8 ms·

Girls Who Code expands across the US

53 points by Parseco 14y ago

Girls Who Code is set to expand its female-oriented tech education program to Detroit, Miami and San Jose thanks to $435,000 in funding from Knight Foundation. Good stuff.

moccajoghurt 14y ago
I'm worried that there could be a focus on compairing if stuff is less than three. Just kidding, I think it's a great thing that females are getting a new role model in the tech field because talent should decide if you will become a programmer and not ancient role models.
- Parseco 14y ago
  Exactly, we should be way past the stereotypes that crippled society for ages. Programming is for everyone, initiatives like this one are a good step in that direction.
belorn 14y ago
Maybe a bit tagent, but a comment to the article claims that stackoverflow.com is a men favored place, and thus there is a need to have a female exclusive place where female coders can ask questions and get answers. Could someone explain this to me? I know that stackoverflow actually has less female participants than software industry in general, but any causes is eluding me. Are there just a number of hidden stories out there about all the sexist comments being made (have not seen any story, or any such comment while using the site), or are question made by females being singled out and left unanswered? We hear constantly about the evils done in IRC rooms , and we hear about conferences/work places where females don't get respected when they got similar amount of experience as to their men co-workers. Do either of those exist on stackoverflow, and if not, why is stackoverflow not gender equal in participants?
- natasham25 14y ago
  Hi, a woman programmer here. I asked a question on StackOverflow once while first learning Python, and got a pretty mean answer. I called the guy out on my blog, of course: http://natashatherobot.com/hey-dude-you-dont-have-to-be-mean-to-be-helpful/ http://natashatherobot.com/hey-dude-you-dont-have-to-be-mean.... Before asking the question, I never posted on StackOverflow before, because I expected a mean answer, and that's exactly what happened. StackOverflow is not a very safe place for asking questions. It's a place where guys go to show off how much smarter they are than you. Most of StackOverflow questions start with "I'm a noob at this..." - that's because people, even guys, feel the need to pre-qualify the question by proving that they're not complete idiots despite not knowing the answer. Asking a question is a vulnerable thing. You are admitting in public that you don't know something. It's really hard to participate when you know the very same public you're trying to get help from will turn around and critique you.
  - minikomi 14y ago
    Hmm. That comment is brash, and perhaps intimidating to a beginner, but I wouldn't call it mean. "It makes my eyes bleed" or "it looks like an idiot wrote it" vs "badly written" (it also seems like a communication problem - his answer was badly written you might say).
    - belorn 14y ago
      brash and intimidating communities is clearly a factor when factoring in how user friendly something is, and how easy it is to join a community. What one might not think of however, is how that effect gender equality for a community. That for me is a interesting insight to draw (through studies would be nice to confirm it).
  - clicks 14y ago
    The supposed mean part of the answer: Learn to write Python code properly according to the style guide – PEP-8 filter highlights only bad code and in your case the whole file is badly written. I am a male. This does not strike me as mean. I'm thinking now though... are you maybe just an emotionally sensitive person? The response is maybe bluntly put, but it is probably sincere and hastily said. Which makes it easier to construe it non-personally -- it's just a guy on the Internet who said it, he probably doesn't even know your gender. And you know what -- as weird as it may sound, I wish I had received this kind of criticism when I was younger. Too often I was showered with positive comments that I became afraid of non-positive criticism to the point that I stopped taking risks that would endanger my reputation or feelings. It took me some time to learn to just take all criticism and make the best of it: detach the person-element, and just take from it what is truly useful to me, but I'm glad I did. Edit: I'm thinking 'are you maybe just an emotionally sensitive person' may have come off as offensive? Sorry if it did, I'm not sure how else to phrase it, you probably know what I mean here.
- CJefferson 14y ago
  This area of an active study (which my wife studies), so I will make a comment, although any mistakes are my own, not my wife's or her research! Many women doing computing at university have repeated bad experiences, with either asking or trying to answer questions in a vaguely public setting (that is, outside a small clique of friends). I would guess (and this is where I am stretching) that this discourages them from taking part in the most public of Q&A sites.
  - Hansi 14y ago
    But you don't need to identify yourself as either male or female on Stackoverflow so that shouldn't be much of an issue?
    - michaelt 14y ago
      I assume the thinking is they have bad experiences with non-anonymous Q&A and that puts them off Q&A as a whole. Humans generalise their experiences all the time; how to determine whether a generalisation is valid is can be confusing [1]. [1] http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=407 http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=407
    - _delirium 14y ago
      That's an approach some women use successfully (including many of the techie women I know), but in aggregate it seems that either most women aren't trying it, or it doesn't work for them. One entirely speculative guess is that men and women might, on average, have different enough interaction patterns in asking/answer questions that an environment dominated by one gender feels like it, even if the participants' genders aren't disclosed. That doesn't even require any kind of hard biological differences; could be entirely a cultural effect. Thinking about my own online participation, lots of subtle cues go into whether a particular venue, even an anonymous one, feels like my kind of place.
    - easytiger 14y ago
      yea for all i know sans personal comments you are all girls. time for news.ycombinator.com/gonewild methinks
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- brandoncapecci 14y ago
  Well, I know every time I answer a question on Stack I make sure to check the gender of the OP first. On the off chance they are female I just respond: "Software is like sex; it's better when it's free - Linus Torvalds". /s In all seriousness there is no partiality to StackExchange - as one can remain completely anonymous. The only questions that consistently aren't answered the the ones that have been asked hundreds of times. Code is ignorant of whether it's programmer has a Y chromosome. This is simply oversensitivity for oversensitivity's sake... and I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds it a bit annoying.
  - EliRivers 14y ago
    Code is ignorant of gender. Coders are not. Code doesn't answer questions. Coders do. Code doesn't post on forums. Coders do. Code doesn't answer differently based on the perceived gender of the questioner. (Some) coders do. Some people are happy hiding who they are so they can get a decent answer. Some people are not.
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      I don't understand how concealment comes into play. I no more conceal my gender on SO than I conceal my preference for cats or dogs, political stance, or my alcoholism. That is, those things are not mentioned because they are not relevant and don't even consider bringing them up, not because I am concealing anything.
      - EliRivers 14y ago
        "I don't understand how concealment comes into play" Many people choose handles that make obvious their gender. Not deliberately so; people often choose handles based on their names and names are, as a general rule, indications of gender. Many women go on to chose handles for themselves online that deliberately obscure their gender in such forums. Someone who would be, for example, JennyKibble in many places becomes JKibble. This is how concealment comes into play. "I no more conceal my gender" The vast majority of the world's population is not you.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
wallflower 14y ago
I tell all of my friends who program and sometimes talk about "oh, maybe I should do side project Y and.or learn technology X" and who happen to have young daughters - "Dude, you want an interesting challenge - I suggest teach your daughter how to code - use Squeak, Alice3D." Usually - they are like "The IT industry is doomed.. or I don't want my daughter to be a coder.. or she doesn't want to learn how to code.. or (worse) my wife would never want that(!egads!)". And I retort (as nicely as possible): "Even if they don't become coders, they will learn how to problem solve, how to better think, how to analyze. Make a game together! Don't even start with code, start with pieces of paper" The goal is not for them to be coders but to bond with them and teach them a useful skill that isn't necessarily about a livelihood (like fathers teaching sons fishing)"
- OlivierLi 14y ago
  Computer Engineering and Computer Science were just declared two of the ten highest paying majors in the US. Software is everywhere and in everything. How can you friends ever think the software industry is doomed?

53 points by Parseco 14y ago

Girls Who Code is set to expand its female-oriented tech education program to Detroit, Miami and San Jose thanks to $435,000 in funding from Knight Foundation. Good stuff.

moccajoghurt 14y ago

I'm worried that there could be a focus on compairing if stuff is less than three. Just kidding, I think it's a great thing that females are getting a new role model in the tech field because talent should decide if you will become a programmer and not ancient role models.

Parseco 14y ago
Exactly, we should be way past the stereotypes that crippled society for ages. Programming is for everyone, initiatives like this one are a good step in that direction.

belorn 14y ago

Maybe a bit tagent, but a comment to the article claims that stackoverflow.com is a men favored place, and thus there is a need to have a female exclusive place where female coders can ask questions and get answers. Could someone explain this to me? I know that stackoverflow actually has less female participants than software industry in general, but any causes is eluding me. Are there just a number of hidden stories out there about all the sexist comments being made (have not seen any story, or any such comment while using the site), or are question made by females being singled out and left unanswered? We hear constantly about the evils done in IRC rooms , and we hear about conferences/work places where females don't get respected when they got similar amount of experience as to their men co-workers. Do either of those exist on stackoverflow, and if not, why is stackoverflow not gender equal in participants?

natasham25 14y ago
Hi, a woman programmer here. I asked a question on StackOverflow once while first learning Python, and got a pretty mean answer. I called the guy out on my blog, of course: http://natashatherobot.com/hey-dude-you-dont-have-to-be-mean-to-be-helpful/ http://natashatherobot.com/hey-dude-you-dont-have-to-be-mean.... Before asking the question, I never posted on StackOverflow before, because I expected a mean answer, and that's exactly what happened. StackOverflow is not a very safe place for asking questions. It's a place where guys go to show off how much smarter they are than you. Most of StackOverflow questions start with "I'm a noob at this..." - that's because people, even guys, feel the need to pre-qualify the question by proving that they're not complete idiots despite not knowing the answer. Asking a question is a vulnerable thing. You are admitting in public that you don't know something. It's really hard to participate when you know the very same public you're trying to get help from will turn around and critique you.
- minikomi 14y ago
  Hmm. That comment is brash, and perhaps intimidating to a beginner, but I wouldn't call it mean. "It makes my eyes bleed" or "it looks like an idiot wrote it" vs "badly written" (it also seems like a communication problem - his answer was badly written you might say).
  - belorn 14y ago
    brash and intimidating communities is clearly a factor when factoring in how user friendly something is, and how easy it is to join a community. What one might not think of however, is how that effect gender equality for a community. That for me is a interesting insight to draw (through studies would be nice to confirm it).
- clicks 14y ago
  The supposed mean part of the answer: Learn to write Python code properly according to the style guide – PEP-8 filter highlights only bad code and in your case the whole file is badly written. I am a male. This does not strike me as mean. I'm thinking now though... are you maybe just an emotionally sensitive person? The response is maybe bluntly put, but it is probably sincere and hastily said. Which makes it easier to construe it non-personally -- it's just a guy on the Internet who said it, he probably doesn't even know your gender. And you know what -- as weird as it may sound, I wish I had received this kind of criticism when I was younger. Too often I was showered with positive comments that I became afraid of non-positive criticism to the point that I stopped taking risks that would endanger my reputation or feelings. It took me some time to learn to just take all criticism and make the best of it: detach the person-element, and just take from it what is truly useful to me, but I'm glad I did. Edit: I'm thinking 'are you maybe just an emotionally sensitive person' may have come off as offensive? Sorry if it did, I'm not sure how else to phrase it, you probably know what I mean here.
CJefferson 14y ago
This area of an active study (which my wife studies), so I will make a comment, although any mistakes are my own, not my wife's or her research! Many women doing computing at university have repeated bad experiences, with either asking or trying to answer questions in a vaguely public setting (that is, outside a small clique of friends). I would guess (and this is where I am stretching) that this discourages them from taking part in the most public of Q&A sites.
- Hansi 14y ago
  But you don't need to identify yourself as either male or female on Stackoverflow so that shouldn't be much of an issue?
  - michaelt 14y ago
    I assume the thinking is they have bad experiences with non-anonymous Q&A and that puts them off Q&A as a whole. Humans generalise their experiences all the time; how to determine whether a generalisation is valid is can be confusing [1]. [1] http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=407 http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=407
  - _delirium 14y ago
    That's an approach some women use successfully (including many of the techie women I know), but in aggregate it seems that either most women aren't trying it, or it doesn't work for them. One entirely speculative guess is that men and women might, on average, have different enough interaction patterns in asking/answer questions that an environment dominated by one gender feels like it, even if the participants' genders aren't disclosed. That doesn't even require any kind of hard biological differences; could be entirely a cultural effect. Thinking about my own online participation, lots of subtle cues go into whether a particular venue, even an anonymous one, feels like my kind of place.
  - easytiger 14y ago
    yea for all i know sans personal comments you are all girls. time for news.ycombinator.com/gonewild methinks
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
brandoncapecci 14y ago
Well, I know every time I answer a question on Stack I make sure to check the gender of the OP first. On the off chance they are female I just respond: "Software is like sex; it's better when it's free - Linus Torvalds". /s In all seriousness there is no partiality to StackExchange - as one can remain completely anonymous. The only questions that consistently aren't answered the the ones that have been asked hundreds of times. Code is ignorant of whether it's programmer has a Y chromosome. This is simply oversensitivity for oversensitivity's sake... and I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds it a bit annoying.
- EliRivers 14y ago
  Code is ignorant of gender. Coders are not. Code doesn't answer questions. Coders do. Code doesn't post on forums. Coders do. Code doesn't answer differently based on the perceived gender of the questioner. (Some) coders do. Some people are happy hiding who they are so they can get a decent answer. Some people are not.
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    I don't understand how concealment comes into play. I no more conceal my gender on SO than I conceal my preference for cats or dogs, political stance, or my alcoholism. That is, those things are not mentioned because they are not relevant and don't even consider bringing them up, not because I am concealing anything.
    - EliRivers 14y ago
      "I don't understand how concealment comes into play" Many people choose handles that make obvious their gender. Not deliberately so; people often choose handles based on their names and names are, as a general rule, indications of gender. Many women go on to chose handles for themselves online that deliberately obscure their gender in such forums. Someone who would be, for example, JennyKibble in many places becomes JKibble. This is how concealment comes into play. "I no more conceal my gender" The vast majority of the world's population is not you.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

wallflower 14y ago

I tell all of my friends who program and sometimes talk about "oh, maybe I should do side project Y and.or learn technology X" and who happen to have young daughters - "Dude, you want an interesting challenge - I suggest teach your daughter how to code - use Squeak, Alice3D." Usually - they are like "The IT industry is doomed.. or I don't want my daughter to be a coder.. or she doesn't want to learn how to code.. or (worse) my wife would never want that(!egads!)". And I retort (as nicely as possible): "Even if they don't become coders, they will learn how to problem solve, how to better think, how to analyze. Make a game together! Don't even start with code, start with pieces of paper" The goal is not for them to be coders but to bond with them and teach them a useful skill that isn't necessarily about a livelihood (like fathers teaching sons fishing)"

OlivierLi 14y ago
Computer Engineering and Computer Science were just declared two of the ten highest paying majors in the US. Software is everywhere and in everything. How can you friends ever think the software industry is doomed?