
Why are most programmers white males? - programminggeek
http://brianknapp.me/most-programmers-white-males/
======
grandalf
I used to get teased for being so interested in computers and electronics
during grade school, and for staying in at recess to program or read.

Being able to ignore social pressures and just be yourself is definitely a
benefit of privilege. So it's easy to see how many of the rarest skills and
ingenious founder stories are examples of someone going against the grain to
do something he or she cares about.

When people decry privilege, they seem to think that it's a bad thing, that we
should all feel the insecurity, the doubt, and the drive to conform that most
people feel.

I think the opposite is true, we should strive for all people to feel the
empowerment of privilege and the freedom to pursue whatever moves them.

As a corollary, it's not a coincidence that the top schools admit the most
privileged applicants. Those are the people whose privilege has allowed them
to think about what is important to them... not just simply trying to be
popular, avoiding getting beaten up by the kids who hate nerds, or avoiding
ticking off an abusive parent, etc.

Privilege puts a person years ahead when it comes to moral clarity, purpose,
curiosity, and self-actualization. Metaphorically, everyone else is in some
sort of minimum security prison.

~~~
Arete3141
There are multiple factors, but basic discouragement, starting from childhood,
is a big one.

100 years ago, when writing could make you a decent living, women were
constantly discouraged from writing. Here's Virginia Woolf's character Lily in
To The Lighthouse, dealing with nagging doubts:

"Then why did she mind what he said? Women can’t write, women can’t paint—what
did that matter coming from him, since clearly it was not true to him but for
some reason helpful to him, and that was why he said it?"

At roughly the same time, women were often employed as "computers" \-- that
is, people who did complex mathematical calculations. It was thought that
women were good for this more tedious math, thus leaving men free for the
higher math to which they were more eminently suited.

So, to review: When writers could support a family, women were discouraged
from being writers. When math skill was not connected with a good salary,
women were accepted as being good at math.

Nowadays, very few writers can make a living, while mathematically-minded
coders can. So today's generally accepted wisdom is that girls are naturally
good with words (which doesn't pay), while boys are good with math and
computers (which does).

The fact that women aren't in coding isn't a bug, but a feature. Remember the
Eniac? Programming that was brutally hard, and it was all done by women, and
there does not seem to have been a particular amount of money or glory in it.
Now there's both, and that's why women are discouraged from joining in the
lucrative boys' club.

Once code starts being written by robots and the average developer can't find
a job, then you'll see the field fill up with women.

~~~
greenhatman
Where do you see women being discouraged from programming? Because I see the
opposite everywhere.

------
rm999
This article makes some decent points around class and the expense of a
computer in the 80s/90s. But it dodges more substantial questions, and a lot
of the substance is either circular logic or confirmation bias.

There are plenty of asian men in programming, so this isn't a race thing. It
probably is socioeconomic for the reasons the article points out, so that's
fine - I think we can leave it at "white and asian people dominate programming
because they tend to come from wealthier families".

I think the much harder question is why women aren't in programming. They make
up 50% of the population and come from the same exact socioeconomic background
as men. This question is important because the repercussions still haunt us
today. The article starts this question with "girls weren’t interested in
computers or video games at all", and then circles the logic with "people tend
to do things that they see other people who are 'like them' doing". Well, I'd
like to know why women weren't interested in programming. In my circumstantial
experience it wasn't a conscious decision or peer pressure, it was coming top
down from society. I saw many parents encouraging their sons to play with
computers and completely ignoring that their daughters may want to also. The
article completely avoids this topic, sadly.

edit: downvoted within 30 seconds - if you're gonna downvote, please at least
reply and start a discussion about it.

~~~
Pica_soO
I once had plans to create a small scripting language, specifically designed
for woman in tech. I always envied woman for the ability to hold such huge
social networks in their memorys and manipulate them. Maybe if you you made a
programming language whose basic datastructure is similar to another person,
and who's classes communicated with each other.

Then i held a C-Introduction course at university for a womans only class and
abandoned the idea. Its not that woman are not smart enough to grasp tech,
quite the contrary, on average they where faster learners then men.

The problem is that woman constantly evaluate their surroundings, and value
their prospects accordingly.

And sorry, Nerds dont make for a high-value surrounding. This is no shiny
glass apple-shoe-box a programmer princess lands- this a dorm shoe-box filled
with Ramen eating nerds, partially unwashed, seemingly stuck in infinite
childhood( W40k as a break talk), which to make things more bewildering, is a
bonus to the job, because you are able to grasp things faster with a playful
mindset. Lots of Hitchiker and LoRs insider jokes between the Bachelors and
the graduating Masters dont help to that either. Its like a great Insiders
game - to which you have come much too late - and which compared to other
groups doesn't look very glamorous.

Now, hold against this, the other study groups- lawyers, MBAs and doctors who
hold at universities quite the social high life (every fraternitys part is
famous, except for the Infoguys) already- and you begin to grasp why
programing doesn't keep woman interested. Its small stuff, and its eroding
away confidence, one day at a time.

~~~
dismantlethesun
I guess the question is why aren't the unwashed ramen eating nerds of the
female gender interested in programming? Now let's not pretend they don't
exist, they're key members of any university anime club. Why did they choose
systems, civil, and chemical engineering over computer science?

~~~
Pica_soO
I forgot the neurotics and otherwise social outcasts. Not that unwashed, but
definitely not bragging material for someone who defines his value by the
showman factor of the company he spends time with.

------
RaceIsSensitive
Throwaway, because race is a sensitive topic, and below is a potentially
unpopular way to look at things in regards to race (I am not addressing gender
in this comment).

1\. Whites actually do not make up a disproportionate number of the
programmers in the US! Whites are 74% of the workforce and 72% of the
programmers.

2\. Asians do make up a disproportionately high number of the programmers in
the US, they are 6% of workforce but 20% of programmers.

3\. I'd suggest that programming is a job where intellectual ability
(specifically math-type logic) is highly correlated with success. Everything
else held equal - on average more intellectual ability will lead to a better
programmer.

4\. Black Americans have on average significantly lower math skills (measured
by the SAT) than white Americans. The factors leading to this are widely
debated, but the fact remains that the gap still exists in a big way.[2]
Asians have, on average, much better math skills than whites and blacks.

5\. This doesn't seem to me primarily a culture issue, it seems like an
intellectual ability issue.

Conclusion: I am not qualified to say what drives the intellectual ability gap
(education, infant diet, genetics, culture, etc). But the fact remains the
highest IQ people (and therefore highest IQ groups) will continue to perform
the best in jobs where IQ is a big factor for success.

[1][https://datausa.io/profile/soc/151131/](https://datausa.io/profile/soc/151131/)

[2]I'm using SAT math scores to show this here, which of course have faults,
but it's tough to argue they don't show an actual difference. IQ tests show
similar results: [https://www.brookings.edu/research/race-gaps-in-sat-
scores-h...](https://www.brookings.edu/research/race-gaps-in-sat-scores-
highlight-inequality-and-hinder-upward-mobility/)

~~~
baddox
Number 5 seems like a leap.

~~~
RaceIsSensitive
Do you agree that higher IQ (on average) makes a better programmer, and that
as a group asians have higher IQs than blacks?

If so, how do you expect blacks (as a group) to have the same number of
quality programmers as asians?

Again, I am NOT saying this needs to be inherently true in the future, that
this is unsolvable, is genetic, etc. I am simply saying that today (on
average) 18 year old asians have more intellectual ability than 18 year old
blacks - and therefore, I would expect the asians (as a group) to do better in
programming today.

Maybe in 20 years the IQs of the various race groups will be equal. And if
that becomes the case and there is still a gap, then my thesis is disproven.
But that is not the case today.

------
ng12
I think this hits the nail on the head, and explains why some people feel
gilted by the recent push for diversity in tech -- like it or not it's only a
popular issue because tech is now sexy where it absolutely wasn't before.
Other fields have worse gender ratios by a fair margin (in both directions)
but you don't see news articles about it -- maybe because there's no
Zuckerberg of mechanical engineering.

------
briholt
The reason men are more inclined to program is autism. Thinking systematically
and enjoying some level of solitude are traits that make a good programmer.
It's no coincidence that men are 4.5x more likely to be diagnosed with
autism[1]. Look at any early interview with Zuck or Gates or Musk or Jack -
it's like an educational video on how to spot mild Asperger Syndrome.

[1]
[https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html](https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html)

~~~
altano
This is what programmers tell themselves but it sounds bizarre to me.

1) There is almost no profession where thinking is required for which
"Thinking systematically and enjoying some level of solitude" isn't helpful.
Programming isn't special in this regard.

2) Having empathy with your users seems even more important to me, and a lack
of this is the cause of a lot of shitty software.

Also, Mark Zuckerberg doesn't strike me as being Asbergery at all but maybe
that's just because I work at Facebook.

~~~
briholt
You seem like someone who is way outside of the autistic spectrum.

Imagine the sound of other people talking sounding like nails on a chalkboard.
Now imagine working a job in sales, biz dev, marketing, customer support,
investing, legal, management, child care, or HR. How many hours can you go in
a day without hearing that screeching sound? Maybe 1/2 hour if you tried hard?
Now imagine working in a good programming environment where you can frequently
spend 1-3 hours without talking to anyone, and when you reluctantly do it's
for very short periods with people who understand you don't like talking. Or
maybe you can just work at home and almost never deal with anyone.

Are you the type of person who wants to spend weeks at home, alone, no travel,
no dinners, with almost no human interaction outside of say 4 family/close
friends? A very large number of programmers I've met are.

------
Yetanfou
Why are people asking more and more of these basically racist / 'genderist' /
_whatever_ ist questions? Why is it that it is nearly impossible to open a
newspage or magazine without being confronted with '...blah blah blah _white
males_ blah blah ...' or '... blah blah blah _women wearing hijab_ blah blah
...' or '...blah blah _LGBT people_ blah blah ...'?

I live in Sweden, one of the most egalitarian countries in the world, but if
you were to believe the media we're about as bad as it can get when it comes
to 'discrimination' and 'privilege' and such. Strangely enough those claims
are mostly made by people from the 'upper class', living in the most
comfortable (and, need I say it, 'white'...) areas of the capital and other
big cities. People who send their children to remarkably homogeneous schools
while they promote diversity everywhere.

This whole thing with identity politics better stop soon or we'll be back in
the 18th century before you know it, with segregation everywhere. Because that
is what this mostly leads to. The more people identify themselves with some
special interest - be it based on skin colour, gender, religion, sexual
preference, country of origin or any other factor - the more society will fall
apart into disparate camps.

Back to the question, why is the majority of people in IT of a specific gender
and a specific skin colour? Well, I can ask the same question about, say,
horse riding: why is the majority of people of a specific gender and skin
colour, at least in this country? Or let's take another profession,
veterinarians, why are they mostly of a specific gender?

The answer to these questions is mostly that, for some reason, more males than
females are interested in computer-related stuff. On the other hand, more
females than males are interested in working with pets. Is this a problem? If
so, what should be done about it? Should there be a mandatory stop on
veterinary college for women to combat the female domination of the field?
Should girls be forced to play football and boys be lifted in the saddle?

If so, why? What would be achieved by this, other than increasing the level of
injustice - men who want to work in IT can not due to quota, women who want to
work as vets can not due to quota...

If racism is bad, stop drawing attention to race. If gender is a social
construction (...), why decry the lack of a specific gender (...) in a given
field. Just... stop. No more identity politics, please.

~~~
notacoward
> If racism is bad, stop drawing attention to race.

I understand where you're coming from. Not having to think about race, or
gender, or whatever is a great _long term_ goal that we probably share.
However, I argue that saying we should stop thinking about it _today_ is
premature.

Most discrimination is unconscious, but has a significant cumulative effect.
Consider the studies on blind interviews or auditions, showing that
interviewers rate women higher when they don't know they're women. Or the
studies showing that the _same idea_ can be presented in meetings, more likely
to be shot down when it's from a woman and accepted when it's from a man
(sometimes even both in the same meeting). You don't need me to look these up
for you. There have been many, they're easy to find, and you can even conduct
your own experiment if you want. Or ask some women you know whether this has
happened to them. Here's the key point:

    
    
       Discrimination does not require ill intent.
    

It's highly likely that nobody in these interviews or meetings means to be
discriminatory, or recognizes themselves as such, but the outcomes happen
anyway. Even if you are the most virtuously fair-minded person ever, that
won't undo the effect of _other people 's_ unconscious discrimination. The
only way to address discrimination is to _consciously_ recognize it in others
and in ourselves, and to _explicitly_ address it when it happens. That means
paying attention to different outcomes for different groups, which in turn
means maintaining an awareness of who's in which group. Leaving our eyes open
might be uncomfortable, but closing them simply doesn't work.

~~~
Yetanfou
Discrimination exists, true. So does racism, partly due to the fact that
humans develop a preference for 'their own' within a few months after birth
[1]. Those habits die hard and can, in some, end up as debilitating racism
where they consider anyone outside their own phenotype to be undesirable. In
most people it just stays around in a watered-down form without doing real
damage. Some people make conscious efforts to try to unlearn this latent
racial bias, some even go so far as to hyper-correct against their own
phenotype.

Having said this, I still stand by my wish to get rid of identity politics and
to tone down or get rid of focus on race/ethnicity/gender/ _etcetera_. The
reason for this is that it leads to less cohesion in society, not more. As
usual in politics it is the louder mouths which get heard while the more
thoughtful ones get relegated to the back. This quickly leads to outspoken
people pushing themselves forward as defenders of their identity group,
decrying the injustice society supposedly does upon them and calling for
special treatment. It does not take long for all nuance to be lost, for the
discourse to polarise around these loudmouths. Disparate identity groups
withdraw behind their barricades, hurling insults and epithets at perceived
opponents and soon any chance of improving the original situation is lost.

I'm left-handed. If I were so inclined I could start a political pressure
group to fight all the injustice this right-hand-dominated society foists upon
me and my identity group. I'd throw myself up as the fearless leader of the
oppressed sinister masses - see, even the word used for left has a stigma
attached to it - and request, no _demand_ that society adapts itself to my
minority. I'd be in the media, be positively flooded with funding from
government and NGOs, I'd be famous. What's not to like...

...but I won't. Why not? Because, even though there is a clear right-handed
bias in society [2] due to the fact that around 90% of people are right-
handed, I don't see how it would help to focus my identity around my left-
handedness. Jimi Hendrix was left-handed as well but that did not keep him
from picking up a right-handed guitar. Like him and countless others I learned
to adapt to my environment and use it to my advantage.

[1]
[https://www.google.se/search?q=babies+racial+bias](https://www.google.se/search?q=babies+racial+bias)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_against_left-
handed_peopl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_against_left-
handed_people)

------
chewyfruitloop
Yeh $1500 computers.... you where looking at the wrong thing. Everyone else
was looking at the not Microsoft market... commadore, Atari etc. I bought my
first computer with Christmas money when I was about 10 for under £100 in the
mid 80's. The whole girls weren't into computers is looking at the bubble from
the inside and not looking at why there's a bubble. Parents in the 70's tended
to point the boys at building and engineering toys and the girls at dolls etc.
Those children followed on in the same fashion. That's left us in the gender
bias we have now. As for ethnic groups... that's complicated and depends on
local demographic, plus imigant families tend not to be overflow in spare
cash....

~~~
CoolGuySteve
The video game crash of the early 80s put a stop to those cheap programmable
computers. By the 90s, any cheap home computer, like the
NES/SNES/Genesis/Gameboy was not programmable by the end user.

When I was a kid, I learned BASIC on a 10 year old Tandy 80 to write games
like I had on my NES (which was marketed solely to boys btw). Eventually my
dad dropped $2000 on a 486 (and subsequent upgrades) and that's when I was
able to start writing C with the DJGPP toolchain, installing Linux, rebuilding
machines out of spare obsolete parts, etc.

If my family wasn't well off, there's no way I'd have progressed past having
known BASIC for a couple of summers.

I think this is a common refrain for anyone born between about 1980 and maybe
1995. By 2010, there were cheap laptops, netbooks, and whatnot.

~~~
webvictim
My family weren't at all well off when I was growing up in the UK, but my Dad
had some contacts in a local IT business who had a spare BBC microcomputer
that he got hold of around 1988 when they were throwing it away.

I was born at the end of 1984 and played games on it with him from around age
3, then started tinkering myself and learning how to load games and play them
at around age 5. In another couple of years I was going to the library and
checking out books full of lengthy game listings in BASIC, painstakingly
typing them in, running them and saving them to tape. That experience
basically ignited my love for computers and for programming. When the family
managed to get a cheap PC I was about 9 or 10 and I spent as much time on
there as I could, learning how to use MS-DOS 5, Windows 3.1 and playing games.

After this point I scrounged whatever hardware I could - I acquired an old IBM
286 with an EGA monitor that a local school wanted to get rid of, various
other components, borrowed software off friends to copy the disks, etc. My
parents were pretty supportive and at age 13 they were a little better off - I
persuaded them to get me my own PC as a joint birthday and Christmas present,
using an old monitor and peripherals we already had. I got access to the
internet and started viewing the source of web pages, copying the HTML,
learning what it did and editing it to make my own pages. I started to learn
CSS, how to edit images and how to write Perl.

The story goes on and on - I'm mostly just going on a bit of a ramble about my
past and fondly remembering all the experiences I had. The point is that yes,
if your family is absolutely on the breadline while you're growing up then you
probably won't have access to this stuff, but we were by no means upper middle
class and I managed to get a great start with computing. It's mostly about
passion and people looking out for you. I scrounged so much old hardware and
software from people who didn't want it any more because I knew it'd be a
fantastic learning experience, and I was lucky enough to have parents who
encouraged me to do this and didn't spend the _entire_ summer telling me to go
outside and "do something".

------
HarryHirsch
On the other hand, why are so many crystallographers women? Dorothy Hodgkin,
Olga Kennard, Eleanor Dodson, Kathleen Lonsdale, it's easy to come up with all
these and many more, they are among the greats.

You'd think it's due to J D Bernal. He was a pioneer of x-ray crystallography
and was involved with many women, all of whom he treated with respect. That
set the tone in the field.

~~~
timthorn
I know that you said many more, but such a list surely isn't complete without
Rosalind Franklin?

~~~
HarryHirsch
Definitively. And Jane Richardson. How we think about protein structure is due
to her artwork.

------
20years
This is a topic of high interest to me personally. Over the past couple of
years I have been teaching middle school students how to code on and off. I am
also a female who has been coding for close to 20 years now.

In the classes I teach, the girls are usually far beyond the boys. They get
this stuff so much quicker and at a much deeper level. They are so much more
focused and really try to understand what everything means.

The boys need instant gratification. They want to hack and mess around with
the code but most don't want to really try and understand what it all means.
They also need way more confirmation from the other boys in the class. They
all create their games and show them off to the other boys and then they all
try to one up each other. This is how they are motivated. They also completely
exclude the girls from this.

In my current class of 17, there are 5 girls. All 5 are far ahead of all of
the boys and 3 of those girls are already doing the advanced stuff. 4 of those
girls sit together and actually seem to be annoyed by the boys antics. This
has been similar in all of the classes/workshops I have taught.

It has been a very interesting observation which has convinced me that the
boys club type behavior starts very early. What I am not convinced of is that
we should necessarily try and change the boys behavior as long as they are not
specifically offending the girls. I worry that this would suppress their
instinctual way of being motivated and learning. I can also understand however
why girls bail out, which is unfortunate in itself being that even at this
early age, they are so good at it. I am not really sure what the answer is
other than trying to encourage girls to stick with it and give them that
support early on.

"There is one other reason I think you see fewer women and minorities as
software developers. People tend to do things that they see other people who
are "like them" doing"

It helps when other girls are doing it with you like the 5 in my current
class.

~~~
FT_intern
I hope your political beliefs aren't implicitly biasing your teaching against
the males.

The primary education system seems to be failing males (more female college
graduates every year) and it wouldn't help if you added to that.

I'm curious, would it be an issue to you if all the boys in the class were
"beyond" the girls?

~~~
20years
I am simply stating what I am observing and the different ways males and
females learn and what motivates them.

I would never advocate not teaching males or giving females priority. Ever! I
have a 13 year old son btw. He helps me in these classes.

As my comment states: "What I am not convinced of is that we should
necessarily try and change the boys behavior as long as they are not
specifically offending the girls. I worry that this would suppress their
instinctual way of being motivated and learning."

I do believe that they learn differently and we need to try and find a way to
appeal to both in the different ways they learn and how they are motivated.

I personally think the education system is failing both males and females but
that is an entirely different discussion.

------
matt_wulfeck
> _It was flat out unpopular and the only people I found that were really into
> it were nerdy white kids like me who somehow tricked their parents into
> buying a computer._

Indeed the seeds were sown a very long time ago. My father bought a PC with
some inheritance money he had, then he immediately regretted it because I
spent all my time and summer on it rather than playing sports or hanging out
with friends!

Back then nobody realized how in demand our field would be. By the time I
started college I had already been programming.

------
thegayngler
I'm black and my family wasn't upper middle class. My parents bought a
computer when I was 11 years old and I lived on that thing. After I dropped
out of HS and was living on my own at like 18, I would put dollars into the
machine so I could build my music website as I didn't have a computer at the
time.

The point is people who are interested will do what they have to even if they
don't have large amounts of money.

~~~
rmah
I think your experience is highly admirable. But I think even you have to
admit that most people, regardless of background, do not have the sort of will
power and drive you exhibited.

So yes, any particular person could overcome the obstacles in their path. But
most will not. And it's the "most" that will lead to skewed statistics over
time.

~~~
thegayngler
I certainly agree. It was just my interest and I felt like it was fun for me
to put something out that the whole world could see if they wanted to.

------
FT_intern
Is it even really a privilege to be into programming in your childhood/teen
years?

Most kids are not Feynmans. They aren't naturally curious geniuses who are
only stopped by a judgmental society and "biases". There is a whole other,
more dominant incentive structure in place.

The way many kids/teens become interested in programming is through video
games and trolling online forums/message boards. Now, why do some kids play
videos games and troll the internet more?

Because the opportunity cost is low for them. Meaning that if they did not
play video games/troll the internet, the other potential activities are not as
fun for them.

A vital activity that other kids do is socializing and hanging out with
family, friends, etc. in real life.

Is it really a privilege to be exiled from real life to the internet? Would
those kids spend time on the internet playing video games and reading about
programming if they weren't as "privileged" as they are and had opportunities
to socialize in real life?

------
notacoward
The 'white' part is pretty straightforward. THe 'male' part is trickier. If
it's a simple matter of role-model discouragement, why has it been getting
_worse_? Depending on which data set you look at, the percentage of CS
graduates (bachelor's) who were female has been declining since the early to
mid 80s. This matches my own experience, with a steady decline in the
percentage of my developer colleagues who were female from 1989 until this
year. It's not all about the so-called pipeline. There are many forms of
discrimination and discouragement that apply even to women who are already in
the field. That includes everything from differences in conversational style
to pay disparities to actual assault.

To a large extent, most programmers are men because the people driving the
culture - not just programmers themselves but execs, investors, etc. - have
been men, and that culture has been more comfortable for other men than for
women. (BTW I was going to use "male" and "female" but the objectifying way
that "female" is used by the MRA/alt-right crowd made it sound creepy.) When
_those_ people stop injecting their old-boy-network ethos and habits into our
workplaces, we might stand a chance of creating an ecosystem where someone
who's not just like them can still feel like an equal.

~~~
FT_intern
> If it's a simple matter of role-model discouragement, why has it been
> getting worse? Depending on which data set you look at, the percentage of CS
> graduates (bachelor's) who were female has been declining since the early to
> mid 80s.

It depends on your perspective. You don't have to see the situation through
percentage of total market share.

The absolute numbers for female CS graduates are increasing. It is just that
more males are enrolling and becoming interested in CS than females.

When did this all start? when video games became mainstream

~~~
notacoward
> The absolute numbers for female CS graduates are increasing. It is just that
> more males are enrolling and becoming interested in CS than females.

I'm honestly not sure how that changes anything. "Why isn't the growth the
same for women" is practically the same question as "why aren't the absolute
numbers the same for women". The same explanations and the same remedies are
likely to apply either way, and over time lower growth rates will still leave
us with lower absolute numbers. So no, I don't think it really depends on
perspective.

------
vowelless
Is it even true that most programmers are "white males"? Is the scope the
global population?

~~~
HarryHirsch
At a certain Java school in the South that is attended mostly by Indians, the
gender ratio amongst the Indians is fairly even. The Americans, they are all
white and male. What this means is open to interpretation.

~~~
klipt
I believe in Indian culture, engineering and programming are respected as
solid, lucrative professions, while in general (white) American culture
they're seen as second best to being say, a doctor or lawyer, which is where
more high achieving women end up.

------
jhbadger
The author makes a good point as to the high cost of computers in the US in
previous decades, which meant kids who grew up using computers tended to be
upper-middle class, but what about places like Britain where the Sinclair
Spectrum and various Amstrad machines reigned in the 1980s-early 1990s? These
were cheap machines. It would be interesting to see if this cheapness led to a
more diverse set of programmers.

~~~
timthorn
They were cheaper, but the social status of geeks was just the same in the UK.

------
dlwdlw
The reason most programmers are white males is because traditionally only
wealthy western countries had access to computers. As the cost went down, more
people could afford to study and in silicon valley at least there are many
Chinese and Indians, basically a reflection of world population than anything
else. Plus, the majority if good jobs are still in the US where the majority
of the population are white males.

This is completely separate than white male privilege. Programming was never
something to make you popular and there was never any attempt at creating
barriers to entry. It was a nerdy unsexy job till recently. The biggest gate
to diversity is probably getting a visa.

I don't hear any white expat programmers complaining about why all the
programmers in China are mostly chinese and being looked down on for lack of
advanced math skills.

------
throwaway26960
Because women are smart. The women I've worked with claim ignorance to
programming, have no desire to learn programming, and give me a mile high task
list of things to do. Then they take all the credit for my work while I'm
being worked to the bone. I burn out and quit while they hire the next fresh
programmer ready to accept work.

I've tried teaching employees to program, but when they realized how much
painful/frustrating work they can now accept with this fresh new skill, they
immediately stop learning how to program. Easier to give me all the work.

~~~
analog31
Become a manager and play the same game. But seriously, it may be a function
of your workplace culture. Where I work, the programmers have a typical 8 hour
work day, and their managers are very protective of their time. In fact, if I
need some programming work done, I have to do it myself, even though I'm
supposedly not employed as a programmer.

Another option is to find a role where you use your programming skill, but
you're not developing software for someone. That's my case. My title is
"scientist," and truth be told, I spend a considerable portion of my day
programming, but I'm using code to solve problems, and my code will never be
used by a customer.

------
soneca
I understand the logic. But data about the diversity among programmers around
20~25 years old must be significantly different from ~40 if he is right. We do
not have to sit and wait 20 years hoping he is right. Is there any such data
available?

About the cost of the equipment to learn. Is there any raspberry pi based
computer that one can use to learn to code? Like, something below USD100? That
would also help more class diversity.

~~~
evilDagmar
That's pretty much _every_ RPi. Computers are cheap now, and the RPi in
particular is incredibly inexpensive and has more than enough power for people
to learn programming skills.

------
arghimonmobile2
I encourage everyone in tech to read Unlocking the Clubhouse, by Margolis et
al. It doesn't quite propose how to solve the problem, but it certainly teases
out a number of contributing factors. I think in the case in point, the
importance of being encouraged/discouraged depending on gender cannot be
understated. Of course, to the individual involved it'll feel 'normal' since
it has always been that way, but on a societal level it is blatantly obvious
that children are moulded into gendered expectation patterns from literally
the moment they're born. (As to that last assertion, there's a study floating
around on how adults react to a baby crying then told the child is either male
or female. Quite saddening.)

------
gweinberg
I think in the US it is not the case the programmers are significantly
disproportionately white.

~~~
IslaDeEncanta
[https://datausa.io/profile/soc/151131/#demographics](https://datausa.io/profile/soc/151131/#demographics)

------
brockvond
That is so spot-on... the only reason people care about forcing diversity in
tech is because its now a fashionable industry that gets you respect and makes
you money. If coders were not lauded for being super-smart, rich, and working
in "fun environments" nobody would care how big of a white sausage fest it'd
be.

~~~
prostoalex
I was wondering if other industries (construction, commercial fishing, oil
drilling, nursing, coal mining, aircraft maintenance) were as focused on
diversity as tech. And if not, what made tech an outlier.

------
finid
Interesting topic, but I think _Why are most programmers in the USA white
males?_ is a much more accurate title.

------
carsongross
Asians are proportionally over-represented because programming broadly rewards
IQ, and asians have the highest IQ. Men are over represented because they are
naturally better, on average, at abstract mathematical reasoning.

There are social reasons as well, but this is the core of the issue.

------
illuminati1911
What kind of question is this? Do you think there are many white male
programmers in China for example?

It shouldn't surprise anyone that white people are majority in white coutries
and that it reflects to working life too.

And why male? Because men like programming and only few women do.

------
jrs235
Because white males were more likely to have access to computers 15-30 years
ago?

------
AckSyn
This kind of article is trashy at best. We all know the answer alread, and the
solution is found in the answer!

Encouragement from the time people are young. "Cultures" that can't respect
what a kid wants to be curious about and lets them explore that shouldn't be
allowed to persist.

Reading, scientific exploration of subjects, using their minds.

The society and culture that shuns learning and education need to die off.

The rest is race and gender baiting garbage.

~~~
douche
How much of the beneficial parts of the "hacker ethos" are rooted in having to
circumvent the disapproval and blockers that attempted to prevent access to
the machine?

Nobody was encouraging me to dick around on the computer and learn what have
turned out to be hugely beneficial skills. Instead it was "Get the fuck off
that thing and go outside and stack the firewood!"

~~~
AckSyn
Well you had responsibilities as a child and presumably you have them now as
an adult. That hasn't a thing to do with what I'm talking about.

------
stri8ed
Why are most prison inmates males?

------
romanovcode
Why are most coal miners males?

------
funzofactofive
Yeah...20 years ago "girls didn't like video games" is a very weak narrative.

~~~
ouid
well, 20 years ago, being a nerd was awful until college. Just the worst
possible childhood available.

------
raulpopa
it's the IQ folks.

