5 ms·

I agree with your antecedent. It is true that i think a lot of the prejudice and abhorrent behavior takes place younger. There are a lot of people who don't m

I agree with your antecedent. It is true that i think a lot of the prejudice and abhorrent behavior takes place younger. There are a lot of people who don't make it through the weeders that should. However, i just can't fathom how it could be the case that there's nothing we can do about it, regardless of what our ages may be. Why aren't we addressing the pipeline into the industry? That can take the form of direct involvement with the lives of students (which is also something that should be undertaken carefully. My wife took programming classes in high school, and even her instructor for the class was creepy), or indirectly, again through trying to defeat the stereotypes about who is in our industry. And i think we need to broaden our perspective on where the feeder into the pipeline is. Why aren't we trying to get analytical individuals from other fields who already do train their students to think analytically?

swolchok 17y ago
Why aren't we trying to get analytical individuals from other fields who already do train their students to think analytically? Probably because trainability of those folks would cause more "anyone can do it" sentiment, devaluing our skills. As to the pipeline, now you're calling for outright altruistic activism, not a change in day-to-day behavior at work. Also, if I set out to "encourage women in computer science", it would probably be perceived as "creepy".
- knowtheory 17y ago
  "now you're calling for outright altruistic activism, not a change in day-to-day behavior at work" That makes me want to facepalm a bit. Do you work with open source software? Also, if I set out to "encourage women in computer science", it would probably be perceived as "creepy". Then don't. Set out to encourage students who are good at analytical thinking to get into programming, and keep an eye on equal promotion of the utility of programming (note, that programming is not the same as computer science. I've got a linguistics degree, and i am a perfectly competent programmer [okay, so yes, i 've got a minor in computer science too]).
  - swolchok 17y ago
    That makes me want to facepalm a bit. Do you work with open source software? Yes, but for ego boost and/or personal bugfix reasons.

swolchok 17y ago

Why aren't we trying to get analytical individuals from other fields who already do train their students to think analytically? Probably because trainability of those folks would cause more "anyone can do it" sentiment, devaluing our skills. As to the pipeline, now you're calling for outright altruistic activism, not a change in day-to-day behavior at work. Also, if I set out to "encourage women in computer science", it would probably be perceived as "creepy".

knowtheory 17y ago
"now you're calling for outright altruistic activism, not a change in day-to-day behavior at work" That makes me want to facepalm a bit. Do you work with open source software? Also, if I set out to "encourage women in computer science", it would probably be perceived as "creepy". Then don't. Set out to encourage students who are good at analytical thinking to get into programming, and keep an eye on equal promotion of the utility of programming (note, that programming is not the same as computer science. I've got a linguistics degree, and i am a perfectly competent programmer [okay, so yes, i 've got a minor in computer science too]).
- swolchok 17y ago
  That makes me want to facepalm a bit. Do you work with open source software? Yes, but for ego boost and/or personal bugfix reasons.