4 ms·

And fifty years ago it was incredibly female dominated - the "male shift" in CS is easy to observe and pretty handily defeats any of those false claims you'll s

by munk-a 5y ago

And fifty years ago it was incredibly female dominated - the "male shift" in CS is easy to observe and pretty handily defeats any of those false claims you'll see about "men's brains being wired" for programming. It's important to remember that men muscled women out of programming initially once the field became seen as something more than a secretarial position.

Dracophoenix 5y ago
As you pointed out CS was once secretarial work. But what constituted CS also underwent a transformation during that time period. No one was muscled out so much as barriers to entry broke down thanks to market forces. Here's a comment I wrote in response to a similar point addressing the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26767280 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26767280
- munk-a 5y ago
  I am a programmer like my mother before me - but while I've had it easy working in high level language like C++ and PHP she worked in binary and, only toward the end of her career assembler. She made banks work using nothing but low level machine instructions which far exceeds the rudimentary stuff I'm doing today. Eventually she graduated up to management and project planning, but this was back in the day where individual contributors never made much money directly - if you wanted to keep getting raises you had to career track switch to management. I don't disagree that programming itself did significantly shift, but it's been perpetually getting easier, not more difficult, to work professionally at.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tomp 5y ago
This is patently untrue. Men started to dominate when it turned from a "secretarial" position into an engineering job, as they did in ... wait for it ... actual engineering. https://developers.hp.com/sites/default/files/Intl%20Womens%20Week%20percent-degrees-women-usa-annotated.jpg https://developers.hp.com/sites/default/files/Intl%20Womens%...
15155 5y ago
Were the bulk of these programmers solving problems with engineering and logical reasoning as they might today?
- mcguire 5y ago
  Yes. More so.
  - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
    Revisionist history
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    That doesn't align with most accounts of how computing was performed in the 50's and 60's. For instance, Knuth was seen as an anomaly because he would operate the keypunch as fast as the secretaries and would keypunch his own programs.
    - mcguire 5y ago
      Programmers aren't and weren't keypunch operators. Or secretaries.
      - 908B64B197 5y ago
        No, they would have been known as "computer operators" and still been counted in the "computer related occupations" bucket.
        mcguire 5y ago
        I recommend Joanna Russ' How to Suppress Women's Writing for more tips on how to deny women's presence.
  - munk-a 5y ago
    And not just more so - but more so with worse tools to do it with. There are really hard problems in development these days that we all deal with - and we only deal with them because we're standing on the shoulders of giants - most of whom were women.
908B64B197 5y ago
> once the field became seen as something more than a secretarial position. It's not just perception; "Computers" used to refer to employees performing calculations manually for numerical methods. Then "Computer Operators" were secretaries translating assembly instructions written on paper into the correct octal code to punch on cards to feed the machine. They got the instructions from engineers. The teletype made their work obsolete, but you can still see the demographic shift in "Computer Related Occupations" as aggregated on government data.
TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
I think you have to go to the 1940s and 1950s for programming being a “secretarial position”. That was 70 and 80 years ago. It’s not even a valid comparison at that point, it’s too different. CS back then was completely different than today or even the recent past. As one example, computational complexity wasn’t even a thing until the 1960s with Hartmanis and Stearns. There was a lot more time spent on inputting programs and data than today.

by munk-a 5y ago

Dracophoenix 5y ago

As you pointed out CS was once secretarial work. But what constituted CS also underwent a transformation during that time period. No one was muscled out so much as barriers to entry broke down thanks to market forces. Here's a comment I wrote in response to a similar point addressing the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26767280 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26767280

munk-a 5y ago
I am a programmer like my mother before me - but while I've had it easy working in high level language like C++ and PHP she worked in binary and, only toward the end of her career assembler. She made banks work using nothing but low level machine instructions which far exceeds the rudimentary stuff I'm doing today. Eventually she graduated up to management and project planning, but this was back in the day where individual contributors never made much money directly - if you wanted to keep getting raises you had to career track switch to management. I don't disagree that programming itself did significantly shift, but it's been perpetually getting easier, not more difficult, to work professionally at.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

tomp 5y ago

This is patently untrue. Men started to dominate when it turned from a "secretarial" position into an engineering job, as they did in ... wait for it ... actual engineering. https://developers.hp.com/sites/default/files/Intl%20Womens%20Week%20percent-degrees-women-usa-annotated.jpg https://developers.hp.com/sites/default/files/Intl%20Womens%...

15155 5y ago

Were the bulk of these programmers solving problems with engineering and logical reasoning as they might today?

mcguire 5y ago
Yes. More so.
- TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
  Revisionist history
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  That doesn't align with most accounts of how computing was performed in the 50's and 60's. For instance, Knuth was seen as an anomaly because he would operate the keypunch as fast as the secretaries and would keypunch his own programs.
  - mcguire 5y ago
    Programmers aren't and weren't keypunch operators. Or secretaries.
    - 908B64B197 5y ago
      No, they would have been known as "computer operators" and still been counted in the "computer related occupations" bucket.
      - mcguire 5y ago
        I recommend Joanna Russ' How to Suppress Women's Writing for more tips on how to deny women's presence.
- munk-a 5y ago
  And not just more so - but more so with worse tools to do it with. There are really hard problems in development these days that we all deal with - and we only deal with them because we're standing on the shoulders of giants - most of whom were women.

908B64B197 5y ago

> once the field became seen as something more than a secretarial position. It's not just perception; "Computers" used to refer to employees performing calculations manually for numerical methods. Then "Computer Operators" were secretaries translating assembly instructions written on paper into the correct octal code to punch on cards to feed the machine. They got the instructions from engineers. The teletype made their work obsolete, but you can still see the demographic shift in "Computer Related Occupations" as aggregated on government data.

TedDoesntTalk 5y ago

I think you have to go to the 1940s and 1950s for programming being a “secretarial position”. That was 70 and 80 years ago. It’s not even a valid comparison at that point, it’s too different. CS back then was completely different than today or even the recent past. As one example, computational complexity wasn’t even a thing until the 1960s with Hartmanis and Stearns. There was a lot more time spent on inputting programs and data than today.