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Thats what it feels like to be a female programmer. only, when you ask for help you hear things like "that's okay, your a girl" or "why would you need to know t

Thats what it feels like to be a female programmer. only, when you ask for help you hear things like "that's okay, your a girl" or "why would you need to know that?". So you stop asking your stupid questions, and your self esteem is ruined forever.

brendanobrien 14y ago
To the OP, thanks for writing. I'm going to try to act on it and get out to some sort of meetup. To you, catastrophallie, on behalf of male developers who happen to think women–ESPECIALLY women who program–are totally awesome, I'm sorry. I'm still confused on how being a woman has anything to do with writing code, and think people who pre-judge your ability do so on unfounded misconceptions.
- geoka9 14y ago
  ... ESPECIALLY women who program–are totally awesome... ... how being a woman has anything to do with writing code... I agree with you in spirit, but, logically I think you have a fallacy here.
  - lucian1900 14y ago
    No fallacy. Parent is expressing admiration of both "women" and "woman programmers".
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fredleblanc 14y ago
It's horrible that this is so prevalent in the tech community (and really any community, but I come from tech, so I'll just speak from what I know). It probably doesn't mean much coming from some random commenter, but I can assure you that there are a lot of great people (male and female) out there that don't think or carry on this way. That said, my areas of knowledge are in HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP. What I know in PHP could probably be translated to a lot of other languages. If you have any questions, you can certainly throw'em my way. Here are a bunch of ways to find me: http://fredhq.com/contact http://fredhq.com/contact And that goes for anyone reading this. I'm not always available (obviously), and I may not have the answer, but I can bounce ideas back and forth which sometimes is just what is needed.
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jlarocco 14y ago
There's no excuse for "that's okay, you're a girl", but FWIW I'm a guy and I get "Why would you need to know that?" all the time.
delinka 14y ago
This is what it feels like to be me and I'm a male programmer. I get slightly different responses of course. Like "that's not smart; why do you need to know that?" and it has affected my self esteem during my entire career. When I've run against the same wall for hours and repeatedly received this response from co-workers, I finally decide to monopolize their time for half an hour explaining the problem. And we discover I was indeed headed down the right path and Mr. MoreExperienceThanYou didn't know the answer anyway. Nothing quite so frustrating as a group of "experienced" people jumping on the "n00b" and telling them that they're on the wrong path only to discover the neck-beard-wannabes couldn't think past their own limited codebase. The industry is full of ego. And I've have to learn to code alone to avoid working with assholes.
- catastrophallie 14y ago
  Coding alone can be hard for anyone. I liked this article because I know there are countless men and women who feel this way. It seemed like a good cross gender way of explaining some of the frustrations of not fitting in the club. don't give up!
- Mz 14y ago
  I doubt that is specific to programming or really about ego. In the movie "Erin Brokovich", Erin gets treated that way when she asks questions. It turns out they most likely did not answer her because they had no explanation and it was just convenient to treat her like she was stupid rather than admit they were.
  - delinka 14y ago
    You are correct that it's not limited to our industry. I run into these kinds of people in many other places in my life. And if I've ever needed to spend any amount of time working with them, I prefer to work alone, interacting only when absolutely necessary. As to Erin Brokovich, she's an excellent example of confidence without ego. It's been difficult for me to cultivate confidence in the presence of others - I was never actually encouraged as a child (sometimes passively discouraged- "why would you want to do that? plenty of other people are doing that.") And apparently it's not common practice to encourage each other as adults.
Retric 14y ago
Sounds like your on a terrible team, you might be asking people who don't know what their doing for help. However, I have found asking for specific advice is less useful than defining the problem, how your approaching it, and what's not working. Some times what might seem like a stupid idea is the best compromise available, but you need to get people past the ick factor before they will help solve the problem.

brendanobrien 14y ago

To the OP, thanks for writing. I'm going to try to act on it and get out to some sort of meetup. To you, catastrophallie, on behalf of male developers who happen to think women–ESPECIALLY women who program–are totally awesome, I'm sorry. I'm still confused on how being a woman has anything to do with writing code, and think people who pre-judge your ability do so on unfounded misconceptions.

geoka9 14y ago
... ESPECIALLY women who program–are totally awesome... ... how being a woman has anything to do with writing code... I agree with you in spirit, but, logically I think you have a fallacy here.
- lucian1900 14y ago
  No fallacy. Parent is expressing admiration of both "women" and "woman programmers".

deleted 14y ago

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fredleblanc 14y ago

It's horrible that this is so prevalent in the tech community (and really any community, but I come from tech, so I'll just speak from what I know). It probably doesn't mean much coming from some random commenter, but I can assure you that there are a lot of great people (male and female) out there that don't think or carry on this way. That said, my areas of knowledge are in HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP. What I know in PHP could probably be translated to a lot of other languages. If you have any questions, you can certainly throw'em my way. Here are a bunch of ways to find me: http://fredhq.com/contact http://fredhq.com/contact And that goes for anyone reading this. I'm not always available (obviously), and I may not have the answer, but I can bounce ideas back and forth which sometimes is just what is needed.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

jlarocco 14y ago

There's no excuse for "that's okay, you're a girl", but FWIW I'm a guy and I get "Why would you need to know that?" all the time.

delinka 14y ago

This is what it feels like to be me and I'm a male programmer. I get slightly different responses of course. Like "that's not smart; why do you need to know that?" and it has affected my self esteem during my entire career. When I've run against the same wall for hours and repeatedly received this response from co-workers, I finally decide to monopolize their time for half an hour explaining the problem. And we discover I was indeed headed down the right path and Mr. MoreExperienceThanYou didn't know the answer anyway. Nothing quite so frustrating as a group of "experienced" people jumping on the "n00b" and telling them that they're on the wrong path only to discover the neck-beard-wannabes couldn't think past their own limited codebase. The industry is full of ego. And I've have to learn to code alone to avoid working with assholes.

catastrophallie 14y ago
Coding alone can be hard for anyone. I liked this article because I know there are countless men and women who feel this way. It seemed like a good cross gender way of explaining some of the frustrations of not fitting in the club. don't give up!
Mz 14y ago
I doubt that is specific to programming or really about ego. In the movie "Erin Brokovich", Erin gets treated that way when she asks questions. It turns out they most likely did not answer her because they had no explanation and it was just convenient to treat her like she was stupid rather than admit they were.
- delinka 14y ago
  You are correct that it's not limited to our industry. I run into these kinds of people in many other places in my life. And if I've ever needed to spend any amount of time working with them, I prefer to work alone, interacting only when absolutely necessary. As to Erin Brokovich, she's an excellent example of confidence without ego. It's been difficult for me to cultivate confidence in the presence of others - I was never actually encouraged as a child (sometimes passively discouraged- "why would you want to do that? plenty of other people are doing that.") And apparently it's not common practice to encourage each other as adults.

Retric 14y ago

Sounds like your on a terrible team, you might be asking people who don't know what their doing for help. However, I have found asking for specific advice is less useful than defining the problem, how your approaching it, and what's not working. Some times what might seem like a stupid idea is the best compromise available, but you need to get people past the ick factor before they will help solve the problem.