7 ms·

Stop telling women they just need to know how to code

44 points by quant 13y ago

LanceH 13y ago
Reaching out and providing scholarships and generally giving a leg up is not how this gap will be closed. It has never been about teaching women to code, except at the bare minimum "I can get a job at a giant company where I'll write 2000 lines of code in a year." It's about right clicking with your mouse to see if there are any other options available. Googling for your answer before you ask someone else. Asking questions on stackoverflow. Hacking and reading at night to figure out something that may or may not be for work. Recompiling the source code to make it bend to your will. There is a price to be paid, and it doesn't have to do with money. As was said thousands of years ago, "There is no royal road to Geometry." It is the same today. All these solutions that don't involve paying that price are destined to fail. College age is too late. Middle school may be the last opportunity for any real percentage of women to be affected. It's not about completing classes.
- thenmar 13y ago
  Wait, are you saying that college is too late to learn how to program?
  - erichocean 13y ago
    I didn't begin programming until college (I'm a white male in the US), and I've gotten paid to do it ever since. That's me on the AUTHORS list for Google Chrome's v8 engine [0] (I ported it, and Node.js, to Solaris if your curious), so I'm at least competent enough to do that. Anyway, that's proof that it can be done, and at a level that make a difference somewhere. :) That said, I don't like to code, so maybe that has something to do with why I started late. I was into computers from pre-school onwards, though. [0] https://code.google.com/p/v8/source/browse/branches/bleeding_edge/AUTHORS?r=5437#16 https://code.google.com/p/v8/source/browse/branches/bleeding...
    - LanceH 13y ago
      I didn't begin programming until after college, actually. But I had a math degree by then (theoretical math, not even applied). I had developed that curiosity and drive, however, and I think college is too late for that. edit - I mean for large numbers. The exceptions are always wonderful to see. another edit - I also don't think that most programming is about programming, it's about figuring out how things work. Just learning to program doesn't help with programming very much. "Figuring out how things work" needs a name, and that's what needs to be taught.
    - auggierose 13y ago
      Actually you are a good confirmation of the bias. You didn't start until college, and you don't like to code.
  - jerf 13y ago
    I think the argument is that statistically speaking, it's too late to produce passion in large quantities. It's not just about one person discovering code, it's about getting enough to close the gap. I'm not sure I agree... many people discover things in college that they've never heard of and subsequently major in. But it's at least debatable.
  - meritt 13y ago
    I interpreted it as if the individual doesn't have an innate curiosity and need for answers, how things work, how to tweak things, an endless desire to learn. If they don't have that "hacker spirit", then it's unlikely they are going to be immensely successful or game-changing. Anyone can get a job doing coding from learning it at any age.
  - betterunix 13y ago
    Is college too late to learn arithmetic? I would equate the two; in fact, I have wondered for a while if we could actually replace arithmetic lessons in elementary school with programming lessons (and have students learn arithmetic by implementing it in code). You still have a malleable brain in college, but picking up an entirely new way to think becomes harder as you age.
  - jleyank 13y ago
    Gee, I don't know. Grace Hopper learned to program quite late in life and she did ok. Maybe it's not WHEN people start to code, it's HOW they start to code and whether they learn while doing it? Big-time athletes don't appear because they were kings of the middle-school playground for 10 years, they participate in an increasingly intensive program that winnows out pretty much everybody who participates. I don't think that we see a huge number of failed programmers ending up as insurance salesmen or financial advisors because they blew out a knee.
- erichocean 13y ago
  I can get a job at a giant company where I'll write 2000 lines of code in a year. Wait, what? 2000 lines of code per year? Having never worked in a "giant" company, is that typical? I do that in about 10 days at a normal pace, and can do it in five if I'm really pushing it to meet a deadline or whatever. Anyway, I thought 4K LOC/month was pretty standard for programmers of all stripes, or ~50K LOC/year. Is it really just 2K? /shocked
  - sbt 13y ago
    Yes, 4k LOC/months is standard, regardless if you write assembly, haskell or C. whether you work through a mill of bureaucracy or you are in charge of your own project. These 2k LOC/year coders must surely be unproductive.
    - kordless 13y ago
      I'm sorry, but that's just a false blaming statement and completely counterproductive to the conversation. There is absolutely zero evidence correlating LOC and productivity. About the only time you could link LOC to productivity is in the very early stages of a project - where some type of visible progress is needed to plan for a possible feature set for the release. Sarcastic statements are considered to be negative blaming statements. They don't help the conversation.
      - gejjaxxita 13y ago
        I think they were being sarcastic.
  - ceejayoz 13y ago
    Some of the best coders I've seen probably have negative LOC/month counts.
    - ubernostrum 13y ago
      I am a huge fan of deleting code. And I've landed commits that killed thousands of lines in one go, so I'm pretty sure I'm in the negative.
- rayiner 13y ago
  I think that's hogwash. The things you suggested: > It's about right clicking with your mouse to see if there are any other options available. Googling for your answer before you ask someone else. Asking questions on stackoverflow. Hacking and reading at night to figure out something that may or may not be for work. Recompiling the source code to make it bend to your will. These are things people can be trained to do. The real problem here is that software engineering is still in the dark ages. We overvalue people who have been "hacking since middle school" because we can't systematically articulate the skills a good programmer should have and how we can train people in those skills. But this is purely a function of the immaturity of the field. There is nothing magic about software development that requires it to be perpetually stuck in the dark ages of ad-hoc craft.
  - frenchy 13y ago
    > We overvalue people who have been "hacking since middle school" Nothing specifically Dark Ages about this. I think that's true with many fields. It's the theme of the child prodigy. A painter, a violinist, an athelete would all be given special notice if the excelled at these skills at a young age. One would expect an excellent engineer to grow up playing with legos or building toy bridges. Perhaps this is a practice that doesn't do us any good, and should be done away with, but it is not at all limited to programming.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      As to engineers, while people might expect that correlation to exist, no company actually cares whether a candidate played with legos as a kid. It would be absurd to even bring it up in an interview. Engineering companies expect that any skills you need to do the job will either have been taught in school, or will be taught to you by the company. What's "dark ages" is grouping programmers together with painters or violinists or athletes rather than other engineers. It's the result of not having a systematic theory of the skills necessary for the profession, and not having a way of taking people with the requisite mathematical aptitude and instilling those skills in a formal way.
    - crusso 13y ago
einhverfr 13y ago
There are a lot of other things too. We live in what I call the "economic order of fake-gender-neutrality" where women get ahead by foregoing having families. This means that a certain kind of woman is going to be interested in taking high-risk long-hours work like being a tech founder. Not someone like my grandmother who was a tenured astrophysicist while raising four children. I know this is probably not going to go over well on HN given the connections to VC's but a major part of the problem is that "tech founders" means businesses caught in the VC exit strategy. But I think a lot of the really disruptive businesses of tomorrow are going to be lifestyle businesses, and if you want to attract women to coding, I think that lifestyle businesses are a better deal for most people. The potential payoffs are lower, it is true, but the freedom is higher, and the security is better in many cases. And with a lifestyle business, the freedom to have a family, and to integrate family and work time, makes the challenges that face child-rearing men and women (but they affect women at a younger age) easier to handle. I think that as one starts to show that these lifestyle businesses are really viable in technology, that we will see women come (and truth be told, probably become the majority of coders in open source software).
- vezzy-fnord 13y ago
  We live in what I call the "economic order of fake-gender-neutrality" where women get ahead by foregoing having families. I wouldn't really call this a women's issue, so much as a universal issue for people of all backgrounds. Having a family simply requires a drastic lifestyle shift no matter what (well, if you intend on being a decent spouse and/or parent, at least), as well as certain sacrifices to one's career. I like the proposal of lifestyle technology businesses, though I'm not entirely sure how they would work. Unless you're self-sufficient, in which case it's never been a problem.
  - bjelkeman-again 13y ago
    We run something which could be considered a lifestyle tech business. Several of our staff, including women, have had kids and come back to work with us. One of our developers is in fact coming back from 6 months paternity leave this month.
rokhayakebe 13y ago
Pando just published an article on a super-model who also writes and releases her own iPhone apps, codes also in python. I guess you could also say she is a software engineer who dabbles in modeling. http://pando.com/2014/01/02/from-coding-to-the-catwalk-this-high-fashion-model-has-a-secret-double-life/ http://pando.com/2014/01/02/from-coding-to-the-catwalk-this-...
- kofq 13y ago
  She studied Comp Sci. at Amherst. So what's so special about her writing and releasing apps ?
Dewie 13y ago
> Please bear with me as I draw an analogy using history. In 1865 the U.S. government abolished slavery. [...], and it wasn't until 2008 that we elected our first African American president. Doing the math it took 143 years before African American were supposedly on equal political footing! By this logic, I guess white women are (politically) disadvantaged compared to black (men) today?
- frenchy 13y ago
  Would you challenge that? I'm a bit out of my league here, but it seems like there are proportionally more black men in politics than white women. ("Disadvantaged" is a poor word for these stats; however, because it implies that white women are interested in being in politics, but these stats don't confirm/deny that.)
  - Dewie 13y ago
    > Would you challenge that? It was a question.
gavanwoolery 13y ago
My mom became a doctor in the late 60s, when there was still a good deal of real sexism towards women (she was the only woman doctor at the college) - she had her lab work sabotaged among other things. (Before becoming a doctor, she started majoring in computer science, of all things.) So why did women start becoming doctors? Is it because we went out of our way to create special programs, incentives, interest, and reverse discrimination for them? No. Women became doctors because they wanted to, and now sexism is at a point where it is kind of pathetic to not become a doctor because you are afraid of any sexist reactions you might encounter. I'd say the same applies for computer science. Women will come into the discipline over time (especially since now there are more software engineers than there are farmers in the US), no need artificially manipulate the evolution of the job market.
- MartinCron 13y ago
  no need artificially manipulate the evolution of the job market Interesting point, though I consider things like "stop being sexist assholes" not to be an artificial manipulation of the evolution market but just basic civilized behavior which benefits men and women alike.
  - gavanwoolery 13y ago
    I agree - there is no reason to be sexist. But the author's message is not just about sexism, it is about reverse discrimination. It's one thing to fight against inequality. Its another to demand that the scales be tipped in your favor.
  - berrypicker 13y ago
    Is opposing affirmative action programs, which have historically proven to be largely failures, being a "sexist asshole"? I'm looking at this from a purely economical perspective because I really do not care about what people do, and I do not see a good reason to try to manipulate the employment market instead of society's view on employment.
    - MartinCron 13y ago
yummyfajitas 13y ago
The collectivist/individualist conflict in this article is odd. On the one hand, she seems to be opposed to collective responsibility: Men supporting the notion that their female significant other can contribute as an equal partner financially or be the bread-winner of the household....leaving the choice of taking care of elderly parents up to women. Ok, sounds good. No one owes anyone anything, you can do as you like with your life. No social obligations. Having supportive social and economic practices for those who do chose to have children and take care of aging family members, which will need to be reinforced by some body such as companies or governments. Wait what? So non-mothers owe mothers "support", socially and economically? I'd love to know the philosophical underpinnings of this odd combination of individualism and collectivism. I do hope it's something more interesting than simply "the universe should make my chosen lifestyle easier!" (Incidentally, it's incoherent articles like this one which have convinced me that more people should learn philosophy. I describe it as incoherent simply because it has a gaping philosophical hole, and no attempt whatsoever is made to explain it.)
- mhurron 13y ago
  > I do hope it's something more interesting than simply "the universe should make my chosen lifestyle easier!" That's all it is, as long as that lifestyle is staying home and having kids. Otherwise you're a selfish bitch and looked down upon.
- gruseom 13y ago
  If philosophy teaches you that ideas need to fit in one of binary opposite buckets, that sounds like an argument for not studying it.
  - yummyfajitas 13y ago
    Studying philosophy teaches that questions like this need to be answered (or at least acknowledged) rather than ignored.
- pessimizer 13y ago
  As we are usually all children, workers, and aging family members at some point, but the responsibility of childbirth, child-rearing, and elder care are, due to biology and historical discrimination, largely and/or completely borne by a subset of half of the population, the justification seems pretty obvious on its face. Just because it includes collective reasoning and is not libertarian doesn't make it self-contradicting.
kofq 13y ago
stop fucking debates about non-sense issues and trolls
kordless 13y ago
> will produce a Mark Zuckerberg, who will go on to build a billion-dollar company in roughly seven years The entire premise to this article is based on a misled expectation. The expectation is that there should be a billion dollar startup founded by a woman. Who set that expectation and why is it reasonable? I'm a man, and I don't aspire to build a billion dollar company. I aspire to be insanely happy, and love what I do for a living. And travel a bit. Given we're entering a new age of humanity, shouldn't we be spending clock cycles on figuring out how to be happier, instead of just wanting more stuff? BTW, 'more stuff' is not inclusive of 'fair and equal treatment'. We all deserve to be treated equally.
jeswin 13y ago
The author mentions child care, shared responsibility, financial support, parents etc. But all these things matter after it might already be too late to get into coding. The fundamental issue that needs to be addressed is the one PG made last week: "God knows what you would do to get 13 year old girls interested in computers."* Instead of having a discussion on what is probably the single most important factor affecting gender inequality in tech, PG was forced to defend. For these reasons, gender discussions have become somewhat pointless. There is no place for candidness. Everyone is trying to be politically correct and to say things that people want to hear. *Most of the arguments against this seemed to rely on exceptions, random examples and personal experience, and not on stats.
gmjoe 13y ago
> Meanwhile, it is still socially acceptable for men to focus wholeheartedly on their career. Right, but so maybe the goal shouldn't be that women should be able to do the same... what if it could instead stop being socially acceptable for men to focus wholeheartedly on their career? Think of all the men who wish they'd spent more time with their kinds, instead of at the office. More time with their wives. Think of all the divorces caused by the long hours and stress of management and C-suite jobs. Even if men want to spend more time with their families, it's often just not socially acceptable, within the culture of their company/industry. Men who take full advantage of "maternity" leave aren't exactly looked at as promotion material, all too often. And think of how much of life they miss out on. We hold up Steve Jobs as a model of shining corporate success. But it's become public knowledge that he wasn't exactly so shining when it came to being a good dad. Maybe it's not just necessarily the mindset around women that needs to change -- maybe it's the mindset around men.
Ryoku 13y ago
I was waiting to find an article clearly speaking about this; which I think is the elephant in the room when it comes to female tech founders. The issue, as it points out, is not being able to hack; or being able to learn, etc. Society has been proven over and over that females can do just as good as males. The issue, I think, is purely social. Most people still see women with through a veil of prejudices, and this will only change with time as more women venture into that part of the industry. Founding is barely about learning how to code. It's more about human relationships and networking. And as long as the image of a female entrepreneur keeps been looked down at, this problem will keep rising. May be it's not as easy to see in USA but I've seen it clearly in my country (Mexico) in small-medium businesses conventions and with clients.
smtddr 13y ago
I just want to point out that this story has been shot down off the front page, and 2nd page, in less than 20 minutes. HN really can't handle having the spotlight revealing its thoughts on gender & race. My browser history was the only reason I could even find this link again. You know what someone should make in 2014? A website scrapes/mirrors HN, but only the topics about gender and race that get "disappeared"(made undiscoverable) from HN in under 20mins.
- crazygringo 13y ago
  I'm glad I'm not the only one that notices -- this is the second time I've seen this happen, on a gender/race thread. The previous one was related to blackgirlscode.com. I don't know if there's a certain group of people flagging these types of articles for whatever reason, or if pg/admins actively want to avoid this kind of social discussion (maybe it's too 'controversial' or tends to degenerate too easily?) or something else. But you're exactly right -- a gender/race article suddenly jumps from the #10 spot, to third-page, effectively completely killing discussion. It does feel an awful lot like censorship, and it seems unfortunate. And because of it, pretty much nobody except you will probably ever see this comment. Oh well.
  - smtddr 13y ago
    I already collect links on race, I might start collecting the gender-related stories as well. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6885123 - Homeless coder starts app 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6365495 - Africans genetically more corrupt? 3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6448409 - Rick Ross's history 4. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6857739 - Nelson Mandela dies 5. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6035263 - (Most obvious)Resume with black vs white name 6. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6902563 - racist+sexist mindset in Harvard 7. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6907915 - Homeless coder finishes app 8. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6975732 - BlackGirlsCode event Maybe I'll be the one to start a site that publishes these links and caches the comments(because I suspect HN will start making the links 404).
- jorgecastillo 13y ago
NAFV_P 13y ago
We can encourage women to participate and welcome them with open arms, but that won't undo the thousands of years of ongoing cross-cultural practices that reinforce a woman's primary role as a nurturer (and I am not just talking about nurturing children). The bit in brackets is referring to compiler bootstrapping.
cheshire137 13y ago
> you cannot just cram more transistors onto a chip in order to double it is speed

44 points by quant 13y ago

Reaching out and providing scholarships and generally giving a leg up is not how this gap will be closed. It has never been about teaching women to code, except at the bare minimum "I can get a job at a giant company where I'll write 2000 lines of code in a year." It's about right clicking with your mouse to see if there are any other options available. Googling for your answer before you ask someone else. Asking questions on stackoverflow. Hacking and reading at night to figure out something that may or may not be for work. Recompiling the source code to make it bend to your will. There is a price to be paid, and it doesn't have to do with money. As was said thousands of years ago, "There is no royal road to Geometry." It is the same today. All these solutions that don't involve paying that price are destined to fail. College age is too late. Middle school may be the last opportunity for any real percentage of women to be affected. It's not about completing classes.

thenmar 13y ago
Wait, are you saying that college is too late to learn how to program?
- erichocean 13y ago
  I didn't begin programming until college (I'm a white male in the US), and I've gotten paid to do it ever since. That's me on the AUTHORS list for Google Chrome's v8 engine [0] (I ported it, and Node.js, to Solaris if your curious), so I'm at least competent enough to do that. Anyway, that's proof that it can be done, and at a level that make a difference somewhere. :) That said, I don't like to code, so maybe that has something to do with why I started late. I was into computers from pre-school onwards, though. [0] https://code.google.com/p/v8/source/browse/branches/bleeding_edge/AUTHORS?r=5437#16 https://code.google.com/p/v8/source/browse/branches/bleeding...
  - LanceH 13y ago
    I didn't begin programming until after college, actually. But I had a math degree by then (theoretical math, not even applied). I had developed that curiosity and drive, however, and I think college is too late for that. edit - I mean for large numbers. The exceptions are always wonderful to see. another edit - I also don't think that most programming is about programming, it's about figuring out how things work. Just learning to program doesn't help with programming very much. "Figuring out how things work" needs a name, and that's what needs to be taught.
  - auggierose 13y ago
    Actually you are a good confirmation of the bias. You didn't start until college, and you don't like to code.
- jerf 13y ago
  I think the argument is that statistically speaking, it's too late to produce passion in large quantities. It's not just about one person discovering code, it's about getting enough to close the gap. I'm not sure I agree... many people discover things in college that they've never heard of and subsequently major in. But it's at least debatable.
- meritt 13y ago
  I interpreted it as if the individual doesn't have an innate curiosity and need for answers, how things work, how to tweak things, an endless desire to learn. If they don't have that "hacker spirit", then it's unlikely they are going to be immensely successful or game-changing. Anyone can get a job doing coding from learning it at any age.
- betterunix 13y ago
  Is college too late to learn arithmetic? I would equate the two; in fact, I have wondered for a while if we could actually replace arithmetic lessons in elementary school with programming lessons (and have students learn arithmetic by implementing it in code). You still have a malleable brain in college, but picking up an entirely new way to think becomes harder as you age.
- jleyank 13y ago
  Gee, I don't know. Grace Hopper learned to program quite late in life and she did ok. Maybe it's not WHEN people start to code, it's HOW they start to code and whether they learn while doing it? Big-time athletes don't appear because they were kings of the middle-school playground for 10 years, they participate in an increasingly intensive program that winnows out pretty much everybody who participates. I don't think that we see a huge number of failed programmers ending up as insurance salesmen or financial advisors because they blew out a knee.
erichocean 13y ago
I can get a job at a giant company where I'll write 2000 lines of code in a year. Wait, what? 2000 lines of code per year? Having never worked in a "giant" company, is that typical? I do that in about 10 days at a normal pace, and can do it in five if I'm really pushing it to meet a deadline or whatever. Anyway, I thought 4K LOC/month was pretty standard for programmers of all stripes, or ~50K LOC/year. Is it really just 2K? /shocked
- sbt 13y ago
  Yes, 4k LOC/months is standard, regardless if you write assembly, haskell or C. whether you work through a mill of bureaucracy or you are in charge of your own project. These 2k LOC/year coders must surely be unproductive.
  - kordless 13y ago
    I'm sorry, but that's just a false blaming statement and completely counterproductive to the conversation. There is absolutely zero evidence correlating LOC and productivity. About the only time you could link LOC to productivity is in the very early stages of a project - where some type of visible progress is needed to plan for a possible feature set for the release. Sarcastic statements are considered to be negative blaming statements. They don't help the conversation.
    - gejjaxxita 13y ago
      I think they were being sarcastic.
- ceejayoz 13y ago
  Some of the best coders I've seen probably have negative LOC/month counts.
  - ubernostrum 13y ago
    I am a huge fan of deleting code. And I've landed commits that killed thousands of lines in one go, so I'm pretty sure I'm in the negative.
rayiner 13y ago
I think that's hogwash. The things you suggested: > It's about right clicking with your mouse to see if there are any other options available. Googling for your answer before you ask someone else. Asking questions on stackoverflow. Hacking and reading at night to figure out something that may or may not be for work. Recompiling the source code to make it bend to your will. These are things people can be trained to do. The real problem here is that software engineering is still in the dark ages. We overvalue people who have been "hacking since middle school" because we can't systematically articulate the skills a good programmer should have and how we can train people in those skills. But this is purely a function of the immaturity of the field. There is nothing magic about software development that requires it to be perpetually stuck in the dark ages of ad-hoc craft.
- frenchy 13y ago
  > We overvalue people who have been "hacking since middle school" Nothing specifically Dark Ages about this. I think that's true with many fields. It's the theme of the child prodigy. A painter, a violinist, an athelete would all be given special notice if the excelled at these skills at a young age. One would expect an excellent engineer to grow up playing with legos or building toy bridges. Perhaps this is a practice that doesn't do us any good, and should be done away with, but it is not at all limited to programming.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    As to engineers, while people might expect that correlation to exist, no company actually cares whether a candidate played with legos as a kid. It would be absurd to even bring it up in an interview. Engineering companies expect that any skills you need to do the job will either have been taught in school, or will be taught to you by the company. What's "dark ages" is grouping programmers together with painters or violinists or athletes rather than other engineers. It's the result of not having a systematic theory of the skills necessary for the profession, and not having a way of taking people with the requisite mathematical aptitude and instilling those skills in a formal way.
  - crusso 13y ago

einhverfr 13y ago

There are a lot of other things too. We live in what I call the "economic order of fake-gender-neutrality" where women get ahead by foregoing having families. This means that a certain kind of woman is going to be interested in taking high-risk long-hours work like being a tech founder. Not someone like my grandmother who was a tenured astrophysicist while raising four children. I know this is probably not going to go over well on HN given the connections to VC's but a major part of the problem is that "tech founders" means businesses caught in the VC exit strategy. But I think a lot of the really disruptive businesses of tomorrow are going to be lifestyle businesses, and if you want to attract women to coding, I think that lifestyle businesses are a better deal for most people. The potential payoffs are lower, it is true, but the freedom is higher, and the security is better in many cases. And with a lifestyle business, the freedom to have a family, and to integrate family and work time, makes the challenges that face child-rearing men and women (but they affect women at a younger age) easier to handle. I think that as one starts to show that these lifestyle businesses are really viable in technology, that we will see women come (and truth be told, probably become the majority of coders in open source software).

vezzy-fnord 13y ago
We live in what I call the "economic order of fake-gender-neutrality" where women get ahead by foregoing having families. I wouldn't really call this a women's issue, so much as a universal issue for people of all backgrounds. Having a family simply requires a drastic lifestyle shift no matter what (well, if you intend on being a decent spouse and/or parent, at least), as well as certain sacrifices to one's career. I like the proposal of lifestyle technology businesses, though I'm not entirely sure how they would work. Unless you're self-sufficient, in which case it's never been a problem.
- bjelkeman-again 13y ago
  We run something which could be considered a lifestyle tech business. Several of our staff, including women, have had kids and come back to work with us. One of our developers is in fact coming back from 6 months paternity leave this month.

rokhayakebe 13y ago

Pando just published an article on a super-model who also writes and releases her own iPhone apps, codes also in python. I guess you could also say she is a software engineer who dabbles in modeling. http://pando.com/2014/01/02/from-coding-to-the-catwalk-this-high-fashion-model-has-a-secret-double-life/ http://pando.com/2014/01/02/from-coding-to-the-catwalk-this-...

kofq 13y ago
She studied Comp Sci. at Amherst. So what's so special about her writing and releasing apps ?

Dewie 13y ago

> Please bear with me as I draw an analogy using history. In 1865 the U.S. government abolished slavery. [...], and it wasn't until 2008 that we elected our first African American president. Doing the math it took 143 years before African American were supposedly on equal political footing! By this logic, I guess white women are (politically) disadvantaged compared to black (men) today?

frenchy 13y ago
Would you challenge that? I'm a bit out of my league here, but it seems like there are proportionally more black men in politics than white women. ("Disadvantaged" is a poor word for these stats; however, because it implies that white women are interested in being in politics, but these stats don't confirm/deny that.)
- Dewie 13y ago
  > Would you challenge that? It was a question.

gavanwoolery 13y ago

My mom became a doctor in the late 60s, when there was still a good deal of real sexism towards women (she was the only woman doctor at the college) - she had her lab work sabotaged among other things. (Before becoming a doctor, she started majoring in computer science, of all things.) So why did women start becoming doctors? Is it because we went out of our way to create special programs, incentives, interest, and reverse discrimination for them? No. Women became doctors because they wanted to, and now sexism is at a point where it is kind of pathetic to not become a doctor because you are afraid of any sexist reactions you might encounter. I'd say the same applies for computer science. Women will come into the discipline over time (especially since now there are more software engineers than there are farmers in the US), no need artificially manipulate the evolution of the job market.

MartinCron 13y ago
no need artificially manipulate the evolution of the job market Interesting point, though I consider things like "stop being sexist assholes" not to be an artificial manipulation of the evolution market but just basic civilized behavior which benefits men and women alike.
- gavanwoolery 13y ago
  I agree - there is no reason to be sexist. But the author's message is not just about sexism, it is about reverse discrimination. It's one thing to fight against inequality. Its another to demand that the scales be tipped in your favor.
- berrypicker 13y ago
  Is opposing affirmative action programs, which have historically proven to be largely failures, being a "sexist asshole"? I'm looking at this from a purely economical perspective because I really do not care about what people do, and I do not see a good reason to try to manipulate the employment market instead of society's view on employment.
  - MartinCron 13y ago

yummyfajitas 13y ago

The collectivist/individualist conflict in this article is odd. On the one hand, she seems to be opposed to collective responsibility: Men supporting the notion that their female significant other can contribute as an equal partner financially or be the bread-winner of the household....leaving the choice of taking care of elderly parents up to women. Ok, sounds good. No one owes anyone anything, you can do as you like with your life. No social obligations. Having supportive social and economic practices for those who do chose to have children and take care of aging family members, which will need to be reinforced by some body such as companies or governments. Wait what? So non-mothers owe mothers "support", socially and economically? I'd love to know the philosophical underpinnings of this odd combination of individualism and collectivism. I do hope it's something more interesting than simply "the universe should make my chosen lifestyle easier!" (Incidentally, it's incoherent articles like this one which have convinced me that more people should learn philosophy. I describe it as incoherent simply because it has a gaping philosophical hole, and no attempt whatsoever is made to explain it.)

mhurron 13y ago
> I do hope it's something more interesting than simply "the universe should make my chosen lifestyle easier!" That's all it is, as long as that lifestyle is staying home and having kids. Otherwise you're a selfish bitch and looked down upon.
gruseom 13y ago
If philosophy teaches you that ideas need to fit in one of binary opposite buckets, that sounds like an argument for not studying it.
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  Studying philosophy teaches that questions like this need to be answered (or at least acknowledged) rather than ignored.
pessimizer 13y ago
As we are usually all children, workers, and aging family members at some point, but the responsibility of childbirth, child-rearing, and elder care are, due to biology and historical discrimination, largely and/or completely borne by a subset of half of the population, the justification seems pretty obvious on its face. Just because it includes collective reasoning and is not libertarian doesn't make it self-contradicting.

kofq 13y ago

stop fucking debates about non-sense issues and trolls

kordless 13y ago

> will produce a Mark Zuckerberg, who will go on to build a billion-dollar company in roughly seven years The entire premise to this article is based on a misled expectation. The expectation is that there should be a billion dollar startup founded by a woman. Who set that expectation and why is it reasonable? I'm a man, and I don't aspire to build a billion dollar company. I aspire to be insanely happy, and love what I do for a living. And travel a bit. Given we're entering a new age of humanity, shouldn't we be spending clock cycles on figuring out how to be happier, instead of just wanting more stuff? BTW, 'more stuff' is not inclusive of 'fair and equal treatment'. We all deserve to be treated equally.

jeswin 13y ago

The author mentions child care, shared responsibility, financial support, parents etc. But all these things matter after it might already be too late to get into coding. The fundamental issue that needs to be addressed is the one PG made last week: "God knows what you would do to get 13 year old girls interested in computers."* Instead of having a discussion on what is probably the single most important factor affecting gender inequality in tech, PG was forced to defend. For these reasons, gender discussions have become somewhat pointless. There is no place for candidness. Everyone is trying to be politically correct and to say things that people want to hear. *Most of the arguments against this seemed to rely on exceptions, random examples and personal experience, and not on stats.

gmjoe 13y ago

> Meanwhile, it is still socially acceptable for men to focus wholeheartedly on their career. Right, but so maybe the goal shouldn't be that women should be able to do the same... what if it could instead stop being socially acceptable for men to focus wholeheartedly on their career? Think of all the men who wish they'd spent more time with their kinds, instead of at the office. More time with their wives. Think of all the divorces caused by the long hours and stress of management and C-suite jobs. Even if men want to spend more time with their families, it's often just not socially acceptable, within the culture of their company/industry. Men who take full advantage of "maternity" leave aren't exactly looked at as promotion material, all too often. And think of how much of life they miss out on. We hold up Steve Jobs as a model of shining corporate success. But it's become public knowledge that he wasn't exactly so shining when it came to being a good dad. Maybe it's not just necessarily the mindset around women that needs to change -- maybe it's the mindset around men.

Ryoku 13y ago

I was waiting to find an article clearly speaking about this; which I think is the elephant in the room when it comes to female tech founders. The issue, as it points out, is not being able to hack; or being able to learn, etc. Society has been proven over and over that females can do just as good as males. The issue, I think, is purely social. Most people still see women with through a veil of prejudices, and this will only change with time as more women venture into that part of the industry. Founding is barely about learning how to code. It's more about human relationships and networking. And as long as the image of a female entrepreneur keeps been looked down at, this problem will keep rising. May be it's not as easy to see in USA but I've seen it clearly in my country (Mexico) in small-medium businesses conventions and with clients.

smtddr 13y ago

I just want to point out that this story has been shot down off the front page, and 2nd page, in less than 20 minutes. HN really can't handle having the spotlight revealing its thoughts on gender & race. My browser history was the only reason I could even find this link again. You know what someone should make in 2014? A website scrapes/mirrors HN, but only the topics about gender and race that get "disappeared"(made undiscoverable) from HN in under 20mins.

crazygringo 13y ago
I'm glad I'm not the only one that notices -- this is the second time I've seen this happen, on a gender/race thread. The previous one was related to blackgirlscode.com. I don't know if there's a certain group of people flagging these types of articles for whatever reason, or if pg/admins actively want to avoid this kind of social discussion (maybe it's too 'controversial' or tends to degenerate too easily?) or something else. But you're exactly right -- a gender/race article suddenly jumps from the #10 spot, to third-page, effectively completely killing discussion. It does feel an awful lot like censorship, and it seems unfortunate. And because of it, pretty much nobody except you will probably ever see this comment. Oh well.
- smtddr 13y ago
  I already collect links on race, I might start collecting the gender-related stories as well. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6885123 - Homeless coder starts app 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6365495 - Africans genetically more corrupt? 3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6448409 - Rick Ross's history 4. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6857739 - Nelson Mandela dies 5. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6035263 - (Most obvious)Resume with black vs white name 6. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6902563 - racist+sexist mindset in Harvard 7. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6907915 - Homeless coder finishes app 8. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6975732 - BlackGirlsCode event Maybe I'll be the one to start a site that publishes these links and caches the comments(because I suspect HN will start making the links 404).
jorgecastillo 13y ago

NAFV_P 13y ago

We can encourage women to participate and welcome them with open arms, but that won't undo the thousands of years of ongoing cross-cultural practices that reinforce a woman's primary role as a nurturer (and I am not just talking about nurturing children). The bit in brackets is referring to compiler bootstrapping.

cheshire137 13y ago

> you cannot just cram more transistors onto a chip in order to double it is speed