Why aren't there more women in programming? Siren of Shame makes it obvious.
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Nice job, erasing, in a testosterolalic tsunami of non-sequiturs, and invidious comparisons, using pseudo-factoids, the historical achievements of women in the evolution of "computation," from Ada, Countess Lovelace, through Grace Hopper, and on ... and on. I suspect you have an experience-deficit with mistresses who wear leather, rather than cotton aprons, or you are living in a 1950's American sit-com playing on a black-and-white 9x6 inch screen, the latest PlayBoy editorial by Hugh Hefner within reach. I will offer prayers to the Great Mother on your behalf. She is merciful ! yours, Bill
“Humans are amphibians: half spirit, half animal; as spirits they belong to the eternal world; as animals they inhabit time. While their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imagination are in continual change, for to be in time, means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy is undulation: repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks.” C.S. Lewis
BillWoodruff wrote:
She is merciful !
Tell that to John Bobbit!
Will Rogers never met me.
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After following the recent link in CP's daily news to the SoS[^] website I couldn't help but think, here is a perfect example of why there aren't more women in programming. I really can't speak for women, because I'm a sexist pig (and let me apologize right now to any pigs that are reading this), but I imagine the large majority of women would be completely repulsed by working in such an environment. Actually, it's hard for me to imagine anyone over the age of 25 not getting sick of it pretty quickly. I think feedback, competition, and fun are all useful tools in increasing productivity and job satisfaction but this application seems to be written with teenage boys as the audience. Everything is a competition and your ego is the stake. The whole thing seems to be geared towards saying I'm smart, I'm better than you, you're a stupid idiot. If you want to stroke your ego in such a way then go get the latest version of Halo or Call of Duty and don't waste your time diluting the experience with the pretense of work. However, if you want to build something great. Something better than what is possible alone, you have to foster collaboration. I think an application like this would actually be detrimental to the long term productivity of any software house in at least two ways besides inhibiting female participation. First, it discourages collaboration because like in a first-person-shooter where my goal is to frag my opponents I succeed when others fail. I didn't scrutinize the application but I didn't see the section where you get hero points for helping someone else. You get your jollies by boosting your own stats and laughing at the ineptness of others. Except in the most dysfunctional and juvenile environments I doubt this would lead to a total breakdown of collaboration but it would act as a gentle headwind that slowly puts your team further and further behind its potential. The second problem is that it will probably lead to the gaming of the gaming system. People might start doing things like making micro commits because that gives them a better score. The impacts would probably be subtle, almost imperceptible at first. But over time the differences would accumulate until you found the entire heart of your code had eroded away. Of course, if you were impatient you could probably
Because men don't cry when their programs fail! ;P
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Bill, I look forward to each and every one of your posts. Thank you for them. One day I'll understand a full post without recourse to Dictionary.com (did you just make up "testosterolalic" ?
BillWoodruff wrote:
the latest PlayBoy editorial by Hugh Hefner
There were editorials !?
MVVM # - I did it My Way ___________________________________________ Man, you're a god. - walterhevedeich 26/05/2011 .\\axxx (That's an 'M')
_Maxxx_ wrote:
There were editorials !?
They were the reason I subscribed to Playboy.
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After following the recent link in CP's daily news to the SoS[^] website I couldn't help but think, here is a perfect example of why there aren't more women in programming. I really can't speak for women, because I'm a sexist pig (and let me apologize right now to any pigs that are reading this), but I imagine the large majority of women would be completely repulsed by working in such an environment. Actually, it's hard for me to imagine anyone over the age of 25 not getting sick of it pretty quickly. I think feedback, competition, and fun are all useful tools in increasing productivity and job satisfaction but this application seems to be written with teenage boys as the audience. Everything is a competition and your ego is the stake. The whole thing seems to be geared towards saying I'm smart, I'm better than you, you're a stupid idiot. If you want to stroke your ego in such a way then go get the latest version of Halo or Call of Duty and don't waste your time diluting the experience with the pretense of work. However, if you want to build something great. Something better than what is possible alone, you have to foster collaboration. I think an application like this would actually be detrimental to the long term productivity of any software house in at least two ways besides inhibiting female participation. First, it discourages collaboration because like in a first-person-shooter where my goal is to frag my opponents I succeed when others fail. I didn't scrutinize the application but I didn't see the section where you get hero points for helping someone else. You get your jollies by boosting your own stats and laughing at the ineptness of others. Except in the most dysfunctional and juvenile environments I doubt this would lead to a total breakdown of collaboration but it would act as a gentle headwind that slowly puts your team further and further behind its potential. The second problem is that it will probably lead to the gaming of the gaming system. People might start doing things like making micro commits because that gives them a better score. The impacts would probably be subtle, almost imperceptible at first. But over time the differences would accumulate until you found the entire heart of your code had eroded away. Of course, if you were impatient you could probably
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Please supply your address so that my black belt wife (who is one of the best coders I know) can come round and smack your sexist hide around.
I was brought up to respect my elders. I don't respect many people nowadays.
CodeStash - Online Snippet Management | My blog | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier -
And red braces in debugging.
I was brought up to respect my elders. I don't respect many people nowadays.
CodeStash - Online Snippet Management | My blog | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier -
I only scanned through the linked page - but what does it have to do with Women in programming? Agree or disagree with gaining reputation points based on checking in broken code (anything to stop that is a good thing, IMHO) but I don;t see what it has to do with sex?
MVVM # - I did it My Way ___________________________________________ Man, you're a god. - walterhevedeich 26/05/2011 .\\axxx (That's an 'M')
Quote:
What does it have to do with Women in programming?
Possibly everything but with only a superficial glance probably nothing. My initial reaction when seeing this application wasn't that this is some evil tool to subjugate women. I'm also reasonably confident it wasn't the intent of the developers to make an app that repels women. However, by not thoroughly considering the consequences of their choices they may have done just that. When I saw this application I imagined a work place that wholeheartedly embraced its philosophy. Then for whatever reason I started thinking about women. I imagined just about every woman I know and I couldn't think of a single one that would enjoy working in an environment like this. So I invite you to do the same. Imagine a workplace like this and then imagine the women you know working there. How many of the women you imagined have big smiles on their faces because they love their work environment? I believe that if you take a moment to imagine these two things as I did you will largely come to the same conclusions.
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Nathan Nowak wrote:
Why aren't there more women in programming?
Does there need to be more women in programming? I don't grant that a lack of women is the same thing as broken.
MehGerbil wrote:
Does there need to be more women in programming? I don't grant that a lack of women is the same thing as broken.
Well I do. Let me ask you this. Do you think the world would be a better place if Marie Curie had decided to be a wet nurse rather than pursuing physics and chemistry? Or do you think we'd all be better off if Grace Hopper had relegated herself to the typing pool? To play on gender stereotypes for a minute, what if half the best programmers are women and half the best nurses are men? What do we lose as a society by having large groups of people unable to reach their potential? What do those individuals have to suffer by being shepherded into careers for which they have no particular talent or desire? Let me ask you this. Would you consider it a problem if everywhere in my program where I needed to sort something I used a bubble sort instead of a merge sort? Is it a problem to consistently do worse than what we know is the best possible? It seems to me you have two basic choices. You can consider the lack of women in programming a problem or you can try as others have to make the case that women do not have the ability or desire to be programmers and therefore the disparity is just, right, and natural. If you make the case that they don't have the desire you have to show that it is because something inherit in the creative act of programming repulses them and not that they are discouraged by the male-dominated, SoS culture that permeates the industry.
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MehGerbil wrote:
Does there need to be more women in programming? I don't grant that a lack of women is the same thing as broken.
Well I do. Let me ask you this. Do you think the world would be a better place if Marie Curie had decided to be a wet nurse rather than pursuing physics and chemistry? Or do you think we'd all be better off if Grace Hopper had relegated herself to the typing pool? To play on gender stereotypes for a minute, what if half the best programmers are women and half the best nurses are men? What do we lose as a society by having large groups of people unable to reach their potential? What do those individuals have to suffer by being shepherded into careers for which they have no particular talent or desire? Let me ask you this. Would you consider it a problem if everywhere in my program where I needed to sort something I used a bubble sort instead of a merge sort? Is it a problem to consistently do worse than what we know is the best possible? It seems to me you have two basic choices. You can consider the lack of women in programming a problem or you can try as others have to make the case that women do not have the ability or desire to be programmers and therefore the disparity is just, right, and natural. If you make the case that they don't have the desire you have to show that it is because something inherit in the creative act of programming repulses them and not that they are discouraged by the male-dominated, SoS culture that permeates the industry.
Nathan Nowak wrote:
Well I do. Let me ask you this. Do you think the world would be a better place if Marie Curie had decided to be a wet nurse rather than pursuing physics and chemistry?
I don't think un-answerable hypothetical questions about the past are helpful. The fact is, nobody knows what the impact would have been had Marie Curie been a wet nurse. Your rhetorical question implies you know the answer. You do not.
Nathan Nowak wrote:
It seems to me you have two basic choices. You can consider the lack of women in programming a problem or you can try as others have to make the case that women do not have the ability or desire to be programmers and therefore the disparity is just, right, and natural.
I don't make the assumption that a disparity in the distribution of the sexes among different jobs proves that something is broken. I'm just one of many who tire of every difference being a pants-wetting, hair-igniting, tear-invoking crisis. As for the disparity being 'just, right, and natural', that is a load of horse-poopie. Who makes that determination and what exactly is their criteria?
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Fact #1: Programming = total control (over an "inanimate" something) [Biological] Fact #2: The male of most species, human included, thrive on total control (over any & everything they can). Some may equate the above as: Biological Total Control = shame anyone else in order to stay in control This, I'm confident, is true in more than just a few instances/environments/persons, but certainly not every such of the same. Many qualify that women are wired, for the most part, to be submissive; this is derived from the 3 top faiths in the world, which hold to this in some capacity/form/measure. How "deep" that measure goes is subjective solely by the person, usually the male, measuring it. In flowing with the "wired" perspective, it is often held, and reasonably at that, that women are also wired for "caring" for others [children, husband, others; animate that they are]. Computers don't need care, don't care to be cared for, and don't have the capacity to even care to be cared for! Why would someone who doesn't a) desire to be controlling over an inanimate; b) would rather be caring for something animate (i.e., a child or their spouse); c) is not wanting to be shamed (and, candidly, is not designed/wired for dealing with such); d) nor care for something that doesn't need caring for in the first place want to be involved with that "something" (inanimate that it is) when they well-know men, who is is designed/wired for dealing with such, seek just the opposite of such? By their (women) very nature, they don't! Thus, they (women), by their very nature, choose what is natural ~ that of caring for others. This is not to say that women can not program, for they do. I've worked with some brilliant programmer gals and guys. While not *the* answer, I present it with exceeding confidence it is a reasonable and valid answer.
BCantor wrote:
Why would someone who doesn't a) desire to be controlling over an inanimate; b) would rather be caring for something animate (i.e., a child or their spouse); c) is not wanting to be shamed (and, candidly, is not designed/wired for dealing with such); d) nor care for something that doesn't need caring for in the first place
Let me start with C. Are you really suggesting that men like to be shamed and that men are better at handling shame than women? I don't believe it, but the majority opinion seems to be that men are incompetent at handling emotions and women are masters. If men thrive on total control and dominance, as you suggest, then shaming would be a crippling blow to their egos. Your other three points all seem to revolve around the idea that women just want to be caregivers and nothing else. However, in the early days when options for women in the workplace were extremely limited one thing that was open to them was typing. They flocked to the profession in droves because they were hungry for any opportunity they could get. Can you make the case that the mechanical act of typing is somehow synonymous with care giving? By your standards, how is typing any less of a domination of an inanimate object than programming? What kind of woman would even consider such a thing when the position of full time home maker was available? Now fast forward several years to the dawn of the computer age. At this time programming was entering code onto punch cards. Since that was basically just glorified typing much of it was performed by women. So how do you explain large numbers of women working in the profession during this period? Can you make the case that operating a punch card machine is like taking care of a baby? Time marches on and punch cards get replaced with terminals and keyboards. The act of designing a program and coding merge. Now we see an approximately equal proportion of men and women in the field of computer programming. I'd have to do some research but it appears things stayed this way until the early 80's. I don't see how programming in the 70's and 80's is anymore care-givery than programming today. If anything I would say computers today are much more like animate objects than they were back then. So what happened to all the women programmers? Well, if I were to enter into wild speculation, my hypothesis would be that sometime in the 80's computers became pervasive enough that society deemed it necessary to come u
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JimmyRopes wrote:
She could put me on her sholdres and do deep knee bends.
Could, or did? ;)
MVVM # - I did it My Way ___________________________________________ Man, you're a god. - walterhevedeich 26/05/2011 .\\axxx (That's an 'M')
_Maxxx_ wrote:
She could put me on her sholdres and do deep knee bends.
Could, or did?
That was more my fantisy. :-O
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
Think inside the box! ProActive Secure Systems
I'm on-line therefore I am. JimmyRopes -
Not doing a statistic here, but here's what I collected. 1. A vast majority of them cannot differentiate left/right. Now go write an if-then-else. 2. They cannot follow a point to the very last detail. Translation: countless re-reverse programming to achieve things never considered. 3. They cannot control complexity (and programming is controlling complexity, no?). At all. Let's make it look good on UI, and we're dealing with SwitchDesktop later. 4. And my personal one: women are masters of raising exceptions (from the blatant interruption on phone, Skype, verbal etc. just in the point when finally you got your stack trace), but they cannot handle them. If a woman is interrupting you, is normal; if you interrupt one, it's hell unleashed. Seriously. Interview one with 5 guys playing Starcraft on background and yelling "send the goddam zealots !! I'm eliminated !!!". This is a part of the test to measure stress resistance (no, I'm not kidding - and I completed the test while laughing how bad they were playing in the same time :D). 5. And finally, my favorite. Lack of resilience. Watch one loading MS PDBs, doing .reload, !analyze -v, !kb etc. until the bug is found. I didn't see a single case as of today (and I got 16 years in the field). I did see, however, deer eyes looking at a OK/Cancel message box (__purecall included) from 4:40 to 18:00. Time to go home. (Next day at 9:40 the crash was still there). Make me a sexist pig or not - there is nothing invented here. Just observations during time.
Nuclear launch detected
For those that would like to make the case that having few women programmers is to be expected the argument boils down to two points. The women don't want to be programmers or they are unable to. You seem to largely be making the case that women are incapable of being programmers. I would first like to suggest that programming does not take any special amount of skill. The notion that it does probably comes from men wanting to feed their egos. The skills necessary to be a programmer probably boil down to about a 5th grade level of reading comprehension and a 9th grade level of math comprehension. Even children with less education than this often write their own programs. This is not to say that all of programming is so easy a child could do it. Some aspects of programming appear to be genuinely difficult. However, being hard and requiring special skill is not the same thing. Completing a marathon is hard but it does not take any particular innate skill. The large majority of people in the world could complete one if they wanted to. It only takes the will and commitment to several months of training in order to acquire the necessary conditioning to complete the race. Anyway, I consider computing to be the new literacy. I find the idea of women not being able to or wanting to program as absurd as saying women don't want to or are incapable of reading and writing. With your first sentence:
Christian Amarie wrote:
Not doing a statistic here, but here's what I collected.
you make it clear that you are aware that anecdotal evidence is not a sound basis for making a conclusion and yet you pass judgement anyway. Had you the ability to follow a point to the very last detail I think you would have found the following problems with your evidence beyond the usual pitfalls of small sample data. First, given your large bias against women it is very likely that the only women who would choose to work with you are those so lacking in skill they couldn't find a job anywhere else, doing anything else. Your female coworkers would only be those that came to your office as employment of the last resort. Attracting only the worst prospects is just one way in which a sexist environment directly and negatively impacts men. Even if the women candidates did not detect your hostility until after they were hired it is very likely that a selection bias still exists. People like to be right and it would not be surprising to find a person subconsciously selecting a
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For those that would like to make the case that having few women programmers is to be expected the argument boils down to two points. The women don't want to be programmers or they are unable to. You seem to largely be making the case that women are incapable of being programmers. I would first like to suggest that programming does not take any special amount of skill. The notion that it does probably comes from men wanting to feed their egos. The skills necessary to be a programmer probably boil down to about a 5th grade level of reading comprehension and a 9th grade level of math comprehension. Even children with less education than this often write their own programs. This is not to say that all of programming is so easy a child could do it. Some aspects of programming appear to be genuinely difficult. However, being hard and requiring special skill is not the same thing. Completing a marathon is hard but it does not take any particular innate skill. The large majority of people in the world could complete one if they wanted to. It only takes the will and commitment to several months of training in order to acquire the necessary conditioning to complete the race. Anyway, I consider computing to be the new literacy. I find the idea of women not being able to or wanting to program as absurd as saying women don't want to or are incapable of reading and writing. With your first sentence:
Christian Amarie wrote:
Not doing a statistic here, but here's what I collected.
you make it clear that you are aware that anecdotal evidence is not a sound basis for making a conclusion and yet you pass judgement anyway. Had you the ability to follow a point to the very last detail I think you would have found the following problems with your evidence beyond the usual pitfalls of small sample data. First, given your large bias against women it is very likely that the only women who would choose to work with you are those so lacking in skill they couldn't find a job anywhere else, doing anything else. Your female coworkers would only be those that came to your office as employment of the last resort. Attracting only the worst prospects is just one way in which a sexist environment directly and negatively impacts men. Even if the women candidates did not detect your hostility until after they were hired it is very likely that a selection bias still exists. People like to be right and it would not be surprising to find a person subconsciously selecting a
Well, you replied with a true essay here. Your arguments are articulate, and I appreciate this. On the other hand, there are several clarifications needed (my post was short and admittedly anecdotal - but not a fake): - we have interviews in the past days, and *we* did select 2 boys and 1 girl for internship. The selection was done by merit alone, so ... supposing I am biased (read: sexist swine) is not correct IMHO. If there were 4 girls with top scores, I'd voted for get all 4. - I'm making a major logic error every few lines: again, you're entitled to your views, sure, but what I have done was mostly describing situations I have witnessed (and no, not singular incidents involving single persons, but more than one AND in multiple occasions). You may not agree with my post - and I feel that this is a polite characterization of what you really think :) - but describing a situation, singular or not, does not represent a logical error. It's an int x = 3; , not an int x = 3; if (x == 2) do_3(); . - Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming.[^] is something that Brian Kernighan said - statement I just endorse. Finally, my "large bias" against women is simply untrue. I am annoyed by a handful of things - sex agnostic - like stupidity, lack of vision and/or purpose, 9-to-5 programming, lack of determination, inability to learn from others and so many others that differentiate a competent programmer by a lame one. Which, I repeat, happens to be present *statistically* - by reasons which I don't comment, nor care - more in one side of the moon than other. Finally, I will say this: so many times I have been in heated discussions (I was once in a bar with two good friends and we nearly start a fight in a debate MFC vs WTL, to much consternation of the audience ...) about technologies, libraries, frameworks, languages etc. How many times a girl contributed and sustained her point of view? (Exercise left for the reader). EDIT: it seems posting some (true) stories/situations is enough to make one a caveman, so I deleted it since I don't have time, nor inclinations for transform a lounge post in a politically correctness debate. I have been in similar discussions regarding programming, politics, music, sports etc. The truth, as once perceives it, is hard to sell to other people. What one can do is share experience - and this is mine.
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Nathan Nowak wrote:
Well I do. Let me ask you this. Do you think the world would be a better place if Marie Curie had decided to be a wet nurse rather than pursuing physics and chemistry?
I don't think un-answerable hypothetical questions about the past are helpful. The fact is, nobody knows what the impact would have been had Marie Curie been a wet nurse. Your rhetorical question implies you know the answer. You do not.
Nathan Nowak wrote:
It seems to me you have two basic choices. You can consider the lack of women in programming a problem or you can try as others have to make the case that women do not have the ability or desire to be programmers and therefore the disparity is just, right, and natural.
I don't make the assumption that a disparity in the distribution of the sexes among different jobs proves that something is broken. I'm just one of many who tire of every difference being a pants-wetting, hair-igniting, tear-invoking crisis. As for the disparity being 'just, right, and natural', that is a load of horse-poopie. Who makes that determination and what exactly is their criteria?
MehGerbil wrote:
I don't think un-answerable hypothetical questions about the past are helpful. The fact is, nobody knows what the impact would have been had Marie Curie been a wet nurse. Your rhetorical question implies you know the answer. You do not.
First let me say that I did not intend the questions to be rhetorical. If we were talking face to face I would fully expect to hear your answer. Clearly, if I was hoping to hear your answer I also do not share your view that the questions are inherently unanswerable. I was merely asking you to share your beliefs on whether or not women had made valuable and significant contributions to computing and science in the past. The only way I see this as being unanswerable is if you have no beliefs. As far as whether or not such a line is helpful I still think it would be valuable to know your views on the subject. I'm trying to understand why you are uncertain about whether the disparity between genders in technology is a problem. Is it because, like some, you don't think women really have anything to contribute in the first place? Or maybe you feel the market is already saturated with over qualified developers. Perhaps it is something else entirely. I can neither share nor alleviate your uncertainty if I don't know its source. You claim that my question implies I know the answer. With this, I also have a quibble. I think one can easily infer what my beliefs are in regards to these questions both from the context of my response and the very nature of the questions. However, I don't see how this implies that I know the answer anymore than if I were to ask you, "What time is it?" You go so far as to state unequivocally that I do not know the answer to these questions. However, by the very same logic and reasoning that you use to conclude this I can claim with certainty that you do not know that I don't know the answer. Alas, whether or not I know the answer is not the point. I am fully willing to concede that I can not say with certainty, "The world is a better place because Marie Curie was a scientist". The point I want to make is that no one can say anything with absolute certainty because there is nothing that can truly be known. We exists in a world solely of beliefs. Even if I had access to a time machine and I could go back and rerun history a million times with Marie Curie as scientist and a million times as wet nurse I could only state my beliefs as a probability distribution. 96% of the tim
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Bill, I look forward to each and every one of your posts. Thank you for them. One day I'll understand a full post without recourse to Dictionary.com (did you just make up "testosterolalic" ?
BillWoodruff wrote:
the latest PlayBoy editorial by Hugh Hefner
There were editorials !?
MVVM # - I did it My Way ___________________________________________ Man, you're a god. - walterhevedeich 26/05/2011 .\\axxx (That's an 'M')
Thanks for your kind words, _Maxxx_ ! Yep, I did coin "testosterolalic;" my particular infection of the virus, language, manifests in portmanteaux, and neologisms. Like most character traits, a blessing, and curse. ave atque vale, Billious
“Humans are amphibians: half spirit, half animal; as spirits they belong to the eternal world; as animals they inhabit time. While their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imagination are in continual change, for to be in time, means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy is undulation: repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks.” C.S. Lewis
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BillWoodruff wrote:
She is merciful !
Tell that to John Bobbit!
Will Rogers never met me.
Roger Wright wrote:
Tell that to John Bobbit!
Hi Roger, I didn't say that the Great Mother is not vengeful towards the wicked man. Here in Thailand, surgeons from all over the world come to study penile reattachment [^]. The author of this blog entry is an optimist: many men with reattached penis do not regain erectile, and orgasmic, functionality. John Bobbitt would never had his career in porn, if it weren't for Lorena. In Bangkok you can have your penis, and testicles, removed for under US $2000, and I recommend that to you rather than wait for She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, who you disobeyed, to cut it short for you: much greater hygiene, less trauma, less pain. yours, Bill
“Humans are amphibians: half spirit, half animal; as spirits they belong to the eternal world; as animals they inhabit time. While their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imagination are in continual change, for to be in time, means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy is undulation: repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks.” C.S. Lewis
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BCantor wrote:
Why would someone who doesn't a) desire to be controlling over an inanimate; b) would rather be caring for something animate (i.e., a child or their spouse); c) is not wanting to be shamed (and, candidly, is not designed/wired for dealing with such); d) nor care for something that doesn't need caring for in the first place
Let me start with C. Are you really suggesting that men like to be shamed and that men are better at handling shame than women? I don't believe it, but the majority opinion seems to be that men are incompetent at handling emotions and women are masters. If men thrive on total control and dominance, as you suggest, then shaming would be a crippling blow to their egos. Your other three points all seem to revolve around the idea that women just want to be caregivers and nothing else. However, in the early days when options for women in the workplace were extremely limited one thing that was open to them was typing. They flocked to the profession in droves because they were hungry for any opportunity they could get. Can you make the case that the mechanical act of typing is somehow synonymous with care giving? By your standards, how is typing any less of a domination of an inanimate object than programming? What kind of woman would even consider such a thing when the position of full time home maker was available? Now fast forward several years to the dawn of the computer age. At this time programming was entering code onto punch cards. Since that was basically just glorified typing much of it was performed by women. So how do you explain large numbers of women working in the profession during this period? Can you make the case that operating a punch card machine is like taking care of a baby? Time marches on and punch cards get replaced with terminals and keyboards. The act of designing a program and coding merge. Now we see an approximately equal proportion of men and women in the field of computer programming. I'd have to do some research but it appears things stayed this way until the early 80's. I don't see how programming in the 70's and 80's is anymore care-givery than programming today. If anything I would say computers today are much more like animate objects than they were back then. So what happened to all the women programmers? Well, if I were to enter into wild speculation, my hypothesis would be that sometime in the 80's computers became pervasive enough that society deemed it necessary to come u
And you prove my conclusion precisely. Not on why are there not as many women in programming, but the conclusion of: Put a strong mostly-false answer up and you (eventually) get a strong true answer.
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For those that would like to make the case that having few women programmers is to be expected the argument boils down to two points. The women don't want to be programmers or they are unable to. You seem to largely be making the case that women are incapable of being programmers. I would first like to suggest that programming does not take any special amount of skill. The notion that it does probably comes from men wanting to feed their egos. The skills necessary to be a programmer probably boil down to about a 5th grade level of reading comprehension and a 9th grade level of math comprehension. Even children with less education than this often write their own programs. This is not to say that all of programming is so easy a child could do it. Some aspects of programming appear to be genuinely difficult. However, being hard and requiring special skill is not the same thing. Completing a marathon is hard but it does not take any particular innate skill. The large majority of people in the world could complete one if they wanted to. It only takes the will and commitment to several months of training in order to acquire the necessary conditioning to complete the race. Anyway, I consider computing to be the new literacy. I find the idea of women not being able to or wanting to program as absurd as saying women don't want to or are incapable of reading and writing. With your first sentence:
Christian Amarie wrote:
Not doing a statistic here, but here's what I collected.
you make it clear that you are aware that anecdotal evidence is not a sound basis for making a conclusion and yet you pass judgement anyway. Had you the ability to follow a point to the very last detail I think you would have found the following problems with your evidence beyond the usual pitfalls of small sample data. First, given your large bias against women it is very likely that the only women who would choose to work with you are those so lacking in skill they couldn't find a job anywhere else, doing anything else. Your female coworkers would only be those that came to your office as employment of the last resort. Attracting only the worst prospects is just one way in which a sexist environment directly and negatively impacts men. Even if the women candidates did not detect your hostility until after they were hired it is very likely that a selection bias still exists. People like to be right and it would not be surprising to find a person subconsciously selecting a
To Christian: I woke up to a reply to my reply to your reply to my initial post. I wanted to continue the conversation because you raised some interesting points but your reply seems to have disappeared. I will make my comments hear. Hopefully, you don't mind.
Quote:
we have interviews in the past days, and *we* did select 2 boys and 1 girl for internship. The selection was done by merit alone, so ... supposing I am biased (read: sexist swine) is not correct IMHO. If there were 4 girls with top scores, I'd voted for get all 4.
I think you and I have different definitions of what it means to be sexist. You seem to have the view that if I'm not doing something overt like telling a women to her face that she is a stupid piece of trash or demanding that all women stay home cooking and cleaning for their husbands then I am not a sexist. Basically for me, being sexist means assuming a perceived difference between a man and a woman is caused by the presence or absence of a Y chromosome even when there is no credible evidence to support this. The test for whether or not someone exhibits sexist behavior is not simply whether or not they offer a woman a job. Just because in this instance you did the right thing and hired a woman based on objective criteria does not guarantee you are not a sexist. It doesn't suggest you are one either but tomorrow when the female new hire makes her first mistake and you say to yourself, "See, I told you, women are too stupid to be programmers." I will have reason to believe you at least think like a sexist.
Quote:
I'm making a major logic error every few lines: again, you're entitled to your views, sure, but what I have done was mostly describing situations I have witnessed (and no, not singular incidents involving single persons, but more than one AND in multiple occasions). You may not agree with my post - and I feel that this is a polite characterization of what you really think :) - but describing a situation, singular or not, does not represent a logical error.
My claim that you were making major logical errors was based solely on your point 1, where you claim the vast majority of women don't know their left from their right so how can we expect them to write an if-then-else. I see two logic errors here. First you treat a premise that is false as true. Second, you draw a conclusion from that premise which is not implied by it. Look I'll give you the benef
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To Christian: I woke up to a reply to my reply to your reply to my initial post. I wanted to continue the conversation because you raised some interesting points but your reply seems to have disappeared. I will make my comments hear. Hopefully, you don't mind.
Quote:
we have interviews in the past days, and *we* did select 2 boys and 1 girl for internship. The selection was done by merit alone, so ... supposing I am biased (read: sexist swine) is not correct IMHO. If there were 4 girls with top scores, I'd voted for get all 4.
I think you and I have different definitions of what it means to be sexist. You seem to have the view that if I'm not doing something overt like telling a women to her face that she is a stupid piece of trash or demanding that all women stay home cooking and cleaning for their husbands then I am not a sexist. Basically for me, being sexist means assuming a perceived difference between a man and a woman is caused by the presence or absence of a Y chromosome even when there is no credible evidence to support this. The test for whether or not someone exhibits sexist behavior is not simply whether or not they offer a woman a job. Just because in this instance you did the right thing and hired a woman based on objective criteria does not guarantee you are not a sexist. It doesn't suggest you are one either but tomorrow when the female new hire makes her first mistake and you say to yourself, "See, I told you, women are too stupid to be programmers." I will have reason to believe you at least think like a sexist.
Quote:
I'm making a major logic error every few lines: again, you're entitled to your views, sure, but what I have done was mostly describing situations I have witnessed (and no, not singular incidents involving single persons, but more than one AND in multiple occasions). You may not agree with my post - and I feel that this is a polite characterization of what you really think :) - but describing a situation, singular or not, does not represent a logical error.
My claim that you were making major logical errors was based solely on your point 1, where you claim the vast majority of women don't know their left from their right so how can we expect them to write an if-then-else. I see two logic errors here. First you treat a premise that is false as true. Second, you draw a conclusion from that premise which is not implied by it. Look I'll give you the benef
I have found my new, favourite response to a post here. I guess the point I would have liked to bring most to the fore is that there is an inherent bias in the industry where women are expected to fail, so any minor mistake is magnified way beyond its significance. Plus, when women do well, there does seem to be an attitude of they did well "for a woman" (I've seen this particular form of patronising chauvinism in operation many times).
I was brought up to respect my elders. I don't respect many people nowadays.
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I do mention this from time to time, but I AM a woman! :laugh: Seriously! So unless I stab myself, I'm quite safe, thank you!
Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike... me...
Congratulations! Of all the sexist jokes this thread has inspired yours was the only I found funny. As a caricature of attitudes about women it was excellent.