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Sex underrepresentation isn’t a problem itself. It’s a potential source of problems—if you saw some statistical outlier while profiling software, you’d pay more

Sex underrepresentation isn’t a problem itself. It’s a potential source of problems—if you saw some statistical outlier while profiling software, you’d pay more attention to it and verify whether it’s causing issues. Homogeneity of any kind tends to create bias and brittleness. When you ask women why they don’t program, there’s a mix of normal things like “I don’t find it interesting” and “I prefer X”; but many also say “I don’t feel welcome”, and I would like to improve on that. In the same way, when you ask black Americans why they don’t program, a disturbing number say things like “I never had access to a computer”.

icecreampain 13y ago
"I don't feel welcome"? So what other people think is more important than applying oneself to a hobby / career that is intrinsically fair - computer's not being able to discriminate, talk or even think. If the excuse for not programming is based on other people's opinions of oneself, then I just regard it the same as fat people saying that they're fat because society shames them into eating - instead of just being honest and saying that they calorie intake is much larger than their output.