4 ms·

> it's dominated by two kinds of people: people obsessed by the topic, in the autistic spectrum People discussing the so-called gender gap* in software enginee

> it's dominated by two kinds of people: people obsessed by the topic, in the autistic spectrum People discussing the so-called gender gap* in software engineering education always forget a "little" details: learning to program takes a lot of time and dedication. Basically, at least two/three years of 10 hours+ a day (university classes and homework, plus personal reading and projects). Most of this time is spend alone, behind a computer. Very few people are willing to follow this lifestyle, girls even more so because of the lack of face to face human contact it implies. * which is not a real issue anyway: the software isn't worst because of the lack of women creating it. In addition, the same people are totally fine with 80-100% girls in language and humanities degrees which means their real goal isn't "equality", which is reached already because universities don't select people and education is free (speaking of France here; we hear the same gender-gap bullshit).

intarga 7y ago
You're really overstating how hard it is to learn to program. I'm a woman who studied physics and astronomy at university. In my final year I taught myself programming in my spare time because I was interested in it, and knew the job prospects were better than in physics. I had other hobbies and an active dating life at the time, but I still managed to get a software job straight out of university, and it's evolving into a fruitful career. Learning to program in no way requires 3 years of monastic devotion.
- tasogare 7y ago
  Function, parameters, modules, classes, objects, variables, interface, co and contravariance, structs, union... Functional programming, database (data normalization, SQL, no-sql), OS stuffs (process, scheduling, virtual memory), virtual machines, linkers and loaders, compilation, interpretation, compilers (language theory & implementation), HTML et al., networks (ip addressing, domain name, socket), software architecture, design patterns, security issues, memory management, IPC, containers, deployment, CI, encoding (Unicode, UTF8, ASCII), IO, various file formats... List, tree (binary, balanced, implementation), hashset, graph, stack, FIFO. Back-end, mobile, windowed app, game... etc, etc. I see there is a lot of genius in this thread, having come across all these concepts and got a working understanding of all these things in a few weeks/months. I'm 10 years in and I still learn weekly. Either Dunning–Kruger is in full effect or you internalized so many thing you don't see them anymore.
  - Izkata 7y ago
    Yeah, this is pretty much my thoughts as well. Even aside from the large range of topics out there, there's a massive gap from "can do something useful" to "can program well / in a maintainable way". One of my dormmates in college was in some engineering degree, I forget what, and decided to learn some programming from us, since so many of us were in CS. It was a pretty short time before he could do useful things, actually helping him finish his projects faster, but all that took was some very basic concepts: arrays, loops, conditionals. I think on the order of a week to get the concepts down and be able to write a C program from scratch, and another week or two before he had the concepts embedded in his mind enough to use it with his own work. Thing is, even that was far faster than I typically saw for those same concepts, as a Teacher's Assistant for the introductory CS courses. The engineering mindset seemed to give him some sort of foundation to pick it up faster, even having never done it before. And his code was absolutely terrible, he had a long, long way to go if he ever wanted to even consider programming as a profession.
tptacek 7y ago
Over my career, I've taught several people to code, from a standing start, and all of them were productive long before your 2-3 years alone --- I don't think I'm a good enough teacher to have kept anyone engaged without having them be able to get real-world tasks done after a few weeks --- and none of them spent 10+ hours a day. Programmers, I think, want to believe that serious developers have to train in a Shaolin monastery to achieve proficiency, but the reality is much more banal. And, obviously to anyone who works in the industry, software development is a team sport. I spent a couple years as a product marketing manager back at Arbor Networks, doing no software development at all, just product pricing and definition and sales team enablement, and I take more meetings as a software developer than I ever did as a PM. So the idea that women are deterred from tech because it's so antisocial doesn't hold up, either.
- YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
  >> Programmers, I think, want to believe that serious developers have to train in a Shaolin monastery to achieve proficiency, but the reality is much more banal. Wait. You mean the ten years I spent in K'un-Lun learning how to press Return before I was allowed to declare my first variable ... doesn't _everybody_ have to do that?
- cousin_it 7y ago
  > Over my career, I've taught several people to code, from a standing start, and all of them were productive long before your 2-3 years alone What background did these people have? Are you sure it's not sampling bias? I taught programming to a class of kids who didn't choose to be there: their parents made them come. Some kids were immediately "naturals", the rest struggled, and the gap remained no matter what we tried.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    Maybe natural interest for whatever reason rather than necessarily aptitude. I find it pretty unsurprising that if kids make up their mind that they don't like something, maybe they can be brought around but more likely they'll suffer through and make no effort to learn.
YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
>> Most of this time is spend alone, behind a computer. Very few people are willing to follow this lifestyle, girls even more so because of the lack of face to face human contact it implies. I don't follow. What does face to face human contact have to do with being a girl? Can you clarify?
- tasogare 7y ago
  I hope looking at who is overwhelmingly doing teaching, nursing and retail jobs isn't too triggering.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
    Ah, I see. You are not interested in a serious discussion between adults.
vonmoltke 7y ago
> learning to program takes a lot of time and dedication. Basically, at least two/three years of 10 hours+ a day (university classes and homework, plus personal reading and projects) That's absurd. I didn't devote anywhere near that amount of time to learning to program. I did it, in three languages (four, if Verilog counts), over the course of 8 classes in an EE undergrad program. Sure, it took longer to get good at it. Getting good just required actually building things, but not for anywhere near 10 hours a day.

intarga 7y ago

You're really overstating how hard it is to learn to program. I'm a woman who studied physics and astronomy at university. In my final year I taught myself programming in my spare time because I was interested in it, and knew the job prospects were better than in physics. I had other hobbies and an active dating life at the time, but I still managed to get a software job straight out of university, and it's evolving into a fruitful career. Learning to program in no way requires 3 years of monastic devotion.

tasogare 7y ago
Function, parameters, modules, classes, objects, variables, interface, co and contravariance, structs, union... Functional programming, database (data normalization, SQL, no-sql), OS stuffs (process, scheduling, virtual memory), virtual machines, linkers and loaders, compilation, interpretation, compilers (language theory & implementation), HTML et al., networks (ip addressing, domain name, socket), software architecture, design patterns, security issues, memory management, IPC, containers, deployment, CI, encoding (Unicode, UTF8, ASCII), IO, various file formats... List, tree (binary, balanced, implementation), hashset, graph, stack, FIFO. Back-end, mobile, windowed app, game... etc, etc. I see there is a lot of genius in this thread, having come across all these concepts and got a working understanding of all these things in a few weeks/months. I'm 10 years in and I still learn weekly. Either Dunning–Kruger is in full effect or you internalized so many thing you don't see them anymore.
- Izkata 7y ago
  Yeah, this is pretty much my thoughts as well. Even aside from the large range of topics out there, there's a massive gap from "can do something useful" to "can program well / in a maintainable way". One of my dormmates in college was in some engineering degree, I forget what, and decided to learn some programming from us, since so many of us were in CS. It was a pretty short time before he could do useful things, actually helping him finish his projects faster, but all that took was some very basic concepts: arrays, loops, conditionals. I think on the order of a week to get the concepts down and be able to write a C program from scratch, and another week or two before he had the concepts embedded in his mind enough to use it with his own work. Thing is, even that was far faster than I typically saw for those same concepts, as a Teacher's Assistant for the introductory CS courses. The engineering mindset seemed to give him some sort of foundation to pick it up faster, even having never done it before. And his code was absolutely terrible, he had a long, long way to go if he ever wanted to even consider programming as a profession.

tptacek 7y ago

Over my career, I've taught several people to code, from a standing start, and all of them were productive long before your 2-3 years alone --- I don't think I'm a good enough teacher to have kept anyone engaged without having them be able to get real-world tasks done after a few weeks --- and none of them spent 10+ hours a day. Programmers, I think, want to believe that serious developers have to train in a Shaolin monastery to achieve proficiency, but the reality is much more banal. And, obviously to anyone who works in the industry, software development is a team sport. I spent a couple years as a product marketing manager back at Arbor Networks, doing no software development at all, just product pricing and definition and sales team enablement, and I take more meetings as a software developer than I ever did as a PM. So the idea that women are deterred from tech because it's so antisocial doesn't hold up, either.

YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
>> Programmers, I think, want to believe that serious developers have to train in a Shaolin monastery to achieve proficiency, but the reality is much more banal. Wait. You mean the ten years I spent in K'un-Lun learning how to press Return before I was allowed to declare my first variable ... doesn't _everybody_ have to do that?
cousin_it 7y ago
> Over my career, I've taught several people to code, from a standing start, and all of them were productive long before your 2-3 years alone What background did these people have? Are you sure it's not sampling bias? I taught programming to a class of kids who didn't choose to be there: their parents made them come. Some kids were immediately "naturals", the rest struggled, and the gap remained no matter what we tried.
- ghaff 7y ago
  Maybe natural interest for whatever reason rather than necessarily aptitude. I find it pretty unsurprising that if kids make up their mind that they don't like something, maybe they can be brought around but more likely they'll suffer through and make no effort to learn.

YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago

>> Most of this time is spend alone, behind a computer. Very few people are willing to follow this lifestyle, girls even more so because of the lack of face to face human contact it implies. I don't follow. What does face to face human contact have to do with being a girl? Can you clarify?

tasogare 7y ago
I hope looking at who is overwhelmingly doing teaching, nursing and retail jobs isn't too triggering.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
  Ah, I see. You are not interested in a serious discussion between adults.

vonmoltke 7y ago

> learning to program takes a lot of time and dedication. Basically, at least two/three years of 10 hours+ a day (university classes and homework, plus personal reading and projects) That's absurd. I didn't devote anywhere near that amount of time to learning to program. I did it, in three languages (four, if Verilog counts), over the course of 8 classes in an EE undergrad program. Sure, it took longer to get good at it. Getting good just required actually building things, but not for anywhere near 10 hours a day.