9 ms·

Things You Love are Made with Code

39 points by yawz 12y ago

judk 12y ago
Why does a feminist(?) blog have a logo that is a picture of a woman sticking out her butt with her hand on it? Isn't that the atmosphere that contributes to "the gender gap in tech"?
- Bahamut 12y ago
  Looks like the link has been changed.
- Dewie 12y ago
  Maybe she just has a shapely butt.
- DaveSapien 12y ago
  Looking through now, it doesn't appear to be a feminist blog. I dig the idea of celebrating cool stuff women do rather than pointing out the 'oppression' of everyday western life. Shouting about how sexist the tech industry is only puts people off coming into it, celebrating all the cool stuff is the best way to attract more people that aren't dudes. I think this is what the site is doing. The lady's bum logo is part of that celebration... because you know bums are great.
dang 12y ago
Url changed from http://www.themarysue.com/google-made-with-code/ http://www.themarysue.com/google-made-with-code/, which points to this.
return0 12y ago
> engineering isn’t just for engineers. Yes it is.
- lukasm 12y ago
  Could be. The question is: Do you want to drive every day to work over the bridge that was not build by engineers.
  - juliangoldsmith 12y ago
    I disagree with your metaphor. If the bridge you're on collapses, you could be seriously injured. If the CRM you're working in crashes, you're moderately inconvenienced until it comes back up.
    - lukasm 12y ago
      Your app constantly crashes, your customers are pissed and leave. You have to close the company. You suffer from depression and kill yourself. You could find loopholes in any analogy. That's what they are - analogies. Perhaps a different one could capture what I wanted to say. Everybody can sing, but not everybody can listen it.
      - contactmatts 12y ago
        That escalated quickly.
    - s_kilk 12y ago
      Or your CRM crashes and loses some of your business contacts. Or it doesn't crash and just silently corrupts the data your business depends on over time and no-one spots the problem until it's too late. Or maybe the software you use leaks your secrets to others and you are unwillingly outed as transgender/gay/in-disagreement-with-the-state/etc... In this digital age, bad software can do irreparable harm to people. We need to keep this in mind and hold ourselves to a higher standard.
      - dllthomas 12y ago
        I think those are all still at least marginally better than having the bridge you're on collapse, but on the other hand they can wind up affecting many more people than can fit on a single bridge...
- DaveSapien 12y ago
  agreed.
- afarrell 12y ago
  Yes it is. There is value in learning to build things without being an engineer, but you should know the limits of your skill so you don't cause others harm.
  - ProAm 12y ago
    | you should know the limits of your skill so you don't cause others harm Which is funny how the 'hacker' mentality is to build things fast and cheap. Along with Zuckerberg's "Most fast and break things" mantra.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - judk 12y ago
      Moved fast and broke the quotation.
      - ProAm 12y ago
        Which quotation? [1] [1] http://rack.3.mshcdn.com/media/ZgkyMDE0LzA0LzMwL2ZjL1p1Y2tlcmJlcmcxLmQxYTYzLmpwZwpwCXRodW1iCTk1MHg1MzQjCmUJanBn/c2caaa03/dd9/Zuckerberg1.jpg http://rack.3.mshcdn.com/media/ZgkyMDE0LzA0LzMwL2ZjL1p1Y2tlc...
schoen 12y ago
I'm curious about the use of the terminology "code/coding/coder" as distinct from "programming/programmer". I've noticed that a lot of recent programming outreach and education efforts consistently use "learn to code" instead of "learn to program". How come? What connotations do they perceive? Are they intending to refer to a broader set of activities (including document markup, which I wouldn't refer to as programming)? Do they think that some audiences find the term "programming" to have negative connotations that aren't present for "coding"?
- Dewie 12y ago
  Maybe it's just that code is a shorter word, which makes for snappier titles for initiatives and whatnot. Then that carries over to the surrounding discussion about it.
- DanBC 12y ago
  "Coding" is using a computer language to create software. "Programming" is a superset of that, and includes planning and psuedocodes and etc. As an example of that use see "Jackson Structured Programming" which spends a lot of time drawing little boxes and includes coding right at the end.
  - jiggy2011 12y ago
    Do you ever write code without doing any planning?
    - DanBC 12y ago
      No, I never write code without doing the programming first. Coding is converting the planning into whatever language you're using.
- drak0n1c 12y ago
  Some use of "coding" is simply for text and syllable brevity. Also thanks to its relatively new household term status, it doesn't carry as much of the pre-internet 80s/90s imagery of nocturnal bearded men doing arcane systems programming through a CRT. The average non-tech office worker in the 80s had some kind of experience with an oddball programmer coming in for an assignment and leaving with a check in hand. As a child of the 90s, that impression even trickled down to me. Partly due to my father sharing his past workplace experiences, but mostly due to the exaggeration of television, movies, and early internet culture. "Coding" is more cleanly associated with the new wave of engineers, entrepreneurs, apps, and games visible to young people in popular media. It seems irrational, and it is, but that is language and life.
cheez 12y ago
I think I inhabit a different world than most people. I didn't even need to encourage my daughter to get into coding. I only exposed her to it.
Fuzzwah 12y ago
As the proud father of a 5 month old baby girl, things like this make me really happy and eager to see how my daughter interacts with technology.
thegeomaster 12y ago
While I commend initiatives like this, I don't think people should be so eager to make girls start coding. If your daughter shows no interest whatsoever after being exposed to coding, well, maybe it just isn't her cup of tea. It's the same with boys, of course. I know so much people who had been pressured into the same profession as their parents. Not all of them today love what they do. We should be helping kids discover coding, not making them love it. I started hating chemistry and biology because I'm forced to study them in thorough detail in school and I have no interest in them--they're really just a pain in the ass. If someone has genuine talent for a particular area, you don't have to push them to explore it--you just make them aware of it and their natural curiosity will do the rest.
- kllrnohj 12y ago
  We force kids to learn math even if they have no interest in it. Same with history, chemistry, biology, etc... Forcing them to learn an intro to something is very different from forcing them into a career about that something. They don't know whether or not they like it if they've never tried it. This seems to be a campaign to get young girls to try it, nothing more.
  - thegeomaster 12y ago
    Not just forcing them into a career about something, but e.g. being disappointed (or, more precisely, showing that in frobt of them) if they don't express interest. Of course you should get as much people you can to try out as much fields as possible to see if they fit. But in my case, I knew from the first two months of studying chemistry I don't like it, and likewise, from the day I wrote my first VBA Excel macro I knew I loved making computers do things.
- Lewisham 12y ago
  I wish I remembered where the study was now, but I remember reading one which said that girls were naturally curious about STEM careers, up to around 12, when it starts to tail off dramatically. The theory was that societal issues begin to kick in that makes girls not want to: no role models, fellow students telling them it's for nerds and no girls do it, male jock stuff. So the curiosity and talent is just drained out of them. That's the issue. But as I don't have the study to hand, of course I could just be making this all up :/
colmvp 12y ago
I'm curious, are there growing initiatives to make every career gender/race balanced? Because it seems like we're fixated on getting female representation in computer/mathematical occupations from 26.1% to 50%. Yet there are lot other occupations which have pretty low representations, i.e. only 1.6% of architects are black, 0.1% of judges/magistrates are Asian, only 1.8% of automotive repairers are women, only 5.2% of truck drivers are women, 19.7% of social workers are men, 5.2% of childcare workers are men, 3.8% of physicians/surgeons are Hispanic, etc.
- bennyg 12y ago
  It may not be socially acceptable to ask these questions but I wonder the same thing fairly frequently.
- skybrian 12y ago
  Well hopefully there are, but that's up to the people in those professions.
- jiggy2011 12y ago
  If we have more women in STEM then we must have less men in STEM unless we grow the total number of STEM jobs by the same amount. So those men who would otherwise be in STEM must move to other professions, which means they either move into other male dominated professions and make them even more unbalanced or there must be an equivalent push to move them into a female dominated industry. If we do the latter then a possible outcome is a system where we are allocating people to jobs based primarily on demographics rather than interest or aptitude.
  - mrgn 12y ago
    Diversity isn't a zero sum game. STEM is one of the fastest growing professional fields, meaning more people--of any gender--will need to fill those jobs. The goal is gender balance, there's no need to fear that a woman or a person of color accepting a newly created STEM job will somehow push a white man out of his existing position. Let's be realistic here.
sigil 12y ago
In the earliest iLuminate photo I can find, Miral is hacking on an Arduino prototype board and staring at piles of glowing EL wire on the floor. Barely anything worked back then. Five years, numerous televised appearances, and 400 Off-Broadway performances later, the company is still doing amazing stuff at the intersection of art and technology. [1] Miral is the reason why. She can code, she can choreograph, she can manage and inspire people, she can dance, and most importantly, she can pursue a vision relentlessly. She's a great example of that "formidable" quality that pg ascribes to successful founders. So, while I get why Google is trying to inspire more women to code with this story, there's inspiration here for all of us. Build something you love and don't let the hard stuff stop you. (There will be lots of hard stuff.) [1] Seriously, go see the show if you're in NYC, it's mind-blowing.

39 points by yawz 12y ago

judk 12y ago

Why does a feminist(?) blog have a logo that is a picture of a woman sticking out her butt with her hand on it? Isn't that the atmosphere that contributes to "the gender gap in tech"?

Bahamut 12y ago
Looks like the link has been changed.
Dewie 12y ago
Maybe she just has a shapely butt.
DaveSapien 12y ago
Looking through now, it doesn't appear to be a feminist blog. I dig the idea of celebrating cool stuff women do rather than pointing out the 'oppression' of everyday western life. Shouting about how sexist the tech industry is only puts people off coming into it, celebrating all the cool stuff is the best way to attract more people that aren't dudes. I think this is what the site is doing. The lady's bum logo is part of that celebration... because you know bums are great.

dang 12y ago

Url changed from http://www.themarysue.com/google-made-with-code/ http://www.themarysue.com/google-made-with-code/, which points to this.

return0 12y ago

> engineering isn’t just for engineers. Yes it is.

lukasm 12y ago
Could be. The question is: Do you want to drive every day to work over the bridge that was not build by engineers.
- juliangoldsmith 12y ago
  I disagree with your metaphor. If the bridge you're on collapses, you could be seriously injured. If the CRM you're working in crashes, you're moderately inconvenienced until it comes back up.
  - lukasm 12y ago
    Your app constantly crashes, your customers are pissed and leave. You have to close the company. You suffer from depression and kill yourself. You could find loopholes in any analogy. That's what they are - analogies. Perhaps a different one could capture what I wanted to say. Everybody can sing, but not everybody can listen it.
    - contactmatts 12y ago
      That escalated quickly.
  - s_kilk 12y ago
    Or your CRM crashes and loses some of your business contacts. Or it doesn't crash and just silently corrupts the data your business depends on over time and no-one spots the problem until it's too late. Or maybe the software you use leaks your secrets to others and you are unwillingly outed as transgender/gay/in-disagreement-with-the-state/etc... In this digital age, bad software can do irreparable harm to people. We need to keep this in mind and hold ourselves to a higher standard.
    - dllthomas 12y ago
      I think those are all still at least marginally better than having the bridge you're on collapse, but on the other hand they can wind up affecting many more people than can fit on a single bridge...
DaveSapien 12y ago
agreed.
afarrell 12y ago
Yes it is. There is value in learning to build things without being an engineer, but you should know the limits of your skill so you don't cause others harm.
- ProAm 12y ago
  | you should know the limits of your skill so you don't cause others harm Which is funny how the 'hacker' mentality is to build things fast and cheap. Along with Zuckerberg's "Most fast and break things" mantra.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - judk 12y ago
    Moved fast and broke the quotation.
    - ProAm 12y ago
      Which quotation? [1] [1] http://rack.3.mshcdn.com/media/ZgkyMDE0LzA0LzMwL2ZjL1p1Y2tlcmJlcmcxLmQxYTYzLmpwZwpwCXRodW1iCTk1MHg1MzQjCmUJanBn/c2caaa03/dd9/Zuckerberg1.jpg http://rack.3.mshcdn.com/media/ZgkyMDE0LzA0LzMwL2ZjL1p1Y2tlc...

schoen 12y ago

I'm curious about the use of the terminology "code/coding/coder" as distinct from "programming/programmer". I've noticed that a lot of recent programming outreach and education efforts consistently use "learn to code" instead of "learn to program". How come? What connotations do they perceive? Are they intending to refer to a broader set of activities (including document markup, which I wouldn't refer to as programming)? Do they think that some audiences find the term "programming" to have negative connotations that aren't present for "coding"?

Dewie 12y ago
Maybe it's just that code is a shorter word, which makes for snappier titles for initiatives and whatnot. Then that carries over to the surrounding discussion about it.
DanBC 12y ago
"Coding" is using a computer language to create software. "Programming" is a superset of that, and includes planning and psuedocodes and etc. As an example of that use see "Jackson Structured Programming" which spends a lot of time drawing little boxes and includes coding right at the end.
- jiggy2011 12y ago
  Do you ever write code without doing any planning?
  - DanBC 12y ago
    No, I never write code without doing the programming first. Coding is converting the planning into whatever language you're using.
drak0n1c 12y ago
Some use of "coding" is simply for text and syllable brevity. Also thanks to its relatively new household term status, it doesn't carry as much of the pre-internet 80s/90s imagery of nocturnal bearded men doing arcane systems programming through a CRT. The average non-tech office worker in the 80s had some kind of experience with an oddball programmer coming in for an assignment and leaving with a check in hand. As a child of the 90s, that impression even trickled down to me. Partly due to my father sharing his past workplace experiences, but mostly due to the exaggeration of television, movies, and early internet culture. "Coding" is more cleanly associated with the new wave of engineers, entrepreneurs, apps, and games visible to young people in popular media. It seems irrational, and it is, but that is language and life.

cheez 12y ago

I think I inhabit a different world than most people. I didn't even need to encourage my daughter to get into coding. I only exposed her to it.

Fuzzwah 12y ago

As the proud father of a 5 month old baby girl, things like this make me really happy and eager to see how my daughter interacts with technology.

thegeomaster 12y ago

While I commend initiatives like this, I don't think people should be so eager to make girls start coding. If your daughter shows no interest whatsoever after being exposed to coding, well, maybe it just isn't her cup of tea. It's the same with boys, of course. I know so much people who had been pressured into the same profession as their parents. Not all of them today love what they do. We should be helping kids discover coding, not making them love it. I started hating chemistry and biology because I'm forced to study them in thorough detail in school and I have no interest in them--they're really just a pain in the ass. If someone has genuine talent for a particular area, you don't have to push them to explore it--you just make them aware of it and their natural curiosity will do the rest.

kllrnohj 12y ago
We force kids to learn math even if they have no interest in it. Same with history, chemistry, biology, etc... Forcing them to learn an intro to something is very different from forcing them into a career about that something. They don't know whether or not they like it if they've never tried it. This seems to be a campaign to get young girls to try it, nothing more.
- thegeomaster 12y ago
  Not just forcing them into a career about something, but e.g. being disappointed (or, more precisely, showing that in frobt of them) if they don't express interest. Of course you should get as much people you can to try out as much fields as possible to see if they fit. But in my case, I knew from the first two months of studying chemistry I don't like it, and likewise, from the day I wrote my first VBA Excel macro I knew I loved making computers do things.
Lewisham 12y ago
I wish I remembered where the study was now, but I remember reading one which said that girls were naturally curious about STEM careers, up to around 12, when it starts to tail off dramatically. The theory was that societal issues begin to kick in that makes girls not want to: no role models, fellow students telling them it's for nerds and no girls do it, male jock stuff. So the curiosity and talent is just drained out of them. That's the issue. But as I don't have the study to hand, of course I could just be making this all up :/

colmvp 12y ago

I'm curious, are there growing initiatives to make every career gender/race balanced? Because it seems like we're fixated on getting female representation in computer/mathematical occupations from 26.1% to 50%. Yet there are lot other occupations which have pretty low representations, i.e. only 1.6% of architects are black, 0.1% of judges/magistrates are Asian, only 1.8% of automotive repairers are women, only 5.2% of truck drivers are women, 19.7% of social workers are men, 5.2% of childcare workers are men, 3.8% of physicians/surgeons are Hispanic, etc.

bennyg 12y ago
It may not be socially acceptable to ask these questions but I wonder the same thing fairly frequently.
skybrian 12y ago
Well hopefully there are, but that's up to the people in those professions.
jiggy2011 12y ago
If we have more women in STEM then we must have less men in STEM unless we grow the total number of STEM jobs by the same amount. So those men who would otherwise be in STEM must move to other professions, which means they either move into other male dominated professions and make them even more unbalanced or there must be an equivalent push to move them into a female dominated industry. If we do the latter then a possible outcome is a system where we are allocating people to jobs based primarily on demographics rather than interest or aptitude.
- mrgn 12y ago
  Diversity isn't a zero sum game. STEM is one of the fastest growing professional fields, meaning more people--of any gender--will need to fill those jobs. The goal is gender balance, there's no need to fear that a woman or a person of color accepting a newly created STEM job will somehow push a white man out of his existing position. Let's be realistic here.

sigil 12y ago

In the earliest iLuminate photo I can find, Miral is hacking on an Arduino prototype board and staring at piles of glowing EL wire on the floor. Barely anything worked back then. Five years, numerous televised appearances, and 400 Off-Broadway performances later, the company is still doing amazing stuff at the intersection of art and technology. [1] Miral is the reason why. She can code, she can choreograph, she can manage and inspire people, she can dance, and most importantly, she can pursue a vision relentlessly. She's a great example of that "formidable" quality that pg ascribes to successful founders. So, while I get why Google is trying to inspire more women to code with this story, there's inspiration here for all of us. Build something you love and don't let the hard stuff stop you. (There will be lots of hard stuff.) [1] Seriously, go see the show if you're in NYC, it's mind-blowing.