addressed. This particular individual (@jl) and this particular company (Lambda School) are just not addressing that particular cause at this moment. And that should be ok.
- zimablue 8y ago
  1. Free market doesn't mean that your choices are exempt from criticism. I was going to say silly but honestly this is a very stupid point. "To people who are criticising me for funding ISIS - FREE MARKET".
  - ajiang 8y ago
    I'd like to think HN is a place where people can have debate without resorting to saying things like "very stupid point" ;) You're absolutely right that free market doesn't mean your choices are exempt from criticism. That isn't my point, nor where I applied 'Free Market'. My point was: If you're going to argue against this donation, saying that it fuels the trend of reverse racism / sexism that makes the free market more distorted, I would argue that this donation is very much a part of the free market. Private donations to private organizations for private causes.
    - zimablue 8y ago
hhs 8y ago
I think this is wonderful. Makes me think of Eleanor Roosevelt. She started by focusing on a group. But there were a lot of problems in her times and she recognized that, and she went on to tackle so many things like anti-poverty and unemployed youth. I wonder if Jessica Livingston will do something similar, since it's written in the FAQ: "Since neither I nor Lambda School have tried this before, I wanted to reduce the number of variables. If it works this summer, we may expand it next summer."
gridlockd 8y ago
> We use inclusive definitions of “women” and “female” and welcome trans women, ... Cool! > ...genderqueer women... I'm not sure what that means, but... > ...and non-binary people who are female-identified. Okay, what? Isn't the point of non-binary to not to be in the binary of man/woman? Can I identify as male, female and non-binary? Female and non-binary or male and non-binary? Male, female, female and non-binary? The first programming task for these students should be designing the UI widget that appropriately records the "gender preference" of a user in 2019.
MagicPropmaker 8y ago
There was a lawsuit in 2018. I'm not sure what the outcome was: https://www.thecollegefix.com/women-only-tech-scholarships-man-tax-violate-california-discrimination-laws-lawsuit/ https://www.thecollegefix.com/women-only-tech-scholarships-m...
- salmonellaeater 8y ago
  The plaintiffs lost. > Judgment was entered as follows: Judgment entered for FS ISAC Inc and against Allison, Rich ;Hamilton, James https://unicourt.com/case/ca-sd-allison-vs-fs-isac-inc-861010 https://unicourt.com/case/ca-sd-allison-vs-fs-isac-inc-86101...
decebalus1 8y ago
I'm leaning back and watching our profession go to shit. The liberalization of programming is very profitable for software companies. The wages need to go way down as currently we're the contemporary blue-collar job that didn't get screwed up by the modern corporate machine. This has less to do with gender than with plain-old creating inflation within the profession. Accountants, doctors, lawyers, all managed to closely guard their profession while we're opening up the doors to basically everyone and we think 'it's cute' when the janitor learns how to write web pages. People saluting this should check back in about 10 years to let me know how it goes.
- prolepunk 8y ago
  Sure, whenever someone comes up with initiative to encourage women to do anything, inevitably people start crawling out saying everything is going to be screwed up because of that. Not be cause of women, of course, that would be a misogynist thing to say, but because of some completely unrelated and irrelevant reason. yeah, right.
- MrPea 8y ago
  Couldn't have said it better. My eyes need a break rolling when people, especially politicians, say coding is a requirement and as important as math.
  - kazinator 8y ago
    Algorithmic thinking is part of math, and quite important. Anyone who learns pencil-and-paper addition and multiplication is actually following an algorithm, so you basically cannot even learn arithmetic without touching algorithms. People need to understand what an algorithm is, because more and more circumstances which affect their lives will be determined by algorithms.
    - MrPea 8y ago
      Good point, I think an important distinction is computer science versus software engineering. I fear if it's the latter, schools will be churning out code monkeys
dgzl 8y ago
I don't think throwing money and free services at women while we sit on our knees begging them to join us the best way to get them interested. I'm generally against equality of outcome, and support equality of opportunity, which this is not.
- theprotocol 8y ago
  I agree. Sadly I have been slandered for having this view. Apparently belief in equality means I hate women ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
ringaroll 8y ago
This is an excellent thing! More women should be encouraged to code as there are too many men in the field already. I hope this sets the trend so that colleges mandate 60% quota for women in CS. Companies should pay women more then men to encourage more women to join the field. Laws should be made so that companies have to hire women because the bosses are misogynist. Destroy the patriarchy! You go girl!
- dang 8y ago
  Please do not take HN threads even further into ideological hell. In addition to destroying this place, it's tedious.
  - ringaroll 8y ago
    You're a far right misogynist woman hating person. In other words are a part of the problem! Don't you see a problem with too many men in CS? Don't you want more women to succeed? I just checked your profile. You should be fired for being a woman hater.
    - dang 8y ago
      Ok, since it seems you don't want to use HN as intended, I've banned the account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
dang 8y ago
All: there's room on HN for good-faith debate, but not for ideological flamebait (regardless of which flavor), so can you please not post that? It's tedious, off topic, and boy does it suck the oxygen out of a thread. Here's a test: ask yourself how much intellectual curiosity there is in your comment or your motivation for posting. If you don't find much, please hold off until you do. Intellectual curiosity is the reason this site exists [1], and it's a fragile factor nowadays amid the rage and hysteria online. Keep HN curious. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- moffet2018 8y ago
  hey dang, ask yourself how much intellectual curiosity is there in this promo post?! quite disingenuous on your side.
  - dang 8y ago
    It's true that moderation comments are out-of-band for the site. But they're necessary, because the system can't right itself without them. If it helps at all, they're even more tedious to write than they are to read. Edit: mlevental points out that you were referring to the article, not my comment. I think there's plenty of intellectual curiosity in what Jessica wrote, especially in the blog post explaining why she did it. In fact, I'd say it's obvious. That commenters don't always respond to curiosity with curiosity of their own is a separate issue. Certainly it's also a promotional post in the sense of wanting to call attention to the program, but that sort of mix is common on HN, and it's where it is on the front page because users upvoted it.
    - mlevental 8y ago
      the person you're responding to here is trying to point out that the article is disingenuous and so only can generate the same. I don't agree/disagree. just clarifying.
      - root_axis 8y ago
40acres 8y ago
Some of the comments in this thread is a master class of how discrimination and gatekeeping work not just in our industry but in society as a whole. How can we simultaneously be an industry built on free an open source software and yet try to put up walls around our industry when efforts are made to make it more accessible to others? The barriers to programming are being lowered and this is an excellent thing. More diverse companies, different types of people to bounce ideas on, new perspectives. This is what our industry needs more than ever, and yet so many feel a threat veiled by concerns of affirmative action and 'reverse discrimination'. We need to acknowledge the barriers that have existed in our industry but may be blind to you personally because you never had to deal with it. For one, access to a PC for a long time was restricted to those with low incomes. My mother saved her income tax refund for two years to buy our first PC, the one I learned to program on. The schools I attended didn't have a computer lab until my junior year of high school. It's a great thing that programming is being spread to those who did not have access before. If software is eating the world everyone had better become familiar.
- ericsoderstrom 8y ago
  > Some of the comments in this thread is a master class of how discrimination and gatekeeping work All the top comments I see are supportive and encouraging. Maybe there were some negative removed comments, but overall this thread doesn't seem to demonstrate gatekeeping and discrimination.
  - djsumdog 8y ago
    Enabled flagged/dead in your options. I think it's pretty valuable to see the way moderators are shaping the conversation.
    - coolreader18 8y ago
      Isn't it a common misconception that flagged/dead comments are because of moderators? Dead comments happen automatically if enough people flag it[0]. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173836 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173836
golemiprague 8y ago
Just leave the women alone, they are not interested and rightfully so. In the western world there are many other jobs which are much more fun for women and they are happy to do them, including high paying professional jobs like lawyers or doctors with much higher bars for entry, and yet, women manage to study and do those jobs just fine. In countries where programming pays well and there are no other better options you can see much more women in the field, like India or Israel, somehow those women who in many times comes from much more traditional and conservative societies, manage to learn to code like any other men. I wonder how they do it without all the affirmative action while popping out 5 kids per family or even more like the orthodox women in Israel. It seems like modern feminism destroys the capability of women to learn anything that is not liberal arts, someone needs to research how that happened and how it is all men's fault.
calimac 8y ago
Another promotion of a protected class designed to bait and separate humans
black-tea 8y ago
People: do whatever you want to do this summer. There are virtually zero barriers to entry for programming today. They've been minimal for a good twenty years now as it is.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
sickygnar 8y ago
Hello Michael, Thank you for applying to the Summer Hackers Program. We’ve received your submission. In the first week of April, we'll be selecting the 40 students who'll receive a scholarship to our immersive 15-week course and a living stipend. We'll invite students to a 10-minute interview by April 5, and by April 15, we'll be able to send out acceptances. Then, you'll have until 8am PST on May 21 to complete our precourse work. You can get started on that today: PRE-COURSE WORK To be admitted to Lambda School, you must pass the Lambda Challenge: https://challenge.lambdaschool.com https://challenge.lambdaschool.com, a timed (45-minute) three-question test on JavaScript. If you're comfortable with JavaScript, you can take the Lambda Challenge today. If you don't know JavaScript yet, that's fine! We teach what you need to know in our precourse work, which you can access on your student profile at https://apply.lambdaschool.com https://apply.lambdaschool.com. If accepted to Lambda School, the Lambda Challenge must be completed a week prior to your start date. You should expect to spend 20-30 hours completing the precourse work, and you can get help with it by signing up for our Web Development Prep Slack: https://lambdaschool.com/web-prep-slack https://lambdaschool.com/web-prep-slack. Thank you and have a nice day! Karen Zachary Director of Admissions Lambda School
grondilu 8y ago
I'm genuinely curious about how deeply identity politics is infecting HN. Also, arguably the very original submission is flame bait.
spammersharass 8y ago
Don't know what the fuss is about, this is open to everyone, men and women: > We use inclusive definitions of “women” and “female” and welcome trans women, genderqueer women, and non-binary people who are female-identified.
DBYCZ 8y ago
Anyone who argues that there should be "More women in tech" needs to go visit a medical college. Completely filled with super smart women interested in science. If STEM women found Coding as interesting as they did Medicine (which is arguably more competitive and prestigious), we wouldn't have any shortage of women writing code. There is nothing wrong with either way, just let people do what they like to do.
- ajross 8y ago
  What's the evidence that women aren't coding because they aren't "interested"? If you want to make that argument, don't you need to go and refute all the anecdotal evidence that women aren't entering tech careers because they don't feel welcome? I cite as evidence the fact that women in med schools have not, in fact, always been well represented and that the same kind of rhetoric about their "interests" was used to exclude them from medicine as recently as our parents' generation. So... given a choice between "tech is fundamentally different from medicine and chicks don't like it" and "tech is behind medicine's adoption curve with resepect to gender inclusion", I'm taking the later as the obvious hypothesis.
  - henryaj 8y ago
    > "tech is behind medicine's adoption curve with resepect to gender inclusion" also seems like a hard-to-believe hypothesis. See https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more... for an outline of the 'interest' hypothesis - essentially, women are stronger than men in both verbal and math/science domains, but prefer the former, so will pick subjects that more closely align with their interests when society lets them do so. In countries with worse egalitarianism and social security, they'll gravitate towards subjects that bring them more economic freedom.
  - QualityReboot 8y ago
    > If you want to make that argument, don't you need to go and refute all the anecdotal evidence that women aren't entering tech careers because they don't feel welcome? Who feels welcome in tech? It's an elitest culture filled with strong personalities that fancies itself a meritocracy.
temptemptemp111 8y ago
We know you're manipulating the front page ideologically. We know you've shadow banned hundreds not due to anything in the HN rules, but due to your ideology. I'm just posting this for others to see... You and I have been over this many times in the past and you refuse to be honest.
allen37 8y ago
A great message. I love HN for this very reason. Just today I noticed an article about an Army interrogator turned concientious objector. At the latter portion of my military career I too was an interrogator. I avoided posting because I realized the topic was too hot and likely to become political. It didn't hurt my feelings, I simply moved on with my day.
- dang 8y ago
  We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19465697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19465697 and marked it off-topic. Nothing wrong with your comment at all, it just shouldn't be at the top of this thread. Mine shouldn't either, but it's up there for different reasons unfortunately.
DantesKite 8y ago
In general, making it easier for more people to get into programming feels feels like a good thing to me. Programming is a game-changer in terms of its ability to amplify talents and interests. It's the longest lever I know of. What stops people from getting into programming, however, is a bit more difficult to determine, but there does seem to be patterns. Less women and blacks compared to asians and whites. Oddly enough, trying to figure out the causes of these differences intersects a broad range of fields from evolution to sexual discrimination to access to resources. And because there's so much uncertainty, the explanation quickly turns into politics.
- princekolt 8y ago
  My personal 2c is that it is a lot about perception and awareness. You need to be aware a certain thing exists and how it works before you can aspire to do it. I'm sure you've met people in the past that had jobs you didn't even know existed. And invariably since some populations have been less present in tech, less of that population will be exposed to it, and thus aspire to work in it. Sometimes the smallest influences can have a big impact, both positively and negatively.
harrisonjackson 8y ago
I like to take the most positive outlook on these sorts of things... What a fantastic opportunity for 40 women! In my career and life, I've been fortunate to have a lot of great opportunities - some that I sought out and some that fell into my lap. I've tried to pay it forward when I can and I am sure that these women will too given the chance. The impact of these 40 scholarships could be 40 more technical cofounders or mentors or inventors - and that is a great thing for the community. I hope that 1+ of these ladies offer me a great opportunity or create an amazing product that I love :D
peterwwillis 8y ago
So, this brings up some questions in my mind: 1) Who is it being offered to? Clearly, women in college. The majority of people in college are privileged (in this country, anyway) so you're offering free money to potentially privileged people. Is it possible to prioritize women who need the money over ones that could pay for it? 2) If I offered $9,000 in training for welding to someone in college, they might take that too. It's well known that the things people study in college and careers they prepare for often don't always result in what they do for the rest of their working life. Is it possible to prioritize individuals who demonstrate a consistent/continued interest in being in the industry, rather than random students looking for a free ride? 3) Where is this being marketed? To insiders who already are in a position to want to be in the industry and find a place there? Or underprivileged and minority communities that might need more of a hand to find out about such opportunities before they can work towards them? Basically, I think it's a nice idea, but I think it can be tuned to optimize doing the most good with some minor tweaks.
eraad 8y ago
This headline would get you banned from Twitter
wtdata 8y ago
Ask yourself, would it be proper an action titled: Men: Learn Medicine this summer or Men: Learn Psychology this summer? All I am asking is for coherence, one way or another.
- DanBC 8y ago
  They have those, and this is a point that is repeatedly made, and debunked, on HN.
  - wtdata 8y ago
    It's interesting, all top results in Google for "affirmative action in medicine" are about ethnicity, not gender [1] (same for psychology), can you point me to the source where it's something normal for men as well? [1] https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=affirmative+action+in+medicine https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=affirmative+action+in+...
    - lostdog 8y ago
      30 seconds of Googling found this and many other examples: https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-physician-relationships/why-men-are-considered-a-diversity-pick-for-some-ob-gyn-residency-programs.html https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-physician-rel... If you include nursing you'll find even more examples. There are so many poor arguments against diversity efforts that should be retired.
tmaly 8y ago
I am working on an effort to build a course for my younger daughter. Its less ambitious than this, but she is having a lot of fun learning. I am targeting visual programming with Scratch 3
howiroll 8y ago
Are women disabled or needs special attention when learning to code?
pj_mukh 8y ago
There are so many women I know that are cognitively over-qualified for the jobs they are in, and kind of stuck because of finances. I am sending this to all of them.
leereeves 8y ago
I honestly do think this is a good idea. She saw a need, identified a way to help, and is generously contributing. And if some women feel more comfortable or learn better in a boot camp for women only, I wish them the best. And yet it makes me and many others angry, not for what it is, but because of the social context in which it occurs. There's an all too common attitude these days that success for white people, men, and above all white men is something to oppose.[1,2] That cruelty toward men is acceptable.[3] That "it's impossible to be racist toward whites or sexist toward men". That sitting comfortably is "manspreading" and masculinity is toxic. The world is divided in part because of efforts like this. Is more division really something to celebrate? 1: https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-unbearable-male-privilege-of-beto-orourke https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-unbearable-male-privilege-... 2: https://www.thedailybeast.com/to-bernie-sanders-beto-orourke-and-the-other-white-male-dems-running-to-be-president-in-2020-can-you-not https://www.thedailybeast.com/to-bernie-sanders-beto-orourke... 3: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/02/business/media/sarah-jeong-new-york-times.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/02/business/media/sarah-jeon...
- giantsloth 8y ago
  The world is not divided by efforts like this. There’s an extremely complicated economic/political/cultural circumstance that is dividing the world. To reduce current cultural divides to reactionary simple binaries is beyond silly. No one is opposed to white men succeeding, it’s just not interesting because that’s the status quo. While the interests of all working class people need to be addressed (including white men), getting angry over some random millionaire rolling out cash to 40 girls who are also most likely going to be of a socioeconomic status that is at least smart, articulate and aware enough of our bubble is absurd. The real issue is we have to fight over the crumbs of some out of touch millionaire rolling out private grants like we’re children so that we can ultimately provide cheaper labor for people like her to make herself more wealthy and continue the cycle.
- renholder 8y ago
  >That cruelty toward men is acceptable. To be fair, in more socially progressive countries, this is actually being countered/fought against[0]. The article linked is in Swedish, so you can use your choice of translator to decypher the text; but this is a demonstration of not only your point but the fact that people are actually starting to take a stand against the narrative that cruelty towards men is anywhere near being acceptable, in an equal and just society. [0] - https://www.metro.se/artikel/anna-bj%C3%B6rklund-dumpa-inte-din-kille https://www.metro.se/artikel/anna-bj%C3%B6rklund-dumpa-inte-...
dmitrygr 8y ago
California's Unruh Civil Rights Act specifically outlaws discrimination based on sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, age, disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, or sexual orientation. This law applies to all businesses in California. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unruh_Civil_Rights_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unruh_Civil_Rights_Act
- GaryNumanVevo 8y ago
  This doesn't apply here. It's no different from me writing a check for someone to go to college.
giantsloth 8y ago
This whole discussion is missing the forest through the trees. People are fighting over the scraps being dolled out by some out of touch billionaire, who ultimately wants to increase her network and drive up her labor supply to increase her profits. This program will effect 40 people (who cares about their gender) out of many 100s of millions of Americans. 40 people who are in a socioeconomic class to know about this program and to have had the education to articulate themselves well enough to be admitted. If this woman actually wanted to help women she’d be striving and advocating for public policy that actually looks to provide universal programs across socioeconomic backgrounds (which would include white men and women and also poor black people). But she’s not, she believes she should have unilateral control over who gets to be successful through access to programming training, because she’s fundamentally anti democratic.
0xfeeddeadbeef 8y ago
I am a cisgender white male. I never wanted to be a programmer — I was forced into it by my mother, aunt and grandmother. They also provided me with tuition money. I will sue them for oppressing me and also making it harder for women to pursue their dreams. Edit: Downvoting into oblivion, as expected. Cue the western woman — the most oppressed life form on the planet Earth.
- DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
  I suspect you're being downvoted because of how you're presenting your idea, not because of whatever particular point you're making.
  - 0xfeeddeadbeef 8y ago
    Joking about very important 'grievances' is worse than a physical assault.
- dang 8y ago
  Posting trollish flamebait will get you banned here. Please don't break the guidelines by complaining about downvotes either. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - 0xfeeddeadbeef 8y ago
    Thanks for your tireless efforts to keep HN clean and welcoming. I will be voicing the same idea in non-flamebait form in the future. Don't you think that you've changed my mind by shutting me up.
    - dang 8y ago
      Nobody's out to "shut you up". You're only asked to follow the same basic, reasonable rules that everyone else is: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
wtmt 8y ago
Off topic, but I found this circular reference apt for a post about learning programming, and thus quite amusing too. This post links to "Why I started the Summer Hackers Program" [1] and that post has a link to this one. http://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/why-i-started-the-summer-hackers-program http://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/why-i-started-the-summer...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
75dvtwin 8y ago
I read the blog-post, but it does not make clear to me why Jessica chose to offer the money to women only. > " Specifically, she can’t build the first version of her product and is forced to find a cofounder who can. Because she can't judge technical ability, she'll often choose the wrong person for the job. And in a startup, if you choose the wrong programmer or cofounder and have to replace them, the delay alone can be enough to kill the company. …" I have met a number of people who cannot program, but believe that they have a great idea (only if somebody could just build that app for them …). Even random neighbors who learn that I write mobile apps just sort of assume, that I do not have my own ideas -- and instead, just program somebody else's ideas into life (sort of like I am a typist, but an author of the novel, I am typing -- has to be somebody else). All that gender-bias in recent, US, tech grants does, is re-enforces the stigma that women in US are 'special-needs', as far as it comes to technology. This is not a good stigma to have, and it cannot be broken by appeal to a moral high. As a parent, it is also difficult to explain to my son, why my daughter would qualify for such a generous grant, but he would not... What explanation is there ? As few on this thread, I think there are better way to identify people who born into (or became over time) into a very unfair and disadvantageous environment. And giving those, the extra help, offering them generosity -- is nothing but heart warming. And deserves huge applauds and replication. There are boys and girls from disadvantaged environments, some lost parents to cancer, to car accidents, to wars, to terrorist attacks. Some are in different countries suffering from horrible illnesses (that were caused by environment catastrophes). Some were unlucky to be born to drug abusing parents. --- It does take more work, may be more passion, to reach out to those -- but I think it would better society more.
- iliketosleep 8y ago
  > As a parent, it is also difficult to explain to my son, why my daughter would qualify for such a generous grant, but he would not... What explanation is there ? There are explanations, but whether they are valid or not is a matter of debate. Here is one possible explanation: Women have faced all kinds of discrimination which has, for the most part, kept them out of the industry. Even if we're not actively discriminating against women now, bias still remains in this male-dominated industry. Therefore, it's necessary to do something in order to bring women back in, and we all have to do our part - in some cases this could mean men making way for women. This is the basic principle of affirmative action policies - it's about doing what we can to correct our historic mistakes. For it to work we must all play our part, and sometimes we must make small sacrifices for the greater good
happppy 8y ago
People are only learning to program because they saw good money, every other person now a days is just learning to program to get into programming job even though they have 0 interest in programming. Due to all this, CS is very saturated, and there will be one day when every other person will be a programmer, jobs will be few so competition will be high but pays will be less. If you were that interested in programming you would have known it when you are choosing your career paths. You saw money, you came in, nothing else. And what's with this women learn to program, I never saw any Men learn to program. They say it like CS schools do not accept girls when they apply, idiots.
AmIDev 8y ago
IMHO, this is the right approach to boost the ratio of women in technology. That is, by teaching coding to those women who don't know it. Most companies seem to focus on improving ratio of women in their company itself, by targeting say female CS undergrads, which doesn't help increase the ratio of women in tech(as these women have already made the choice to be in tech). To be clear, this approach makes perfect sense from the company's perspective, but it ain't helping the greater cause.
cotelletta 8y ago
A while back I saw a coworker virtue signal about the parallels between tech and nursing. There were gender problems in both, and it was the same cause, he said. Except, it's not the same cause at all, it's just the same blame. Watch: Not enough women in tech: "men, it's your fault, stop being so crude and competitive. Change your working style to suit and attract women. Stop making crude jokes and having arguments." Not enough men in nursing: "men, it's your fault, stop being such cowards who think a social job is not manly. Don't listen to your friends if they mock you, it's toxic masculinity." What would actually be equality is if the first was paired with: "Women nurses, stop being so catty and learn to be more stoic to attract men in the workplace. Change your habits and social style to be more factual and problem oriented." Or the second paired with: "Women in tech, stop listening to your girlfriends who think tech is not glamorous and cute. Value your own self worth and improve your self sufficiency. Don't be a mean girl." The fact that this very simple gender swap is treated as invalid demonstrates how intellectually bankrupt the diversity movement is. Their justifications only come after the fact, after they've already decided who qualifies for sympathy and victimhood, and who doesn't. Despite all this concern about subtle implicit bias, about societal pressure and messages invisibly reinforced by society... Somehow gender studies experts have still not noticed that some of the most implicitly gendered terms are expectations that only men are meant to live up to: to not be a coward and not be a creep. If a woman values her own comfort and safety over self sacrificing? That does not make her a coward. If a woman expects to be welcomed and to be able to join a social interaction a priori? Not entitlement, not creepy. 50 years of gender studies, and society is only more willing to entertain such pandering and double standards at the expense of men. H L Mencken was right: men are stupid because they actually think concepts like honor and duty are real, instead of just a stick used to shame them into submission. No thank you. "Historically marginalized" and "traditionally underrepresented" is a giant excuse built upon the soft bigotry of low expectations. The only people consistently marginalized have been the poor, and I've never seen more spoiled, clueless, unaware adults than at "diverse" tech events.
- slphil 8y ago
  I don't quite agree, but I see where you're coming from. Instead I tend to see them as being just different behaviors, with bystanders (clueless rubes and cynical manipulators alike) causing conflict in order to support their own inflated diversity bureaucracy. The only thing that really has to be noticed in order to see the problem here is that almost all of the women writing blog posts about how women should go into STEM did not themselves go into STEM. Yesterday I saw a video about an organization trying to get women to go into STEM. All of the women involved in the program had degree in _____ studies, communications, etc. It's OK to be extremely cynical about this. That said, I don't have a problem with women working whatever job they want. Just don't expect me to play along with the self-esteem parade and grievance bureaucracy that tends to come along for the ride.
chaoxu 8y ago
How are the 9000 dollars given? Because someone might be in the US under certain visa issues. (For example, OPT, F1, etc).
T3RMINATED 8y ago
This is so Feministic it should be banned.
danielscrubs 8y ago
I can tell you that my female, former classmates that graduated CS are earning way more than the males do. It's trivial to get a male developer with a 5-year degree, but a female one? If media focused on that instead of the negative things, more females would go into the CS-programmes, which would solve this debate once and for all.

268 points by jl 8y ago

Spreading this as far and wide as I can. Coding is as critical as literacy for the next 20 years and there are too many programs and teachers that teach it poorly, alienating large segments of the population. Lambda is among the best. I hope they can scale past 40 students for this in the future.

alexashka 8y ago
What? The average IQ is 100. Computer science is not a 100 IQ field. Science is not a 100 IQ endeavour. Coding at 100 IQ level will be automated away very soon the same way anyone can have a facebook account without knowing HTML.
- dictum 8y ago
  At what IQ does one act upon the opportunities and circumstances available at present time?
- dang 8y ago
  Who (else) said anything about IQ? Could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html? They include: "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." Also, please stop posting flamebait, especially ideological flamebait, to HN. It fuels flamewars, which destroy what we want to preserve here: thoughtful conversation and intellectual curiosity. Assuming those are things you also want, you're welcome to post here in that spirit.
  - alexashka 8y ago
    Coding was compared to literacy here. Literacy is taught in schools because people of average IQ (100) are capable of literacy and find it helpful in their everyday lives. Literacy is one of the few things taught in schools that actually has any utility in people's everyday lives. Coding is nothing like literacy. It is more like chemistry, physics or Shakespeare - something the vast majority don't care about and will quickly forget. If you have any doubt - poll the population on Newton's three laws of motion and why they matter. Regarding idealogical flamebait - I don't even know what that is - I'm simply expressing my opinion, that the above has hopefully clarified. If you find my stance on the school system offensive, rest assured I'll no longer reply on the matter in this thread, seeing how quick others are to judge others in a negative light.
    - dang 8y ago
      That is a much more substantive comment! there wouldn't have been a moderation issue if you'd posted that to begin with. One way to think of flamebait is low-information comments on provocative topics. Ideological flamebait is the same, on topics where the provocation tends to be ideological.
gridlockd 8y ago
> Coding is as critical as literacy for the next 20 years... I think this is an absurd and tired meme. Most shops who employ coders also employ about 75% non-coders. You need sales, marketing, accounting, management, HR, legal - and even the IT guys often truck along fine with little to no coding skills. If you need code written to perform your task that usually just means the UI of your application isn't powerful enough. So get a coder to add that feature to the UI. You don't need to become a coder yourself. Here's why we really need "more coders" all the time: - the web frontend is getting reinvented every year - the latest trends in infrastructure design ("terascale micro-micro-micro-services as a service") need attention - the latest devices and platform SDKs need to be dealt with - the insane amount of technical debt accumulated through all this churn needs to be paid off Which is all fine only as long as the money keeps rolling in.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > > Coding is as critical as literacy for the next 20 years... > I think this is an absurd and tired meme. Most shops who employ coders also employ about 75% non-coders It would be absurd if coding skill were only useful to people whose job title and central role is “coder” (just as viewing literacy as central would be absurd if measured by the number of people employed as “writers”.)
- jimbokun 8y ago
  Jessica made a really good point, that female founders without any coding knowledge can't even assess whether a coder is any good before hiring him or her. Getting the fundamentals in an intense summer course will not only enable someone to develop a prototype on their own, but also assess who is a good potential hire and who is just good at bullshitting.
  - gridlockd 8y ago
    > Jessica made a really good point, female founders without any coding knowledge can't even assess whether a coder is any good before hiring him or her. If I followed this line of reasoning, then I couldn't hire a lawyer without knowing law, I couldn't hire a marketing person without knowing marketing, I couldn't hire a sales person without knowing sales, and so on and so forth. I would argue that knowledge in law, sales and marketing are far more important to a founder, yet people obsess over coding. > Getting the fundamentals in an intense summer course will not only enable someone to develop a prototype on their own, but also assess who is a good potential hire and who is just good at bullshitting. I don't think that's true. To accurately judge someone else's competence, you have to be at least on their level. Secondly, it's credentials like work experience and education that you go by when hiring. I'm aware that a lot of software developers are often forced to pass lots of silly programming tests, but that's known to not result in better hiring. If you are a founder and non-technical, you shouldn't hire a random developer anyway. You should have a technical co-founder that you can trust and you should focus on literally everything else. You'll need to do a thousand things, but writing code isn't really one of them.

chasingthewind 8y ago

I think this is really commendable. When you put your money where your mouth is you really show that you're serious about your values. All the best to the forty future winners of this grant!

writepub 8y ago
This is excellent marketing at best, and nothing to do with values. Lambda school is a YC portfolio company, and this program/post has gotten YC and LS oodles of positive press. The gender of this batch is designed to generate positive buzz, there was never any restriction on admissions before this announcement, no bias in getting into LS. So what exactly is this supposed to achieve? Great marketing, guys and gals! Cheers
- austenallred 8y ago
  Well, that's one way to look at the world. Lambda School's traffic is down 20% today as compared to yesterday, so if this was a marketing stunt it was a very inefficient and expensive one.
  - rudedogg 8y ago
    > Lambda School's traffic is down 20% today as compared to yesterday This seems weird; did you account for the time (since it's only around noon?)
    - dang 8y ago
      Fridays are lower traffic on HN too. Maybe that generalizes.
- dang 8y ago
  Jessica's posts explain exactly what exactly this is supposed to achieve.

rosterface 8y ago

I recently completed a very difficult job search where I unfortunately had to lean on my ethnicity (I’m Mexican) to pass through very overt screening against white men. I was shocked to hear from multiple companies, large and small, that they did not want men and white men in particular. Now we see a YC co-founder giving 40 women $9000 to learn to program. Where does it end? I was really sad that while I personally can survive in this environment (if I abandon my ideals of not being judged by my genetics), many good men who are passionate about their work are being pressured from all sides. I honestly don’t see how any of this is legal but it’s such a taboo to talk about that fixing the problem seems impossible without a major shift back to valuing skills above demographics.

jordigh 8y ago
> I honestly don’t see how any of this is legal Let me help you, fellow Mexican: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2017-title29-vol4/xml/CFR-2017-title29-vol4-part1608.xml https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2017-title29-vol4/xm... The reason it's legal is because there are laws that explicitly allow this for certain underrepresented or disadvantaged groups. Espero que esto aclare tus dudas.
- atom-morgan 8y ago
  A legal justification doesn't make something right. It's also worth mentioning why the term "underrepresented minority" or "underrepresented group" is need in the first place. Considering how sexist and racist people claim tech is Asians seem to be doing perfectly fine which is exactly why the term URM is needed in the first place.
  - jordigh 8y ago
    The question was just about the legality of it. It's not a mystery why it's legal and people should be aware of what the laws actually are.
    - commandlinefan 8y ago

adenadel 8y ago

Here's the blog post explaining why Jessica is doing this http://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/why-i-started-the-summer-hackers-program http://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/why-i-started-the-summer...

seancoleman 8y ago

My girlfriend, a nurse of 10+ years, just started learning to code on her own, built her first (basic) website (https://www.nataliepeterson.dev https://www.nataliepeterson.dev) and is applying to Lambda School already. I sent this to her this morning and she was elated. Programs like this really work.

tqkxzugoaupvwqr 8y ago
For whatever reason this website feels so personal. Instant flashbacks to the 2000s. I love it. Hint for picking a random image when clicking on the image: The currently shown image should be excluded from the list of images to draw from. This prevents the problem that sometimes clicks appear to do nothing, although in reality the same image was randomly picked again.
- seancoleman 8y ago
  Great suggestion. I will pass along the feedback to the developer :)
  - jxub 8y ago
    A carrousel could work as well
    - fokinsean 8y ago
      carrousels are so passé
- Ntrails 8y ago
  I got the same vibe, so much of ones self just thrown onto a page to see what will happen. Super fun to see. Good luck to the author :)
- quickthrower2 8y ago
  This is what the web would look like if everyone learned to program and got off Facebook. I can only dream! It's https and 100 speed score on https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nataliepeterson.dev%2F https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=.... I'm guessing this is on something like Netlify, as it's fast and there is HN hug of death.

mettamage 8y ago

If it's an online programming class, then why not extent the offer to people based outside the US? This US protectionism thing is driving me crazy. I'll offer my services to Lambda School and/or YC for free if that means I can extent this offer to EU people, provided that my living expenses are covered. I'm in between jobs so I have the perfect schedule for it. I'm from the EU.

adingus 8y ago
It says why in the article. You should read it.
- dang 8y ago
  Could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html? They include: Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that." (This is nowhere near the worst guideline violation in this thread, but it's such a precise one.)
  - adingus 8y ago
    Are you insinuating I didn't read the guidelines?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

yakshaving_jgt 8y ago

I have several female friends who find Affirmative Action campaigns so off-putting, they decide against joining the industry. One friend recently complained to me that all the AA enthusiasts just want to talk about feminism and women in the workplace, and not about actually writing code. She was incensed because she was invited to a 'Girls Code' meetup, where women would learn about algorithms by modelling their own menstrual cycles[0]. She was (understandably) frustrated, saying that her interests extend beyond what comes out of her genitals. This is anecdotal, sure, but amongst my social circle, this seems to be the rule rather than the exception. I sense a bazillion downvotes coming my way. You may think these opinions I am passing along are incredibly incorrect, but they are the opinions of women. [0]: https://imgur.com/a/jFLU0C8 https://imgur.com/a/jFLU0C8 EDIT: It took no time at all for the downvotes to arrive, as expected. There is no such thing as the sisterhood. Feminists will immediately cast out any woman who doesn't hold the "right" opinions.

zimablue 8y ago
This isn't as rare as it sounds, when I was young and a lot more arrogant+principled, I refused to go to my (not actually paying/good) college's Oxbridge interview prep, also ruled out medicine as a career choice partly because in the UK at the time to get in you had to do charity work/specific extra-curriculars. Insane reasoning looking back, but hey 17 year olds are often principled nutcases. I can definitely imagine doing what you describe re compsci if I was a 17 year old girl in 2019. Hope any principled girls (in my biased opinion the brightest/best people in the end) we lose from information tech go into something else useful, kind of a sad thought.
tyrust 8y ago
>Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
exolymph 8y ago
I am also a woman and feel similarly, although it didn't deter me from working in the industry (or at least adjacent to it).

sisu2019 8y ago

you wont change fewer women programmers because, wait for it, women tend to have personality traits that do not go well together with coding. Of course, feel free to waste your money and your reputation doing this pointless virtue signaling anyway.

TheAdamAndChe 8y ago

There will be benefits to this program for those who participate, and I wholly wish those women who have the opportunity to participate the best of luck. However, I also worry about the motives behind the program. A huge part of feminism is a push towards gender equality[1]. Discriminating against half of the population while aiming for equality is an odd way to behave. I know the blog post did not mention gender equality as a goal, but I just completely fail to see how discrimination like this will lead to anything but increased inter-gender conflict and the persistence of stereotypes in the field. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism

rubicon33 8y ago
I don't understand why you're getting down voted for this comment. Isn't the goal equal opportunity? Providing artificial silo'd environments seems at odds to the goal of an unbiased, fair workplace. But I guess I'll just get down voted too.
- manfredo 8y ago
  In much of silicon valley, the goal is equal outcomes not equal opportunity. Often times explicitly unequal opportunity is necessary to achieve equal outcomes.
  - grondilu 8y ago
    Equal opportunity? How often do men get free programming lessons IRL?
- krapp 8y ago
  The premise here is that opportunity wasn't equal to begin with. To accept this premise, you have to also accept the premise that societal restrictions on the roles permitted to women, culturally imposed limits on womens' ability to gain power and authority (the "glass ceiling") and persistent beliefs about women being intellectually inferior to men in regards to certain fields, would lead to a status quo not of meritocracy or equality but prejudice against women in an otherwise 'unbiased' system. And so, to further the goal of equal opportunity, one must balance an already unbalanced set of scales. Not to do so is merely to accept its bias as the status quo.

alexashka 8y ago

'breaking into the startup world' - sigh... How do you break into being a domain expert via 5-10+ years of experience? What do people think start-ups are exactly? Random people with no domain expertise coding their way to great products?

immad 8y ago
Someone might have 20 years of relevant domain experience and no coding experience. Also one can't get to 5 years without doing the 1st year. So I don't really see your point.
austenallred 8y ago
1. Who said you have to have 5-10+ years of experience to start a startup? That's likely an advantage, but certainly not a prerequisite 2. Perhaps there are domain experts with 5-10 years of experience in _something_ and them learning to be technical is impactful?
jimbokun 8y ago
Jessica explicitly says in her blog post that many of the women who consider applying to YCombinator have a lot of useful business skills and domain expertise for the business they want to start, but are held back because they can't code an initial version of the product.
- alexashka 8y ago
  My comment was in regards to a young daughter asking how she could break into the start-up world. The author suggested that coding was a good idea. The author went on to mention that learning in the span of a summer would help pick a good team member or even build a prototpe him/herself. We know from both studies and personal experience, that tech interviews just don't work all that well. This is tech interviews done by professional programmers and managers. We don't know how to pick people who are good vs talk like they're good! This is not anecdotal - it is well known via studies, done by top psychologists. Given that - how would a summer coding bootcamp help pick a co-founder? It's certainly better than nothing. It is also not clear how much one would benefit from 3 months versus taking one of the many excellent online courses and working at your own pace, such as Harvard's CS50, freely available on youtube. Regarding building your own prototype after 3 months of programming - I just want to throw my hands up in the air of this wishful thinking that 3 months is anywhere close to enough time. You will need someone who's tech savvy, and then you're right back to the same difficulties.

nck4222 8y ago

I'm trying to figure out on what side of the debate I fall on this one. On the one hand, women have obviously been disadvantaged in many ways, for many years, which is wrong. The gender disparity in software development is well documented, and should be fixed. No one should be discouraged from learning, or opportunities denied because of gender. On the other hand, a for-profit company deciding to offer free services to individual women, who may or may not be disadvantaged, simply because they're women, doesn't sit well with me either. Frankly, it seems likely that anyone who applies to lambda school (either gender), probably lean towards the more advantaged end than the less advantaged end. So it seems likely this is going to result in women with plenty of advantages already, receiving $9000 worth of education for free, while explicitly denying this opportunity to men, and continuing to disadvantage members of both groups. So, I guess my question is, why is this morally OK? If this was targeted specifically to disadvantaged people, or disadvantaged women, or if it was a non-profit, it seems like this would be an easier call for me.

creaghpatr 8y ago
It's ethical as long as they don't target journalists.
commandlinefan 8y ago
> discouraged from learning, or opportunities denied because of gender. Is there any evidence that this is happening, though? I've never seen anybody, even anecdotally claim "I'm a woman (who is qualified) and I've been unable to find employment". Mostly what I see is people trying to work backwards and say, "if group X makes up Y% of the population and only Z% of programmers, that in itself must be evidence of discrimination".
- nck4222 8y ago
  It doesn't have to be overt, or even knowingly done. Children are frequently subtly pushed towards different careers because of their gender, many times by their devoted parents. It's a societal problem. EDIT: Here's one paper that talks about how "widely shared cultural beliefs about gender" affect early decisions people make wrt to their careers https://sociology.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj9501/f/publications/gender_and_the_career_choice_process-_the_role_of_biased_self-assessments.pdf https://sociology.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj9501/f/pu... "The results of this study show that males assess their own mathematical competence higher than their otherwise equal female counterparts" "self-assessments of task competence were found to influence career-relevant decisions, even when controlling for commonly accepted measures of ability. For males and females, the higher they rate their mathematical competence, the greater the odds that they will continue on the path leading to careers in the quantitative professions. However, since males tend to overestimate their mathematical competence relative to females, males are also more likely to pursue activities leading down a path toward a career in science, math, and engineering."

grondilu 8y ago

Isn't programming a skill that can be learned alone in a fairly straightforward manner? I mean, most programming languages have extensive documentation, tutorials and so on (at least FOSS dynamical languages like Python, Rust, Perl...). From my personal experience and what I can guess about hackers I've talked to for instance on IRC, that's how most guys learned it : the web is full of resources for whoever wants to learn. Now, if for some reason women don't take this road and "need" someone to hold their hand in order to learn programming, I would argue that maybe those women don't have the intrinsic motivation to do so and trying to force it upon them may be a gross waste of time and resources. Not to mention that programming can be a tedious and lame job (sitting in front of a computer all day is often mentioned as a genuine nightmare), so if you have to do it, you'd better love it in the first place.

Pfhreak 8y ago
> Isn't programming a skill that can be learned alone in a fairly straightforward manner? No? Stuff like pointers, for loops, threads, interface design, data structures, idempotency, source control, working on a linux command line, etc. all present reasonably challenging roadblocks for a burgeoning developer, and I think many of us benefited from having someone around to help walk us through this the first time.
- grondilu 8y ago
  > working on a linux command line, That's an interesting example. Sure, I was initiated to the Unix command line at the University, but it was just that : an initiation. I got hooked quickly though so I was driven to learn the rest all by myself (or rather, with the help of the linux community online). I'm sure it's more or less the same for most linux nerds. I may have bought one or two books about linux though, but buying a book about a subject you're passionate about is something normal. You're right that once you want to get into the important technical details, free documentation on the web may be insufficient and you may need to invest in proper textbooks. I still think my point stands, though.
  - Pfhreak 8y ago

ajiang 8y ago

EDIT: To clarify that the money is going directly to private individuals, as per Austen. Incredible, thanks for putting your money where your values are @jl. As for the numerous comments in this post around reverse sexism / reverse discrimination: 1. This is a private individual giving personal capital to other private individuals, supporting a personal cause. It is hard to both claim principles of free market and rally against this. 2. Private companies making hiring decisions are correcting for an indefinite history of bias. That doesn't mean they're hiring unqualified individuals, simply that they're making sure they put in measure to correct for biases and can identify individuals with the great qualifications that in the past would have been past up due to arbitrary euphemisms for gender / racial bias like 'bad culture fit'. 3. None of this is to say that you personally are not experiencing a challenging time or are not subject to bias in any way. None of this should diminish your personal challenges in the work environment. That should be addressed. This particular individual (@jl) and this particular company (Lambda School) are just not addressing that particular cause at this moment. And that should be ok.

zimablue 8y ago
1. Free market doesn't mean that your choices are exempt from criticism. I was going to say silly but honestly this is a very stupid point. "To people who are criticising me for funding ISIS - FREE MARKET".
- ajiang 8y ago
  I'd like to think HN is a place where people can have debate without resorting to saying things like "very stupid point" ;) You're absolutely right that free market doesn't mean your choices are exempt from criticism. That isn't my point, nor where I applied 'Free Market'. My point was: If you're going to argue against this donation, saying that it fuels the trend of reverse racism / sexism that makes the free market more distorted, I would argue that this donation is very much a part of the free market. Private donations to private organizations for private causes.
  - zimablue 8y ago

hhs 8y ago

I think this is wonderful. Makes me think of Eleanor Roosevelt. She started by focusing on a group. But there were a lot of problems in her times and she recognized that, and she went on to tackle so many things like anti-poverty and unemployed youth. I wonder if Jessica Livingston will do something similar, since it's written in the FAQ: "Since neither I nor Lambda School have tried this before, I wanted to reduce the number of variables. If it works this summer, we may expand it next summer."

gridlockd 8y ago

> We use inclusive definitions of “women” and “female” and welcome trans women, ... Cool! > ...genderqueer women... I'm not sure what that means, but... > ...and non-binary people who are female-identified. Okay, what? Isn't the point of non-binary to not to be in the binary of man/woman? Can I identify as male, female and non-binary? Female and non-binary or male and non-binary? Male, female, female and non-binary? The first programming task for these students should be designing the UI widget that appropriately records the "gender preference" of a user in 2019.

MagicPropmaker 8y ago

There was a lawsuit in 2018. I'm not sure what the outcome was: https://www.thecollegefix.com/women-only-tech-scholarships-man-tax-violate-california-discrimination-laws-lawsuit/ https://www.thecollegefix.com/women-only-tech-scholarships-m...

salmonellaeater 8y ago
The plaintiffs lost. > Judgment was entered as follows: Judgment entered for FS ISAC Inc and against Allison, Rich ;Hamilton, James https://unicourt.com/case/ca-sd-allison-vs-fs-isac-inc-861010 https://unicourt.com/case/ca-sd-allison-vs-fs-isac-inc-86101...

decebalus1 8y ago

I'm leaning back and watching our profession go to shit. The liberalization of programming is very profitable for software companies. The wages need to go way down as currently we're the contemporary blue-collar job that didn't get screwed up by the modern corporate machine. This has less to do with gender than with plain-old creating inflation within the profession. Accountants, doctors, lawyers, all managed to closely guard their profession while we're opening up the doors to basically everyone and we think 'it's cute' when the janitor learns how to write web pages. People saluting this should check back in about 10 years to let me know how it goes.

prolepunk 8y ago
Sure, whenever someone comes up with initiative to encourage women to do anything, inevitably people start crawling out saying everything is going to be screwed up because of that. Not be cause of women, of course, that would be a misogynist thing to say, but because of some completely unrelated and irrelevant reason. yeah, right.
MrPea 8y ago
Couldn't have said it better. My eyes need a break rolling when people, especially politicians, say coding is a requirement and as important as math.
- kazinator 8y ago
  Algorithmic thinking is part of math, and quite important. Anyone who learns pencil-and-paper addition and multiplication is actually following an algorithm, so you basically cannot even learn arithmetic without touching algorithms. People need to understand what an algorithm is, because more and more circumstances which affect their lives will be determined by algorithms.
  - MrPea 8y ago
    Good point, I think an important distinction is computer science versus software engineering. I fear if it's the latter, schools will be churning out code monkeys

dgzl 8y ago

I don't think throwing money and free services at women while we sit on our knees begging them to join us the best way to get them interested. I'm generally against equality of outcome, and support equality of opportunity, which this is not.

theprotocol 8y ago
I agree. Sadly I have been slandered for having this view. Apparently belief in equality means I hate women ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

ringaroll 8y ago

This is an excellent thing! More women should be encouraged to code as there are too many men in the field already. I hope this sets the trend so that colleges mandate 60% quota for women in CS. Companies should pay women more then men to encourage more women to join the field. Laws should be made so that companies have to hire women because the bosses are misogynist. Destroy the patriarchy! You go girl!

dang 8y ago
Please do not take HN threads even further into ideological hell. In addition to destroying this place, it's tedious.
- ringaroll 8y ago
  You're a far right misogynist woman hating person. In other words are a part of the problem! Don't you see a problem with too many men in CS? Don't you want more women to succeed? I just checked your profile. You should be fired for being a woman hater.
  - dang 8y ago
    Ok, since it seems you don't want to use HN as intended, I've banned the account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

dang 8y ago

All: there's room on HN for good-faith debate, but not for ideological flamebait (regardless of which flavor), so can you please not post that? It's tedious, off topic, and boy does it suck the oxygen out of a thread. Here's a test: ask yourself how much intellectual curiosity there is in your comment or your motivation for posting. If you don't find much, please hold off until you do. Intellectual curiosity is the reason this site exists [1], and it's a fragile factor nowadays amid the rage and hysteria online. Keep HN curious. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

moffet2018 8y ago
hey dang, ask yourself how much intellectual curiosity is there in this promo post?! quite disingenuous on your side.
- dang 8y ago
  It's true that moderation comments are out-of-band for the site. But they're necessary, because the system can't right itself without them. If it helps at all, they're even more tedious to write than they are to read. Edit: mlevental points out that you were referring to the article, not my comment. I think there's plenty of intellectual curiosity in what Jessica wrote, especially in the blog post explaining why she did it. In fact, I'd say it's obvious. That commenters don't always respond to curiosity with curiosity of their own is a separate issue. Certainly it's also a promotional post in the sense of wanting to call attention to the program, but that sort of mix is common on HN, and it's where it is on the front page because users upvoted it.
  - mlevental 8y ago
    the person you're responding to here is trying to point out that the article is disingenuous and so only can generate the same. I don't agree/disagree. just clarifying.
    - root_axis 8y ago

40acres 8y ago

Some of the comments in this thread is a master class of how discrimination and gatekeeping work not just in our industry but in society as a whole. How can we simultaneously be an industry built on free an open source software and yet try to put up walls around our industry when efforts are made to make it more accessible to others? The barriers to programming are being lowered and this is an excellent thing. More diverse companies, different types of people to bounce ideas on, new perspectives. This is what our industry needs more than ever, and yet so many feel a threat veiled by concerns of affirmative action and 'reverse discrimination'. We need to acknowledge the barriers that have existed in our industry but may be blind to you personally because you never had to deal with it. For one, access to a PC for a long time was restricted to those with low incomes. My mother saved her income tax refund for two years to buy our first PC, the one I learned to program on. The schools I attended didn't have a computer lab until my junior year of high school. It's a great thing that programming is being spread to those who did not have access before. If software is eating the world everyone had better become familiar.

ericsoderstrom 8y ago
> Some of the comments in this thread is a master class of how discrimination and gatekeeping work All the top comments I see are supportive and encouraging. Maybe there were some negative removed comments, but overall this thread doesn't seem to demonstrate gatekeeping and discrimination.
- djsumdog 8y ago
  Enabled flagged/dead in your options. I think it's pretty valuable to see the way moderators are shaping the conversation.
  - coolreader18 8y ago
    Isn't it a common misconception that flagged/dead comments are because of moderators? Dead comments happen automatically if enough people flag it[0]. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173836 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173836

golemiprague 8y ago

Just leave the women alone, they are not interested and rightfully so. In the western world there are many other jobs which are much more fun for women and they are happy to do them, including high paying professional jobs like lawyers or doctors with much higher bars for entry, and yet, women manage to study and do those jobs just fine. In countries where programming pays well and there are no other better options you can see much more women in the field, like India or Israel, somehow those women who in many times comes from much more traditional and conservative societies, manage to learn to code like any other men. I wonder how they do it without all the affirmative action while popping out 5 kids per family or even more like the orthodox women in Israel. It seems like modern feminism destroys the capability of women to learn anything that is not liberal arts, someone needs to research how that happened and how it is all men's fault.

calimac 8y ago

Another promotion of a protected class designed to bait and separate humans

black-tea 8y ago

People: do whatever you want to do this summer. There are virtually zero barriers to entry for programming today. They've been minimal for a good twenty years now as it is.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

sickygnar 8y ago

Hello Michael, Thank you for applying to the Summer Hackers Program. We’ve received your submission. In the first week of April, we'll be selecting the 40 students who'll receive a scholarship to our immersive 15-week course and a living stipend. We'll invite students to a 10-minute interview by April 5, and by April 15, we'll be able to send out acceptances. Then, you'll have until 8am PST on May 21 to complete our precourse work. You can get started on that today: PRE-COURSE WORK To be admitted to Lambda School, you must pass the Lambda Challenge: https://challenge.lambdaschool.com https://challenge.lambdaschool.com, a timed (45-minute) three-question test on JavaScript. If you're comfortable with JavaScript, you can take the Lambda Challenge today. If you don't know JavaScript yet, that's fine! We teach what you need to know in our precourse work, which you can access on your student profile at https://apply.lambdaschool.com https://apply.lambdaschool.com. If accepted to Lambda School, the Lambda Challenge must be completed a week prior to your start date. You should expect to spend 20-30 hours completing the precourse work, and you can get help with it by signing up for our Web Development Prep Slack: https://lambdaschool.com/web-prep-slack https://lambdaschool.com/web-prep-slack. Thank you and have a nice day! Karen Zachary Director of Admissions Lambda School

grondilu 8y ago

I'm genuinely curious about how deeply identity politics is infecting HN. Also, arguably the very original submission is flame bait.

spammersharass 8y ago

Don't know what the fuss is about, this is open to everyone, men and women: > We use inclusive definitions of “women” and “female” and welcome trans women, genderqueer women, and non-binary people who are female-identified.

DBYCZ 8y ago

Anyone who argues that there should be "More women in tech" needs to go visit a medical college. Completely filled with super smart women interested in science. If STEM women found Coding as interesting as they did Medicine (which is arguably more competitive and prestigious), we wouldn't have any shortage of women writing code. There is nothing wrong with either way, just let people do what they like to do.

ajross 8y ago
What's the evidence that women aren't coding because they aren't "interested"? If you want to make that argument, don't you need to go and refute all the anecdotal evidence that women aren't entering tech careers because they don't feel welcome? I cite as evidence the fact that women in med schools have not, in fact, always been well represented and that the same kind of rhetoric about their "interests" was used to exclude them from medicine as recently as our parents' generation. So... given a choice between "tech is fundamentally different from medicine and chicks don't like it" and "tech is behind medicine's adoption curve with resepect to gender inclusion", I'm taking the later as the obvious hypothesis.
- henryaj 8y ago
  > "tech is behind medicine's adoption curve with resepect to gender inclusion" also seems like a hard-to-believe hypothesis. See https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more... for an outline of the 'interest' hypothesis - essentially, women are stronger than men in both verbal and math/science domains, but prefer the former, so will pick subjects that more closely align with their interests when society lets them do so. In countries with worse egalitarianism and social security, they'll gravitate towards subjects that bring them more economic freedom.
- QualityReboot 8y ago
  > If you want to make that argument, don't you need to go and refute all the anecdotal evidence that women aren't entering tech careers because they don't feel welcome? Who feels welcome in tech? It's an elitest culture filled with strong personalities that fancies itself a meritocracy.

temptemptemp111 8y ago

We know you're manipulating the front page ideologically. We know you've shadow banned hundreds not due to anything in the HN rules, but due to your ideology. I'm just posting this for others to see... You and I have been over this many times in the past and you refuse to be honest.

allen37 8y ago

A great message. I love HN for this very reason. Just today I noticed an article about an Army interrogator turned concientious objector. At the latter portion of my military career I too was an interrogator. I avoided posting because I realized the topic was too hot and likely to become political. It didn't hurt my feelings, I simply moved on with my day.

dang 8y ago
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19465697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19465697 and marked it off-topic. Nothing wrong with your comment at all, it just shouldn't be at the top of this thread. Mine shouldn't either, but it's up there for different reasons unfortunately.

DantesKite 8y ago

In general, making it easier for more people to get into programming feels feels like a good thing to me. Programming is a game-changer in terms of its ability to amplify talents and interests. It's the longest lever I know of. What stops people from getting into programming, however, is a bit more difficult to determine, but there does seem to be patterns. Less women and blacks compared to asians and whites. Oddly enough, trying to figure out the causes of these differences intersects a broad range of fields from evolution to sexual discrimination to access to resources. And because there's so much uncertainty, the explanation quickly turns into politics.

princekolt 8y ago
My personal 2c is that it is a lot about perception and awareness. You need to be aware a certain thing exists and how it works before you can aspire to do it. I'm sure you've met people in the past that had jobs you didn't even know existed. And invariably since some populations have been less present in tech, less of that population will be exposed to it, and thus aspire to work in it. Sometimes the smallest influences can have a big impact, both positively and negatively.

harrisonjackson 8y ago

I like to take the most positive outlook on these sorts of things... What a fantastic opportunity for 40 women! In my career and life, I've been fortunate to have a lot of great opportunities - some that I sought out and some that fell into my lap. I've tried to pay it forward when I can and I am sure that these women will too given the chance. The impact of these 40 scholarships could be 40 more technical cofounders or mentors or inventors - and that is a great thing for the community. I hope that 1+ of these ladies offer me a great opportunity or create an amazing product that I love :D

peterwwillis 8y ago

So, this brings up some questions in my mind: 1) Who is it being offered to? Clearly, women in college. The majority of people in college are privileged (in this country, anyway) so you're offering free money to potentially privileged people. Is it possible to prioritize women who need the money over ones that could pay for it? 2) If I offered $9,000 in training for welding to someone in college, they might take that too. It's well known that the things people study in college and careers they prepare for often don't always result in what they do for the rest of their working life. Is it possible to prioritize individuals who demonstrate a consistent/continued interest in being in the industry, rather than random students looking for a free ride? 3) Where is this being marketed? To insiders who already are in a position to want to be in the industry and find a place there? Or underprivileged and minority communities that might need more of a hand to find out about such opportunities before they can work towards them? Basically, I think it's a nice idea, but I think it can be tuned to optimize doing the most good with some minor tweaks.

eraad 8y ago

This headline would get you banned from Twitter

wtdata 8y ago

Ask yourself, would it be proper an action titled: Men: Learn Medicine this summer or Men: Learn Psychology this summer? All I am asking is for coherence, one way or another.

DanBC 8y ago
They have those, and this is a point that is repeatedly made, and debunked, on HN.
- wtdata 8y ago
  It's interesting, all top results in Google for "affirmative action in medicine" are about ethnicity, not gender [1] (same for psychology), can you point me to the source where it's something normal for men as well? [1] https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=affirmative+action+in+medicine https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=affirmative+action+in+...
  - lostdog 8y ago
    30 seconds of Googling found this and many other examples: https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-physician-relationships/why-men-are-considered-a-diversity-pick-for-some-ob-gyn-residency-programs.html https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-physician-rel... If you include nursing you'll find even more examples. There are so many poor arguments against diversity efforts that should be retired.

tmaly 8y ago

I am working on an effort to build a course for my younger daughter. Its less ambitious than this, but she is having a lot of fun learning. I am targeting visual programming with Scratch 3

howiroll 8y ago

Are women disabled or needs special attention when learning to code?

pj_mukh 8y ago

There are so many women I know that are cognitively over-qualified for the jobs they are in, and kind of stuck because of finances. I am sending this to all of them.

leereeves 8y ago

I honestly do think this is a good idea. She saw a need, identified a way to help, and is generously contributing. And if some women feel more comfortable or learn better in a boot camp for women only, I wish them the best. And yet it makes me and many others angry, not for what it is, but because of the social context in which it occurs. There's an all too common attitude these days that success for white people, men, and above all white men is something to oppose.[1,2] That cruelty toward men is acceptable.[3] That "it's impossible to be racist toward whites or sexist toward men". That sitting comfortably is "manspreading" and masculinity is toxic. The world is divided in part because of efforts like this. Is more division really something to celebrate? 1: https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-unbearable-male-privilege-of-beto-orourke https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-unbearable-male-privilege-... 2: https://www.thedailybeast.com/to-bernie-sanders-beto-orourke-and-the-other-white-male-dems-running-to-be-president-in-2020-can-you-not https://www.thedailybeast.com/to-bernie-sanders-beto-orourke... 3: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/02/business/media/sarah-jeong-new-york-times.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/02/business/media/sarah-jeon...

giantsloth 8y ago
The world is not divided by efforts like this. There’s an extremely complicated economic/political/cultural circumstance that is dividing the world. To reduce current cultural divides to reactionary simple binaries is beyond silly. No one is opposed to white men succeeding, it’s just not interesting because that’s the status quo. While the interests of all working class people need to be addressed (including white men), getting angry over some random millionaire rolling out cash to 40 girls who are also most likely going to be of a socioeconomic status that is at least smart, articulate and aware enough of our bubble is absurd. The real issue is we have to fight over the crumbs of some out of touch millionaire rolling out private grants like we’re children so that we can ultimately provide cheaper labor for people like her to make herself more wealthy and continue the cycle.
renholder 8y ago
>That cruelty toward men is acceptable. To be fair, in more socially progressive countries, this is actually being countered/fought against[0]. The article linked is in Swedish, so you can use your choice of translator to decypher the text; but this is a demonstration of not only your point but the fact that people are actually starting to take a stand against the narrative that cruelty towards men is anywhere near being acceptable, in an equal and just society. [0] - https://www.metro.se/artikel/anna-bj%C3%B6rklund-dumpa-inte-din-kille https://www.metro.se/artikel/anna-bj%C3%B6rklund-dumpa-inte-...

dmitrygr 8y ago

California's Unruh Civil Rights Act specifically outlaws discrimination based on sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, age, disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, or sexual orientation. This law applies to all businesses in California. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unruh_Civil_Rights_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unruh_Civil_Rights_Act

GaryNumanVevo 8y ago
This doesn't apply here. It's no different from me writing a check for someone to go to college.

giantsloth 8y ago

This whole discussion is missing the forest through the trees. People are fighting over the scraps being dolled out by some out of touch billionaire, who ultimately wants to increase her network and drive up her labor supply to increase her profits. This program will effect 40 people (who cares about their gender) out of many 100s of millions of Americans. 40 people who are in a socioeconomic class to know about this program and to have had the education to articulate themselves well enough to be admitted. If this woman actually wanted to help women she’d be striving and advocating for public policy that actually looks to provide universal programs across socioeconomic backgrounds (which would include white men and women and also poor black people). But she’s not, she believes she should have unilateral control over who gets to be successful through access to programming training, because she’s fundamentally anti democratic.

0xfeeddeadbeef 8y ago

I am a cisgender white male. I never wanted to be a programmer — I was forced into it by my mother, aunt and grandmother. They also provided me with tuition money. I will sue them for oppressing me and also making it harder for women to pursue their dreams. Edit: Downvoting into oblivion, as expected. Cue the western woman — the most oppressed life form on the planet Earth.

DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
I suspect you're being downvoted because of how you're presenting your idea, not because of whatever particular point you're making.
- 0xfeeddeadbeef 8y ago
  Joking about very important 'grievances' is worse than a physical assault.
dang 8y ago
Posting trollish flamebait will get you banned here. Please don't break the guidelines by complaining about downvotes either. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- 0xfeeddeadbeef 8y ago
  Thanks for your tireless efforts to keep HN clean and welcoming. I will be voicing the same idea in non-flamebait form in the future. Don't you think that you've changed my mind by shutting me up.
  - dang 8y ago
    Nobody's out to "shut you up". You're only asked to follow the same basic, reasonable rules that everyone else is: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

wtmt 8y ago

Off topic, but I found this circular reference apt for a post about learning programming, and thus quite amusing too. This post links to "Why I started the Summer Hackers Program" [1] and that post has a link to this one. http://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/why-i-started-the-summer-hackers-program http://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/why-i-started-the-summer...

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

75dvtwin 8y ago

I read the blog-post, but it does not make clear to me why Jessica chose to offer the money to women only. > " Specifically, she can’t build the first version of her product and is forced to find a cofounder who can. Because she can't judge technical ability, she'll often choose the wrong person for the job. And in a startup, if you choose the wrong programmer or cofounder and have to replace them, the delay alone can be enough to kill the company. …" I have met a number of people who cannot program, but believe that they have a great idea (only if somebody could just build that app for them …). Even random neighbors who learn that I write mobile apps just sort of assume, that I do not have my own ideas -- and instead, just program somebody else's ideas into life (sort of like I am a typist, but an author of the novel, I am typing -- has to be somebody else). All that gender-bias in recent, US, tech grants does, is re-enforces the stigma that women in US are 'special-needs', as far as it comes to technology. This is not a good stigma to have, and it cannot be broken by appeal to a moral high. As a parent, it is also difficult to explain to my son, why my daughter would qualify for such a generous grant, but he would not... What explanation is there ? As few on this thread, I think there are better way to identify people who born into (or became over time) into a very unfair and disadvantageous environment. And giving those, the extra help, offering them generosity -- is nothing but heart warming. And deserves huge applauds and replication. There are boys and girls from disadvantaged environments, some lost parents to cancer, to car accidents, to wars, to terrorist attacks. Some are in different countries suffering from horrible illnesses (that were caused by environment catastrophes). Some were unlucky to be born to drug abusing parents. --- It does take more work, may be more passion, to reach out to those -- but I think it would better society more.

iliketosleep 8y ago
> As a parent, it is also difficult to explain to my son, why my daughter would qualify for such a generous grant, but he would not... What explanation is there ? There are explanations, but whether they are valid or not is a matter of debate. Here is one possible explanation: Women have faced all kinds of discrimination which has, for the most part, kept them out of the industry. Even if we're not actively discriminating against women now, bias still remains in this male-dominated industry. Therefore, it's necessary to do something in order to bring women back in, and we all have to do our part - in some cases this could mean men making way for women. This is the basic principle of affirmative action policies - it's about doing what we can to correct our historic mistakes. For it to work we must all play our part, and sometimes we must make small sacrifices for the greater good

happppy 8y ago

People are only learning to program because they saw good money, every other person now a days is just learning to program to get into programming job even though they have 0 interest in programming. Due to all this, CS is very saturated, and there will be one day when every other person will be a programmer, jobs will be few so competition will be high but pays will be less. If you were that interested in programming you would have known it when you are choosing your career paths. You saw money, you came in, nothing else. And what's with this women learn to program, I never saw any Men learn to program. They say it like CS schools do not accept girls when they apply, idiots.

AmIDev 8y ago

IMHO, this is the right approach to boost the ratio of women in technology. That is, by teaching coding to those women who don't know it. Most companies seem to focus on improving ratio of women in their company itself, by targeting say female CS undergrads, which doesn't help increase the ratio of women in tech(as these women have already made the choice to be in tech). To be clear, this approach makes perfect sense from the company's perspective, but it ain't helping the greater cause.

cotelletta 8y ago

A while back I saw a coworker virtue signal about the parallels between tech and nursing. There were gender problems in both, and it was the same cause, he said. Except, it's not the same cause at all, it's just the same blame. Watch: Not enough women in tech: "men, it's your fault, stop being so crude and competitive. Change your working style to suit and attract women. Stop making crude jokes and having arguments." Not enough men in nursing: "men, it's your fault, stop being such cowards who think a social job is not manly. Don't listen to your friends if they mock you, it's toxic masculinity." What would actually be equality is if the first was paired with: "Women nurses, stop being so catty and learn to be more stoic to attract men in the workplace. Change your habits and social style to be more factual and problem oriented." Or the second paired with: "Women in tech, stop listening to your girlfriends who think tech is not glamorous and cute. Value your own self worth and improve your self sufficiency. Don't be a mean girl." The fact that this very simple gender swap is treated as invalid demonstrates how intellectually bankrupt the diversity movement is. Their justifications only come after the fact, after they've already decided who qualifies for sympathy and victimhood, and who doesn't. Despite all this concern about subtle implicit bias, about societal pressure and messages invisibly reinforced by society... Somehow gender studies experts have still not noticed that some of the most implicitly gendered terms are expectations that only men are meant to live up to: to not be a coward and not be a creep. If a woman values her own comfort and safety over self sacrificing? That does not make her a coward. If a woman expects to be welcomed and to be able to join a social interaction a priori? Not entitlement, not creepy. 50 years of gender studies, and society is only more willing to entertain such pandering and double standards at the expense of men. H L Mencken was right: men are stupid because they actually think concepts like honor and duty are real, instead of just a stick used to shame them into submission. No thank you. "Historically marginalized" and "traditionally underrepresented" is a giant excuse built upon the soft bigotry of low expectations. The only people consistently marginalized have been the poor, and I've never seen more spoiled, clueless, unaware adults than at "diverse" tech events.

slphil 8y ago
I don't quite agree, but I see where you're coming from. Instead I tend to see them as being just different behaviors, with bystanders (clueless rubes and cynical manipulators alike) causing conflict in order to support their own inflated diversity bureaucracy. The only thing that really has to be noticed in order to see the problem here is that almost all of the women writing blog posts about how women should go into STEM did not themselves go into STEM. Yesterday I saw a video about an organization trying to get women to go into STEM. All of the women involved in the program had degree in _____ studies, communications, etc. It's OK to be extremely cynical about this. That said, I don't have a problem with women working whatever job they want. Just don't expect me to play along with the self-esteem parade and grievance bureaucracy that tends to come along for the ride.

chaoxu 8y ago

How are the 9000 dollars given? Because someone might be in the US under certain visa issues. (For example, OPT, F1, etc).

T3RMINATED 8y ago

This is so Feministic it should be banned.

danielscrubs 8y ago

I can tell you that my female, former classmates that graduated CS are earning way more than the males do. It's trivial to get a male developer with a 5-year degree, but a female one? If media focused on that instead of the negative things, more females would go into the CS-programmes, which would solve this debate once and for all.