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Old topic. Salient talking points: 1) "Geek" culture is not heterodox. It's very accepting of fat guys who like faux-Mexican food, and anime; but not so accept

by wisty 15y ago

Old topic. Salient talking points: 1) "Geek" culture is not heterodox. It's very accepting of fat guys who like faux-Mexican food, and anime; but not so accepting of other non-conformists. Many women are not fat guys who like faux-Mexican food, and anime. 2) Women are encouraged to work hard. Men are encouraged to be talented. This is true of teachers, parents, peers, and managers. Coding is something that requires more talent than hard work (at least, to get started); due to the high barrier of entry. 3) There is some ugly sexism in parts of tech. There is ugly sexism in other career paths (finance, sales); but we can do a lot better. 4) Some women choose to have more personal time, rather than staying up till 3am coding. It's hard to tell if this is really relevant - Patrick McKenzie claims to have run business on 5 hours a week. And no-one here (I hope) think driving code monkeys on 80 hour/week death marches is really a good idea (due to tiredness-induced bugs).

kiba 15y ago
2) Women are encouraged to work hard. Men are encouraged to be talented. This is true of teachers, parents, peers, and managers. Coding is something that requires more talent than hard work (at least, to get started); due to the high barrier of entry. I disputed the notion that programming required "talent", whatever it means. Learning to program isn't rocket science, but it required a lot of dedication and patience. Some women choose to have more personal time, rather than staying up till 3am coding. I thought coding until 3AM in the morning is the definition of personal time for programmers.
- wisty 15y ago
  > I disputed the notion that programming required "talent", whatever it means. Learning to program isn't rocket science, but it required a lot of dedication and patience. The dichotomy between hard work and talent can be a false one. What I'm talking about is teachers rewarding girls for solving easy questions without any fuss, and rewarding boys for solving hard problems. Programming requires hard work and talent, but it's seen as talent by outsiders (i.e. 99% of the people most high-school students know). While codeacademy and learn-x-the-hard-way may help lower the barrier, learning to code has, historically, been really bloody hard.
  - einhverfr 15y ago
    But what passes for talent is very often times just a hard, critical eye directed into one's self. In other words, asking, 'how can I do this better?'
- Danieru 15y ago
  > I thought coding until 3AM in the morning is the definition of personal time for programmers. I do not know about most programmers but personally I stop coding at 10pm. Any later and I'd be damaging a well balanced sleep pattern and writing sub-standard code. Instead I think the cause is something similar. Girls historically did not spend a significant amount of their free time on computers. Interestingly enough I think that is changing. Nowadays thanks to facebook both genders spend a vast ammount of time at the keyboard. Whether that will result in more female programmers I'm not sure. With video games the natural next step is to try and make your own. Facebook does not have this natural migration path towards programming.
  - grogs 15y ago
    Facebook is just a tool for most people. Sure, increased exposure to computers will attract more people, but not a huge amount more. My younger brother uses facebook a lot, but has no desire to program.
tikhonj 15y ago
Programming has a high barrier to entry? I've always assumed the opposite: it has a much lower barrier to entry. All you need is a computer and you get immediate feedback (e.g. does your program work). So it's easier than anything involving making physical stuff--no need for materials or tools or expenses, and it's easier than other mental pursuits like math because you can tell if you're going in the right direction and it's easier to do useful/cool things immediately.
- wisty 15y ago
  http://www.cprogramming.com/begin.html http://www.cprogramming.com/begin.html This was one of the first results I got searching for "how do I learn to program". The other results were Norvig's "it takes 10 years", the University of Phoenix, and a wikihow page recommending SICP. If you know how to program, it's easy to get into it. If you don't know, you won't know where to start. You'll get tutorials saying "Install Linux, apt-get build essentials; open vi ...." Once you know how to program (hello world, for loops), you can calculate fibonacci numbers. Wow. Then you need an application. People will think "you're a programmer, so, can you write me a game? Hack the Pentagon? No? LAMO!".
  - einhverfr 15y ago
    I am teaching my 8 year old son to program. He's really into robots so I figured we'd be pushing towards getting him mindstorms once the programming clicks. I am teaching him C and Perl. First things we did were simple loops and hello world programs. Next was a simple number guessing game (one screen of code in Perl). Next will be the number guessing game in C. Really, what helps early on is a teacher. I am able to give him assignments. Ask him to make changes to his code, etc. He is starting to get it but it is a lot of work at first. Maybe an apprenticeship model would be ideal?
  - zcid 15y ago
    Baby steps
  - tikhonj 15y ago
    I dunno. I started programming on the web, with JavaScript. The very first thing I did was make an admittedly trivial interactive web site. Of course, I didn't set out to "learn programming", I set out to make a website. Still, if I was able to fairly easily pick HTML/CSS/JavaScript up and do stuff I found cool in sixth grade, it has to have a pretty low barrier to entry. This is especially true because I never was a hard worker :P That said, I think starting from SICP instead of outdated JavaScript tutorials would have been more awesome. But maybe more difficult. And really, all that stuff: Linux, SICP, Emacs (I'm too cool for Vi :)) was easier than it was made out to be. People say Linux is difficult, but I found it about as easy to pick up as Windows and easier that OS X. After all that rambling, I think I lost my point. All I really have to say is that, in my experience, it's easier than it seems as long as you don't let people intimidate you ("ooh, Linux is difficult" and other nonsense like that).
yummyfajitas 15y ago
...but not so accepting of other non-conformists. What other sorts of non-conformists find that they are not accepted by the tech world? In my experience, the tech world is extremely tolerant of wacky political beliefs (anarchist/communist, for example), low status hobbies, all sorts of foreign cultures, gays and other sexual minorities, to name all the groups I can think of. Also, there are a few studies suggesting women avoid computing because women dislike nonconformists and individualistic culture. This would certainly explain why the corporate world has more women programmers than the startup world. http://web.archive.org/web/20100106021904/http://scicom.ucsc.edu/SciNotes/0901/pages/geeks/geeks.html http://web.archive.org/web/20100106021904/http://scicom.ucsc... http://web.archive.org/web/20091007234852/http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/lin3_gender.pdf http://web.archive.org/web/20091007234852/http://opensource.... Also, you realize your points 2) (women work hard, not smart) and 4) (women don't work hard) are contradictory, right?
- Anechoic 15y ago
  Also, there are a few studies suggesting women avoid computing because women dislike nonconformists and individualistic culture. Those examples don't point to women disliking "nonconformists and individualistic" cultures, they point to women not liking geek male culture. Plush Nintendo-shaped stuffed pillows are just as non-conformist as Star Trek toys, but those UCSC women seemed pretty happy with the environment. The Lin paper talks about all kinds of different problems (" women within the software industry have to work harder than men in order to get the same respect", etc)
  - yummyfajitas 15y ago
    Those examples don't point to women disliking "nonconformists and individualistic" cultures, they point to women not liking geek male culture. It might just be certain non-conformist cultures women don't like. The point remains - if technology were less accepting of differences, it would probably have more women. I'm also not sure I agree that nintendo-pillows are as non-conformist as star trek toys - geek-chic has become fairly mainstream. Plenty of hipsters wear mario or pacman t-shirts but very few people of any mainstream subculture wear a borg or lt. data t-shirt.
einhverfr 15y ago
Geek culture is not entirely heterodox. But it is somewhat heterodox. The key thing is that to be accepted usually you have to do something both different and unusual, but excel it at in your own way. Shameless plug: some examples of my paper airplanes: http://www.flickr.com/photos/einhverfr http://www.flickr.com/photos/einhverfr I think there are many more girl geeks than folks think. But in some areas, they are very much under-represented. The problem though is that "tech" here is used as a very narrow way. I think if there is a female sysadmin who runs an accounting system for a rice manufacturing plant, that she would be a "woman in tech" as would a self-employed consultant that hacks on open source software and implements it for customers. But the "women in tech" lists are not about women working in tech.... And that's part of the problem.

by wisty 15y ago

kiba 15y ago

2) Women are encouraged to work hard. Men are encouraged to be talented. This is true of teachers, parents, peers, and managers. Coding is something that requires more talent than hard work (at least, to get started); due to the high barrier of entry. I disputed the notion that programming required "talent", whatever it means. Learning to program isn't rocket science, but it required a lot of dedication and patience. Some women choose to have more personal time, rather than staying up till 3am coding. I thought coding until 3AM in the morning is the definition of personal time for programmers.

wisty 15y ago
> I disputed the notion that programming required "talent", whatever it means. Learning to program isn't rocket science, but it required a lot of dedication and patience. The dichotomy between hard work and talent can be a false one. What I'm talking about is teachers rewarding girls for solving easy questions without any fuss, and rewarding boys for solving hard problems. Programming requires hard work and talent, but it's seen as talent by outsiders (i.e. 99% of the people most high-school students know). While codeacademy and learn-x-the-hard-way may help lower the barrier, learning to code has, historically, been really bloody hard.
- einhverfr 15y ago
  But what passes for talent is very often times just a hard, critical eye directed into one's self. In other words, asking, 'how can I do this better?'
Danieru 15y ago
> I thought coding until 3AM in the morning is the definition of personal time for programmers. I do not know about most programmers but personally I stop coding at 10pm. Any later and I'd be damaging a well balanced sleep pattern and writing sub-standard code. Instead I think the cause is something similar. Girls historically did not spend a significant amount of their free time on computers. Interestingly enough I think that is changing. Nowadays thanks to facebook both genders spend a vast ammount of time at the keyboard. Whether that will result in more female programmers I'm not sure. With video games the natural next step is to try and make your own. Facebook does not have this natural migration path towards programming.
- grogs 15y ago
  Facebook is just a tool for most people. Sure, increased exposure to computers will attract more people, but not a huge amount more. My younger brother uses facebook a lot, but has no desire to program.

tikhonj 15y ago

Programming has a high barrier to entry? I've always assumed the opposite: it has a much lower barrier to entry. All you need is a computer and you get immediate feedback (e.g. does your program work). So it's easier than anything involving making physical stuff--no need for materials or tools or expenses, and it's easier than other mental pursuits like math because you can tell if you're going in the right direction and it's easier to do useful/cool things immediately.

wisty 15y ago
http://www.cprogramming.com/begin.html http://www.cprogramming.com/begin.html This was one of the first results I got searching for "how do I learn to program". The other results were Norvig's "it takes 10 years", the University of Phoenix, and a wikihow page recommending SICP. If you know how to program, it's easy to get into it. If you don't know, you won't know where to start. You'll get tutorials saying "Install Linux, apt-get build essentials; open vi ...." Once you know how to program (hello world, for loops), you can calculate fibonacci numbers. Wow. Then you need an application. People will think "you're a programmer, so, can you write me a game? Hack the Pentagon? No? LAMO!".
- einhverfr 15y ago
  I am teaching my 8 year old son to program. He's really into robots so I figured we'd be pushing towards getting him mindstorms once the programming clicks. I am teaching him C and Perl. First things we did were simple loops and hello world programs. Next was a simple number guessing game (one screen of code in Perl). Next will be the number guessing game in C. Really, what helps early on is a teacher. I am able to give him assignments. Ask him to make changes to his code, etc. He is starting to get it but it is a lot of work at first. Maybe an apprenticeship model would be ideal?
- zcid 15y ago
  Baby steps
- tikhonj 15y ago
  I dunno. I started programming on the web, with JavaScript. The very first thing I did was make an admittedly trivial interactive web site. Of course, I didn't set out to "learn programming", I set out to make a website. Still, if I was able to fairly easily pick HTML/CSS/JavaScript up and do stuff I found cool in sixth grade, it has to have a pretty low barrier to entry. This is especially true because I never was a hard worker :P That said, I think starting from SICP instead of outdated JavaScript tutorials would have been more awesome. But maybe more difficult. And really, all that stuff: Linux, SICP, Emacs (I'm too cool for Vi :)) was easier than it was made out to be. People say Linux is difficult, but I found it about as easy to pick up as Windows and easier that OS X. After all that rambling, I think I lost my point. All I really have to say is that, in my experience, it's easier than it seems as long as you don't let people intimidate you ("ooh, Linux is difficult" and other nonsense like that).

yummyfajitas 15y ago

...but not so accepting of other non-conformists. What other sorts of non-conformists find that they are not accepted by the tech world? In my experience, the tech world is extremely tolerant of wacky political beliefs (anarchist/communist, for example), low status hobbies, all sorts of foreign cultures, gays and other sexual minorities, to name all the groups I can think of. Also, there are a few studies suggesting women avoid computing because women dislike nonconformists and individualistic culture. This would certainly explain why the corporate world has more women programmers than the startup world. http://web.archive.org/web/20100106021904/http://scicom.ucsc.edu/SciNotes/0901/pages/geeks/geeks.html http://web.archive.org/web/20100106021904/http://scicom.ucsc... http://web.archive.org/web/20091007234852/http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/lin3_gender.pdf http://web.archive.org/web/20091007234852/http://opensource.... Also, you realize your points 2) (women work hard, not smart) and 4) (women don't work hard) are contradictory, right?

Anechoic 15y ago
Also, there are a few studies suggesting women avoid computing because women dislike nonconformists and individualistic culture. Those examples don't point to women disliking "nonconformists and individualistic" cultures, they point to women not liking geek male culture. Plush Nintendo-shaped stuffed pillows are just as non-conformist as Star Trek toys, but those UCSC women seemed pretty happy with the environment. The Lin paper talks about all kinds of different problems (" women within the software industry have to work harder than men in order to get the same respect", etc)
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  Those examples don't point to women disliking "nonconformists and individualistic" cultures, they point to women not liking geek male culture. It might just be certain non-conformist cultures women don't like. The point remains - if technology were less accepting of differences, it would probably have more women. I'm also not sure I agree that nintendo-pillows are as non-conformist as star trek toys - geek-chic has become fairly mainstream. Plenty of hipsters wear mario or pacman t-shirts but very few people of any mainstream subculture wear a borg or lt. data t-shirt.

einhverfr 15y ago

Geek culture is not entirely heterodox. But it is somewhat heterodox. The key thing is that to be accepted usually you have to do something both different and unusual, but excel it at in your own way. Shameless plug: some examples of my paper airplanes: http://www.flickr.com/photos/einhverfr http://www.flickr.com/photos/einhverfr I think there are many more girl geeks than folks think. But in some areas, they are very much under-represented. The problem though is that "tech" here is used as a very narrow way. I think if there is a female sysadmin who runs an accounting system for a rice manufacturing plant, that she would be a "woman in tech" as would a self-employed consultant that hacks on open source software and implements it for customers. But the "women in tech" lists are not about women working in tech.... And that's part of the problem.