
No Longer an Inspiration - e_d_g_a_r
http://www.gina.codes/2015/04/13/no-longer-an-inspiration.html
======
kaylarose
As a woman engineer I understand what the OP is trying to say, but it sounds
callous and (surprisingly) oblivious to the realities of this field.

As someone else pointed out: "1) What is the nature of hackathons? Many are
pitchathons."

I have also lost "hackathons" to projects that were objectively NOT technical
(mocked-up images of an app, without a single line of code). It happens often,
and it's always a bummer to lose, but often they might actually be solving a
bigger issue than me or my team.

For the group of women (girls?) that won - as you pointed out - maybe they
will continue doing hackathons (and maybe - despite your doubt - they even
eventually progressing beyond the Wix stage) because they won an encouragement
award at their first hackathon. It's like a consolation prize for mustering up
the courage to present their product that was obviously not as technically
advanced as some other products. That takes guts, a lot of people
(men/women/other...) might just slink out the back door after the first few
presentations.

So good for them, in that sense - they indeed _are_ an inspiration for people
just starting out.

~~~
knowtheory
Yeah, one of the huge problems our field has is that it doesn't give people a
solid sense of how you upgrade your skills and what kind of waypoint you're at
relative to others (and that that's okay!).

It is magnificent to encourage newcomers to the field. We should also have
level playing fields for folks to participate with everyone (and not stratify
further than we already do). But it sucks when these sorts of objectives
collide and end up alienating people. (and heck sports have awards for rookies
for example!)

The other thing that's really gear-grinding about OP is that... we're judging
our worth based on what happens in hackathons? I hope to $deity most people
aren't doing that, because hackathons are _super_ slanted POVs on the world.

~~~
orbitur
_(and heck sports have awards for rookies for example!)_

Well, for rookies who outperform what's expected of rookies... rookies who
perform at the same level as their more experienced peers.

~~~
wayfarer2s
Actually no, in most professional leagues the rookie of the year/season award
is handed out to the best rookie whether that rookie performed below, above,
or at the same level as their more experienced peers. They are graded only
against other rookies.

------
sfiles
Woman software engineer here. This article, although maybe not totally on
point for why the female team won an award, does hit home on gender issues in
the tech.

As has been said in this thread multiple times, less women are in the field
probably (and partially) because there is less interest. I believe a large
part of that is how male-centric tech is portrayed while growing up. But once
I displayed an interest in high school opportunities were thrown at me from
left and right, to the point that I felt bad for guys who didn't get similar
opportunities.

As expected, as a techie in college I was surrounded by mostly guys, which was
fine 99% percent of the time. There were those special few who saw themselves
superior and made sexist remarks. Guys who wanted to help with homework
because they didn't think the female brain could figure it out. You just prove
them wrong and move on.

There is a gender issue, but it is not all one sided. Talking to the ladies
who let the gentlemen do their hw for them (and the swath of everything else)

------
parfe
The author writes: "After deliberating, the judges announced a new “Most
Inspirational” category" but this category is not new. The author seems to
have misinterpreted the course of events. Based on clicking the blog's twitter
link, this is the hackathon attended by the author:

[https://2013.spaceappschallenge.org/location/new-
york/](https://2013.spaceappschallenge.org/location/new-york/)

[https://2014.spaceappschallenge.org/location/new-
york/](https://2014.spaceappschallenge.org/location/new-york/)

[https://2015.spaceappschallenge.org/location/new-york-
ny/](https://2015.spaceappschallenge.org/location/new-york-ny/)

And the project in question that didn't deserve the award, in the author's
opinion:
[http://aekblaw.wix.com/asteroidascent](http://aekblaw.wix.com/asteroidascent)

they also have a sample curricula
[http://media.wix.com/ugd/57f674_99d136685bfe400f80022bc3652e...](http://media.wix.com/ugd/57f674_99d136685bfe400f80022bc3652e9f7f.pdf)

and a code repo
[https://github.com/spaceappsnyc/asteroidascent](https://github.com/spaceappsnyc/asteroidascent)

~~~
jff
Are you sure that's the right team? Pretty much every commit in the repo is by
a man, and I thought the author mentioned an all-woman team.

~~~
untog
Their entry page lists three women and one man (same one as the Git repo
commits):
[https://2015.spaceappschallenge.org/project/asteroidascent/](https://2015.spaceappschallenge.org/project/asteroidascent/)

------
borgia
Unfortunately, this is the kind of thing we can expect _a lot_ more of in the
coming months and perhaps years as the "tech media" continue to attack it from
the fringes.

You are damned if you do and damned if you don't. There is no satiating the
thirst from the "tech media" for faux outrage driven clicks.

This is a woman in tech, but more specifically she is a techie in tech. She
has been assimilated into the normality of the modern tech industry and is
participating in a highly competitive, skill driven arena.

Make no mistake, any company that does not behave as the organisers of this
hackathon here - not actively displaying an organised, certainly biased,
effort to promote the "Women in Tech" narrative - are open to being squatted
on from above from the "moral highground" occupied by the tech media.

This is what happens when you attack meritocracy in the name of making people
feel good. It is what happens when you create an unrelenting narrative that
continually assaults an industry over how many or few people with a penis or
vagina they have in it. It is what happens when you've an industry surrounded
by "journalists" who've never spent an actual day in it, ready to fire out
articles shaming you for your lack of, or apparent abundance of, penises or
vaginas in your company.

The author here is simply another bystander to the continued assault on the
technology industry.

~~~
beat
So where does the obvious gender bias in the industry come from? It's actually
gotten _worse_ since the 1980s, not better. There are only two explanations
for the obvious reality. One is that women simply aren't as good at
programming as men are. The other is that there is a persistent and difficult
cultural bias against women in this industry.

Most of us would agree that it's the latter. So the question is, what do we do
about it? Whinging about how terrible it is that we are even talking about
this isn't it - that's just wrapping bias in silence. Any good engineer can
tell you that a problem doesn't go away just because you stop acknowledging
it.

The author makes an excellent point... that "Thanks for showing up" awards
aren't a solution, either. We love our craft _because_ it's hard, because it
measures us against hard reality rather than the soft vagaries of social
politics. We cannot bring gender equality into software engineering by trying
to turn it into social rather than technical victories.

But complaining about the "assault on the technology industry" in the form of
pointing out that we have a sexism problem? That's not good engineering, bro.

~~~
borgia
>One is that women simply aren't as good at programming as men are. The other
is that there is a persistent and difficult cultural bias against women in
this industry.

What about option three: They've less of an interest in the area.

When these topics come up there seems to be this weird suspension of the fact
that men and women, or girls and boys, _are_ different in many ways. They've
different interests, they're driven differently, they've different skills,
etc.

They're not perfectly aligned bell curves across the board. We also don't need
them to be. We don't _need_ men and women to be identical save for what is
between their legs in terms of their interests, or how they perform, or their
desires, or whatever else.

We simply need to make the same opportunities available to everyone regardless
of what is between their legs. If a man wants to become a nurse, he should
have the opportunity to and he does. If a woman wants to become a programmer,
she should have the same opportunity and graduate employment rates would show
that they do.

Women dominate _many_ professions. Men dominate _many_ professions. As a
society we don't need to have an equal number of penises and vaginas present
in all professions.

Leave the opportunities open and let people develop their own interests.

~~~
neilk
I know you probably think you're being a skeptical and intelligent speaker of
uncomfortable truths. But you're a lot more like a climate change denier.
You're going with your gut and not the facts.

This graph says it all, I think. Is it really conceivable that women were more
interested in computing when it was all about hand-coding assembly for a
modest amount of money, and less interested now that you can make >$100K/year
doing Rails from home?

[http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-
wom...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-
stopped-coding)

There's tons of evidence that women are excluded from our industry, at every
level -- high school, university, and even the ones that graduate and go on to
work in the industry drop out at a very high rate. Other scientific or
mathematical fields do not have the same problem.

You will probably now try to bury me with various quibbles, because you can
argue against any statistic. but maybe you could try ASKING A WOMAN.

Anecdotally, I know many women who have since found coding later in life. I've
heard several times that they wandered into some science or computer club
early on and had horrible experiences and left. They're coming into it now,
mostly due to the high demand for engineers such that the industry is
(reluctantly) hiring people who don't have the ideal background, and actually
training them. So these women are finding out, for the first time, that they
aren't bad at technical things. It was just that the field was so gendered,
and they came from environments that were strongly biased.

~~~
waterlesscloud
That NPR story has been discussed previously on HN. A comment there led me to
look into the study used for that chart, and it turned out that "data
processing" and "data processing technician" were counted as computer science
fields back in that peak era for women. As those fields faded, so did the
number of women.

Now, that's not iron-clad explanation for the chart, but it's very much worthy
of consideration as an explanation.

It's entirely possible that women were never that high a percentage of what we
_now_ classify as computer science.

In other words, maybe it's more a change in classification than anything else.

~~~
tonyarkles
The flip side to that is that "Computer Science" traditionally wasn't about
programming either, but closer to applied mathematics. It wouldn't surprise me
in the least bit if a data processing technician's role back then was a lot
closer to what a modern web developer does.

Figuring out the best heuristic function for A* to do path finding through
your dataset? Probably computer science. Writing SQL queries and presenting
the results as HTML or JSON? Probably a lot closer to "data processing
technician".

Edit: looks like people are downvoting you because they disagree with you. I
disagree too, but I think it's a valuable avenue to discuss.

~~~
tomjen3
People are downvoting us because they can't come up with a good counter-
argument and won't admit it. Their loss.

~~~
Frondo
Whenever someone says something like this, I immediately assume that they're a
closed-minded individual who's ready to quibble with or dismiss _anything_
that runs counter to their closed-off view of the world.

I've simply never seen a comment like this alongside another from the same
writer that goes something like "Oh, I was wrong about that. Now I know."

So I wonder...is there _anything_ that could be said to you that would make
you say, "oh, I was wrong, now I know better"?

~~~
tomjen3
Normally I would say a published study but I have seen so many studies that
had a horrible methodology, where the data was twisted to show something that
it didn't (like this NPR study or the famous 1/4 of every women is raped at
university) or where the authors plain went ahead and lied.

At a minimum for anything to be convincing it would have to show why there
were less women who start studying computer science than men and that same
thing can't be why there are more women who chooses to become nurses than
there are men who choose to become nurses (since that something would then be
either biological or societal in either case it wouldn't be an issue with our
field). Depending on the specifics, I reserve the right to raise further
objections.

~~~
Frondo
What kind of training do you have in sociological research? I mean, you
obviously consider yourself qualified to assess study methodology. I'm curious
about why.

~~~
Frondo
Hey, downvoters, what exactly is contentious about asking this guy--and I have
no idea who he is except that he's widely dismissive of published science--
about his background or training?

If we weren't talking about something as hot-button a topic as sexism in tech,
but someone was all "tiny invisible biting demons? I just don't know about
this so-called germ theory...", wouldn't it be fair to ask, what's their
background in medical research?

~~~
pkinsky
>If we weren't talking about something as hot-button a topic as sexism in
tech, but someone was all "tiny invisible biting demons? I just don't know
about this so-called germ theory...", wouldn't it be fair to ask, what's their
background in medical research?

Medicine makes concrete, testable predictions that are used every day.
Sociology isn't there yet. Sociology, to me, lies somewhere between theology
and medicine on the credibility scale. I wouldn't expect an atheist to educate
herself on the finer points of of the Trinity and the Holy Ghost before taking
her opinion on modern American Christianity seriously, for example.

------
neilk
I don't know anything about the hackathon Gina is referring to. But I think
we've all seen the same thing - a faux commitment to diversity by just giving
the most brown, female, or otherwise disadvantaged person in the room an award
for trying.

But let's not take the GamerGate approach that diversity is therefore just a
conspiracy of political correctness.

It doesn't mean that diversity is a bad idea, it's just that it's harder than
giving people BS awards.

If you're committed to diversity, it means you are committing to undoing
disadvantages that other people have been enduring their whole life. In other
words: _training_ , in a respectful and supportive environment.

The good news for techies is that it takes relatively little time to train a
talented and intelligent person from zero to productive. We're used to smart
16-year-olds sometimes coding circles around industry veterans. Surely we can
do the same for other kinds of people in their 20s and 30s.

------
this2shallPass
There are two issues: 1) What is the nature of hackathons? Many are
pitchathons. 2) Think about people's incentives. There's a tech climate,
constantly perpetuated in media and many people's conversations, where women
are under attack in technology. If you you don't show you care as a man, if
you don't bend over backwards to make sure everyone feels extra welcome, you
might be branded sexist. I think people are tired or being attacked, and
wanted to encourage some people new to programming.

~~~
MartinCron
Do you have evidence for someone being branded sexist for merely not bending
over backwards to prove that they aren't?

Serious question. I have never seen it.

~~~
borgia
>Do you have evidence for someone being branded sexist for merely not bending
over backwards to prove that they aren't?

Maybe not a specific person or event, but would the constant demand for
"diversity reports" from tech companies from the "tech media" not be an
example of this? And the subsequent shaming by the same media of these same
companies for having too many penises in the office, or too few vaginas?

I apologise for the vulgarity of the above, but that's what it is when it
comes down to it.

~~~
MartinCron
And people say that women are too sensitive and just need to grow a thicker
skin. You realize that there is a difference between saying there is a sexism
problem and saying that everyone is a sexist, right?

------
mwill
Sort of related, reminded me of this: a friend of mine who is a very skilled
lady, attended some "programming for women only" type events, her intention
was to meet people and pitch in to lend a hand.

She told me that 4 out of 5 that she went to were charging exorbitant amounts
and teaching things like how to configure a pre-hosted Wordpress install and
maybe basic HTML+CSS, and calling it programming.

She was pretty pissed about the whole ordeal, I remember her saying something
like: When you compare the content of some 'women only' events in tech to the
non-specific counterparts, it's condescending and borderline exploitative (ie,
charging for pretty limited services)

Kind of a raw deal, especially for a beginner, I imagine.

~~~
tehfedaykin
I'm a woman who runs these kind of events. We did one on Saturday night, and I
was criticized(by other mentors even) for "making things too hard" and
"scaring women away". We were using node and the command line. Damned if we
do, damned if we don't.

~~~
duckmysick
Hey. I'm interested in the logistics behind hosting such events. How many
people were present? Was this just a one-off event or is this a part of a
longer workshop? Did everyone bring their own computers or did you provide
them for the participants? If people brought their own, how did you deal with
the fact that node.js is not pre-installed - was there any introductory period
where you gave instructions how to install/configure the environment? If so,
did you account for different operating systems?

If, on the other hand, you provided the computers, who supplied them? A local
library, a school, a private company, yourself? I don't need a specific name,
just a rough category.

I'm asking, because I'm interested in hosting a similar event, but for a
younger crowd. I figured pure JavaScript would be the best choice because you
don't need a fancy setup - it works straight in your web browser, no matter
the platform. Using something like Python or Ruby (not to mention C++ or Java)
would be more difficult to coordinate.

------
protomyth
Credibility is important. We all want to be credible and have or
accomplishments actually mean something. We do, as a society, give special
prizes to folks who are doing there best but have some disability (in the
broad sense of the word) that makes their best spectacular only in the light
of the realization of their disability. We cheer their accomplishment because
it is amazing, and we wonder what might have been if fate hadn't dealt them a
bad hand. Their best might not even make it to normal and certainly not world-
class. But, it inspires and we acknowledge that as a society.

This isn't one of those situations. This is giving the same credibility to
people who are not encumbered as people who put the time in and understood the
rules of the situation. This is giving a "Most Effort" prize to someone
entering a vegetarian salad at a BBQ competition. It diminishes the
credibility of the hackathon, cheapens the sense of accomplishment for
participants when they finally win, and diminishes the value of experience in
our industry which is a huge problem.

------
MollyR
This article really hit home.

Especially her line about "Now I’m part of the irrelevant, established order
of brogrammers."

I worked my ass off. Instead of going out to party, I studied. Even after
graduating and beginning a job, I still studied every night. Because tech is
hard and I wanted to be more than just a programmer,I want to be a competent
professional Software Engineer. I still study a few hours a day. I watch new
lectures on youtube, I occasionally follow people like John Carmack on
twitter, and I experiment with new coding techniques or styles.

I do not understand why working hard to gain skills is not "inspirational", or
makes me a "brogrammer". And I too have been told I'm not "inspirational"
before. It makes me wonder if its some kind of code word.

I honestly am beginning to resent the politics involved.

------
kaitai
I really enjoyed the beginning of the piece. We're all losers. Recently
someone asked me how I did math and I replied that I failed repeatedly until a
few times I didn't. Still true. Also true of coding, although google is much
more helpful.

The second half of the piece just didn't seem that compelling, though. What if
the pdfs _were_ inspirational? Maybe they were about saving baby seals or
something. And novice guys get passes on all sorts of stuff too. So once some
girls got a prize that seems fake to someone who worked hard. Also, coding
schools promise to make people ninja rockstars in six weeks, because they want
to sell spots and people want to believe it.

Maybe the piece is upvoted because people resonate with that feeling of being
mad that someone "undeserving" got a prize. I don't see that as a useful
feeling to cultivate.

~~~
tabrischen
Agreed.

Different people may have different reasons for going to hackathons. For some,
it may be to practise their skills at solving more technical problems and for
others it may be simply to validate an idea, for which a wix side and a PDF
are perfectly reasonable MVPs.

It's a great thing idea to set aside categories to encourage participation for
novice / beginners to hackathons. We all have to start somewhere, perhaps the
author forgot that she herself was in a similar situation just a few months
ago.

------
Dirlewanger
Awesome article. This is something much of the HN crowd will have trouble
coming to terms with I'm sure. An actual woman programmer (that is, not a tech
journalist/some other peripheral body commenting on an industry they are not
intimate with) who (apparently) sees behind the veil of getting as many on-
the-fence women kinda-sorta interested in programming into the field in an
effort for an employer/organization to say "Look, we're diverse! Look at how
many women we employ!" while being 100% disingenuous in the same breath.

~~~
tptacek
Are you sure you didn't just write: "An 'actual women programmer' said
something from which I can extrapolate into my own agenda?"

Also: if what they wrote was right, what does it matter what their gender is?
Right is right, wrong is wrong.

~~~
Kalium
> Also: if what they wrote was right, what does it matter what their gender
> is? Right is right, wrong is wrong.

This depends greatly on who the commentator is. Meredith's recent piece
touched on this - [https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-
collide-31895b01e68c](https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-
collide-31895b01e68c)

To some, you do not get to have a voice unless you comply with certain
identity requirements. How right or wrong you are is irrelevant unless you
have the identity that says you get to speak.

To others, such as us, this is madness and truth is no respecter of
identities.

~~~
tomjen3
That idea keeps creeping up, but it isn't just in our group it won't fly.
Reality doesn't care what you are or what your feelings are - in a vaccum a
feather and a steel ball fall at the same speed, regardless of your opinions,
feelings or suggestions on the matter.

So in this case our POV is absolutely right. (Feelings do matter when you deal
with humans, but that is also the only area in which they do).

~~~
Kalium
Our POV is right to us because we accept the concept of objectivity. To those
who believe identity is the primary determinant of truth, it doesn't matter
what we believe. And so we're going to keep arguing with them right up to the
point where we collectively decide to ignore them.

Which isn't likely to happen any time soon, given how many of them work in the
tech press.

------
rotoole
Gina,

I think the first part of your essay is inspirational. I liked and related to
your experience learning to code. I'm sure many others on HackerNews would
agree.

The second part was the opposite though. I had to read it a few times to fully
grok what you were actually mad about:

    
    
      1) the "inspiration award" winning team's built something without writing code.
      2) the judges "lied" to these women that they were/could-be coders.
    

To the first point, I would say, expand your definition of hacking. This team
defined a problem, worked on a solution, pitched it to a jury, and got awarded
for it. Isn't that what a hack-a-thon is all about?

And it really seemed contradictory for you to say, "a real hacker is someone
who tries to code all night, and regardless of how shitty it looks, stands up
there and says proudly, “Yeah, I made this. It didn’t work out very well, but
I learned a lot." Then to turn around and bash their submission for not
meeting your own standard of hacking.

Why? Because they aren't "real" programmers? Because you doubt they will ever
be "real" programmers? Because the judges awarded them for being women who
tried? Because you felt slighted?

You come off as self-interested, snobby, elitist, and bitter. As a woman and
engineer, what kind of role-model are you projecting for your community?

I hope the promise of more women in engineering is to change the dominant
"brogramming culture" to be less homogenous and more inclusive of alternative
people, ideas, and processes.

Don't you?

~~~
minthd
Most people at hackatons expect they'll need to build something in order to
win. So they constrain their ideas around that - and then do the hard work of
building that.

It's about fairness towards the other participants of the hackatons.

Otherwise ,if hackatons were about ideas, most people wouldn't bother coding.

~~~
rotoole
I'd argue they did build a technology solution, they did constrain their ideas
to achieve it during the hack-a-thon, and their "inspiration" award is just
that. They were awarded for their ideas and efforts, despite their lack of
skills. It's a message of encouragement to others who are just starting out.

This article is like a high schooler getting jealous of a kindergardener for
getting a gold star on their homework.

------
lordnacho
I don't see what the problem is. They didn't get the gold medal, they got an
encouragement prize.

When I was in high school, I was on the soccer team. We went to a tournament
where we were by far the smallest school. We had our asses handed to us.

At the ending ceremony, for the first time ever, they handed out a fair play
award. To us. Did we think we'd won? No, of course not. It's just a token of
appreciation, a thanks for attending.

I don't see why this kind of thing is so bad. You want to encourage people to
show up to your event, so you make up a reason to thank them.

------
phkahler
I really don't understand this at all. Yes, there are fewer women in tech than
men. But where I come from they are not rare. At one workplace we had at least
one woman in almost every role. Nobody ever made mention of the fact that they
are women. Nobody ever treated them differently, and AFAICT none of them ever
had a complaint about gender issues.

Is this a coastal thing?

Anyone else in the Detroit area agree or disagree with my assessment?

~~~
TwiztidK
Not in Detroit but at another large company in Michigan with a mostly male
engineering and IT staff. I witnessed* one situation where a woman was treated
inappropriately (*I was told about it the day after it when she was trying to
figure out if it was worth reporting to HR. Short story: it was, she did, no
idea what happened to the guy because he doesn't normally work with
engineers). Other than that situation, my female peers are always treated with
respect, people have a high opinion of them, and they don't seem to have
trouble getting promotions.

------
metaphorm
This Gina woman, I like her. Maybe I'm sympathetic because I agree with her
point and enjoy a good rant post, but my own acknowledged biases aside, I
think she really does make a great point here.

------
0xCMP
There are two sides to this. For one, I agree with her that people who
actually want to _be_ a part of this world (not just observing with interest)
and contribute, either to the field or just on a team, do not need to be held
up as 'inspirational.' I hope that team knew that, yes, they didn't do a good
job but at least you're doing something. I know I hated in college when I saw
it happen to men and women equally.

On the other hand, there is something to be said for those people actually
hacking. They have experience and knowledge they don't need to gain all at
once right there to make something cool. I went in to that college I mentioned
with like 6-7 years of programming under my belt. Projects and clients and
etc. These people barely knew that there was a command line in Windows, let
alone how pointers or c strings worked. That happened to everyone, but there
were a few 'hackers' like me who knew a lot coming in. All of us were guys.
There were no girl 'hackers' and I don't presume to know exact reasons why but
their actions basically had to do with what those women who could have been
one of the 'hackers'. The judges were trying to combat, or at least show they
combat that horrible situation. I hated it when girls would say they couldn't
do CS/IT stuff because it was too hard for them or something. Like if it was
magic or whatever. Since, I've realized its not true

------
cbhl
"Building static HTML pages" is not _always_ inappropriate for a hackathon.
For most college-level demos, a mostly-static demo with just enough javascript
to pull data to make it feel fresh is a "hack" that will get you further than
your peers. Depending on your level of ethics, some companies will actually do
demos that are this level of wire-and-duct-tape to sell the product, and then
build it afterwards. The one big catch with this approach is that you can't
pitch something that's non-trivial technically -- if you do, and can't
demonstrate you figured out the secret sauce, then your pitch becomes
worthless.

Many first-timers will walk into a hackathon with just their laptop, and get
stuck in the trap of setting up their environment over the whole weekend.
They'll spend hours trying to download an IDE and interpreter/compiler and
libraries over a poor or nonexistent internet connection. For these people,
"build some static web pages" is one of the easiest ways to get them to the
point where they have something they can comfortably demo in front of their
peers -- and so what if it doesn't really work; they had fun and can come back
next time.

If you build a thing that really works, fine. But a lot of people also walk
into hackathons with pre-formed teams and 80% completed projects (idea, mocks
and artwork already done; IDEs already set up; maybe even hardware already
wired up) and having an emphasis on "real working code" for a time-constrained
event only encourages this sort of "cheating".

------
onion2k
Looks like the winning team hacked the hackathon by finding a solution to the
problem of "how to win a hackathon" in a clever way. I say well played. If the
judges accepted this PDF entry, and it was within the rules, then it's very
bad sportsmanship for the other contestants to say they didn't deserve a
prize. The fact they didn't write any code makes absolutely no difference at
all. Hackathons are about finding solutions to problems, _not_ writing code.

~~~
bradjohnson
It doesn't look like they found or exploited any solution but rather the
judges were determined to let them win regardless of the quality of their
entry.

------
kragen
I thought it was kind of bullshit when Aaron Swartz was like 10 that he won an
Ars Digita prize for a static-HTML site, because the contest was for database-
backed web sites. (I hadn’t entered, I think I wasn’t even eligible, I didn’t
have any skin in the game.) About two or three years later, at my first
startup, he was telling us for free all the things we would later learn
through hard experience we were doing wrong because we didn’t listen. Later he
became one of the best programmers I ever had a chance to work with.

In short, I couldn’t have been more wrong.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with distinguishing between levels of
technical mastery, and honoring more highly the higher levels of technical
mastery. We’ll never get anywhere as a civilization if we let the mundanes
think that your cousin Brian, who knows how to install antivirus software, is
equivalent to Vint Cerf and Don Knuth. But that doesn’t mean we can’t honestly
recognize and encourage people’s progress, even before they reach world-class
status.

And, as kaylarose points out, it’s totally legit to reward people for making
progress on important problems, even if they aren’t hard problems.

------
atmosx
Am I the only here thinking that _it 's not a big deal_ if some guys at a
hackthon erroneously promoted a shitty application (Essentially a non-
application) just because the team was composed of women?

I mean this is how life works. Women in this context are seen as _newcomers_
and by nature, they are more fragile. It's only natural that men try to
_promote_ women in the tech industry, since they are a scarcity.

It would be the same thing if the team at the hackathon was composed by 5
13-year olds building a simple 3D-printer. They are _13-year-olds_ , they are
out-of-context and require _special attention_.

That's something that is bound to change, especially given the publicity
women-related posts seem to get. More and more women are going to start
programming. Then, this is probably going to change.

Generally speaking, I work (and communicate) better with women than men. Women
seem to be much more flexible, easier to communicate.

I understand the point the author is making, but again, I think it's not a big
deal. It's not like Google hired 4 women instead of 4 men as a developers
because they were _females_.

~~~
tdaltonc
You might want to clarify what you mean by "fragile" because some people are
going to interpret you as saying that women are emotional/physically fragile
by virtue of being women.

~~~
andypants
I assume more fragile by virtue of being newcomers.

------
digitalzombie
Yeah hackathon feels like mostly free code for you.

There's competition for that like Kaggle which doesn't dress it as hackathon
imo. It's hey it's a competition, here's the usually term and conditions and
you might win some money and it'll be good for resume. Hackathon seems like a
nicer word for something else, like death tax or climate change (instead of
global warming).

With hackathon I'm not sure about that, it have become some sleezy thing,
there are a few exception like projects that help a certain causes or open
source. OpenBSD had a hackaton and replaces Nginx with the hackton server. It
was a funny article where they were drunk and committed to the tree without
testing it throughly. Unfortunately in her case the causes was just political
bs.

I do agree we shouldn't lie to people how easy it is. But we should mention
that it's a skill and like all skill it takes time and deliberate exercise to
be good.

I love the post. It seems like a dairy of growth as a person and gaining
humility. I think she's a bit harsh on the women in term of not being
programmer and then define hacker. I'm guessing her definition of hacker and
programmer are the same? In general, being positive would be better but it
does highlight and emphasize on not lying about how easy it is to code.

------
jobu
In my limited experience with hackathons it's usually the most polished
looking entry that wins - technical merit has little to do with it. If they
built a cool site without a line of code then who the hell cares! Were there
rules or a theme for this hackathon that were overlooked for this specific
entry? Article seems overly critical to me.

------
jaimebuelta
One of the main problems on tech is the "middle ground", covering that special
place after rookie and before being an expert... It's incredibly difficult to
effectively communicate about this, and I think is why people get frustrated
or think they are not good. Because they are not on the "expert level" on
something (knowing every single detail), but the simple hello world small apps
are too easy and doesn't feel awesome any more... The area in between is not
visible, so it feels a little like not making progress sometimes... Though is
arguably the most interesting/common one.

Related joke: [http://9gag.com/gag/4614736/if-an-author-of-a-computer-
book-...](http://9gag.com/gag/4614736/if-an-author-of-a-computer-book-wrote-a-
math-textbook)

------
fsk
If hackathons are stupid and unfair, then stop going to them.

Pick a project that takes longer than a weekend and do it.

------
amyjess
If you want to know why there are so few women in tech, I suggest reading this
comic: [http://www.smbc-
comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1883#comic](http://www.smbc-
comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1883#comic)

The pressure doesn't come from within the industry, nor is it aimed at adults
who have already expressed an interest. It comes from society as a whole, and
it's aimed at children.

At first, it comes from parents and teachers. Later on, it comes from their
peers. By the time a girl graduates high school and starts figuring out what
she wants in life, she's already biased against tech. Attempts at recruitment
aren't going to significantly affect the gender ratio if they're aimed at
college students or college graduates. It's already too late. Politically-
biased hackathons and hiring policies will never have any real effect, except
maybe to breed resentment on every side of the issue.

Hey, I'm going to share some personal experience. I'm MtF transgender, and I
began my transition at 28. It's pretty well known, at least in the trans
community, that MtFs are overrepresented in tech, and that overrepresentation
increases proportionally with the age of transition (though the age thing is
becoming less relevant as the average age of transitioning is dropping, and
the sharp contrast between "older transitioners" and "younger transitioners"
is starting to blur). On the other hand, the ratio of MtFs to FtMs in the tech
industry is about the same as the ratio of cis men to cis women (and possibly
even more dramatic).

The only possible answer is that people are encouraged/discouraged from tech
during childhood, well before transition. It's also accelerated by how the
tech community tends to be open and accepting of people who don't fit in
socially. Most trans people -- MtF and FtM -- tend to associate with groups of
misfits and outcasts even well before transition. For MtFs, that includes tech
geeks, and for FtMs, that includes various fandoms. Compare the MtF dominance
on reddit vs. the FtM dominance on tumblr: reddit was aimed at techies, and
tumblr was aimed at fandoms.

------
verytrivial
Honest question to those defending the status quo with the word "meritocracy":
How would a functional meritocracy produce the absolute sausage-fest that is
the GCC maintainers list[1]? If that seems like an unfair reference, then what
makes the GCC maintainers list either so especially non-functional or not
meritocratic at selecting people based purely upon skill instead of their
genitals?

[1] [https://github.com/gcc-
mirror/gcc/blob/master/MAINTAINERS](https://github.com/gcc-
mirror/gcc/blob/master/MAINTAINERS)

~~~
iza
Maybe because the contributors are mostly men?

------
lnanek2
I don't see anything wrong with this. No one complains when programmer only
teams turn in something ridiculously ugly and complex that could never achieve
consumer adoption. So why should we complain when design/ux/business/beginners
turn in the other side of a project? Just laying things out and producing
content and thinking about the user experience. Both sides of talent are
needed to make quality entries anyway, so railing against this is just going
to drive off the designer, artist, and other fields that are needed to produce
good work.

------
ebbv
If you really care about programming and not having someone else tell you
you're good, then do it because you want to.

I have been programming for over 25 years. I have never and would never go to
a hackathon. I program because I want to. I program because I'm paid to. I
don't program because I want a room full of strangers to stare at me.

Turning programming into the type of popularity contest they had at the high
school prom I never went to sounds like a nightmare.

------
orthoganol
Isn't the OP a beginner in tech herself (bootcamp graduate, seemingly of
recent)? She's not in a position to judge others as not being 'true coders' or
as being 'too much of beginners.'

It's also a rather quirky dramatization of what it means to be a programmer,
but amusing to read either way.

~~~
e_d_g_a_r
She didn't go to any bootcamp.

~~~
vellum
>I was a female who went to the bootcamp of LMGTFY

A lot of us went there.

------
whoisthemachine
I agree that rewarding people for not doing anything other than showing up is
antithetical to a hackathon, or the software engineering community in general.

However, I _really_ liked your line _" Pass the mountain dew, brah. Git push
-f, brah."_, I might steal that.

~~~
pekk
I thought a hackathon was for people to do projects, and not always or
necessarily to "beat" other people.

------
femto113
Categories that specifically reward participation by newbies aren't new nor
unique to hackathons. The only chess trophy I ever won was for "Top Unrated",
which, obviously, you are only eligible for in your first rated tournament.

------
cenazoic
I'm an (older) woman attempting a career change into programming. (But not new
to tech or being the only/few woman in a given environment.) It's
disappointing that every time this conversation comes up, it devolves into
mean-spirited pseudo-'objective' statements about how 'maybe women just aren't
as interested'/'not as good'/'PC/SJW-bullshit'/etc.

Look, I'm basically a reasonable person. I'm not looking to be offended at
every turn or by every possible 'microaggression' (a concept I personally
dislike, btw). I personally haven't experienced many of the issues that other
women have. That doesn't mean those issues don't exist in the macro, simply
because I haven't experienced them in the micro. Nor does it mean that despite
one's 'objective/rational' view, that there aren't underlying subconscious
assumptions/biases at work in some situations.

Small example. I'll be attending a new coding school in June, developed by the
Nerdery in Minneapolis, called Prime Digital Academy. The guys (and they're
all guys) running/developing curriculum/teaching seem like genuinely nice
people who are putting a particular emphasis on diversity (women, older career
changers, etc.) In fact, the oldest person accepted so far is 60!

Now, take a look a some of the recent images posted on their @goprimeacademy
twitter account. Notice the seating. You're wanting to be accommodating to,
among others, older people (not to mention potential disabled people), so you
put them in beanbags and on hard (or maybe foam) cubes? Perhaps, despite good
intentions, they're making unconscious assumptions about the people that have
to sit on them.

I don't speak for _all_ women, nor do I think that _all_ women have some
universally shared experience. However, I do think that it's very possible (if
not extremely likely) that despite one's best intentions, preconceived
notions/biases (including the idea that you're an 'objective' person) can
preclude you from seeing other people have had different experiences than you,
or came to different conclusions.

Those notions/biases don't make you a bad person (we all have them, of
course), but if you're unwilling to examine them honestly at some point, then
it seems reasonable to conclude that you're probably speaking/acting in bad
faith. If a lot of (women, POC, or yes, even men, in the case of nursing[1])
are telling an existing environment that they're unwelcoming/unfriendly in
some way, then perhaps the most 'reasonable' or 'objective' conclusion is that
there's a problem.

[1][http://www.professionalnursing.org/article/S8755-7223%2810%2...](http://www.professionalnursing.org/article/S8755-7223%2810%2900146-8/abstract)

------
moron4hire
Discounting the politics and focusing strictly on mechanics for a moment--the
purpose of a participating in a hackathon should be to compete in a hackathon.
I know a lot of people who have gone to them because they want to start a
startup. What an absurd idea. If your purpose is to start a project, you
should be able to start projects on your own. If your purpose is to meet
people, there are far more frequent and better places to meet people than
hackathons. If you want to be a programmer, you should be programmering.

I trained in martial arts for years and competed in tournaments. After a
while, I got bored of tournaments. I kept training, because I liked martial
arts. I wasn't in it for the tournaments, and not going to the tournaments
didn't make me any less of a martial artist.

I always found it strange that there were always a few students who mostly
only showed up for the tournaments. They would come to maybe one class every
other week, but if there was a tournament, they were _there_. Mostly, they
didn't do well (of course, because they didn't train in even the things that
were important to tournaments), but if all they wanted was to be there in the
tournament atmosphere and be able to say they competed, then that would have
been fine. But that was not the case. They also _complained_ that they didn't
win.

If their goal was to win martial arts tournaments, then they were doing it
wrong. They should have been practicing forms routines in front of mirrors, to
the detriment of learning wrist-locking and take-down techniques.

Much, much more common were the students who did show up to class every day
(even though they only had two classes a week) but only ever phoned it in.
They were certainly punching the card, but they weren't particularly talented.
Yes, most of the time they'd win because they were the best of the worst, they
were in a division of other card-punchers. But sometimes they'd win against
much more dedicated students, people who put serious training in, people who
exerted a lot of effort.

And before I understood what tournaments were about, it upset me. Tournaments
are just a reinforcement structure for an industry of selling tournaments. The
market for tournaments _is_ mediocre students. Hell, the market for martial
arts schools is mediocre students. It's all a self-feeding system. It makes
money for the ring masters by providing a fantasy of achievement to the
customer. If it were about skill, they'd lose their monetization base.

My point is, understand what your goals are, and do those things that further
your goals. You want to be a martial artist, you get in the dojo and you train
harder than everyone else. You want to compete in tournaments, just show up to
the tournaments. You want to win tournaments, get in the dojo and you skip the
pushups and skip the self-defense techniques and focus only on flexibility and
forms.

If all you want is to be a programmer, then just program. If you want to win
hackathons, then focus on learning the latest and greatest JS frameworks for
rapid app development. Not for building big, scalable applications. Not for
robust security. Not for elegant code. Just for meeting the goals.

The problem is that these things--hackathons, martial arts tournaments,
Olympic gymnastics, junior-varsity-anything--they're all just different types
of beauty pageants. They're inconsequential to anything that is not in their
immediate sphere of influence, and that sphere is tiny. Gina's complaint is
not caused by the realization that hackathons are bullshit, it's caused by her
being _exposed_ to the hackathon. It's caused by her conflating being a
programmer with competing in hackathons.

Which I ultimately think is a pretty rosy picture. It means that, by avoiding
the hackathon, not only will she not know about the bullshit that goes on
there, but she will also have more time to do the thing that really makes her
happy: programming.

------
67726e
Well how about that, a realistic look at what pandering mess subsets of our
industry and programming culture have become. My least favorite part was the
little bit at the end, apologizing to the organizers of the hackathon. Don't
apologize, they're just some pandering asshats being superficially
progressive, because hey, someone without a dick and pale skin participated!

And thank fuck someone touched on those "Pay us $30,000 and become a 1337
h4x0r camps. I don't know if we're in a bubble, but if it were to burst,
there's gonna be some surprised folks getting culled. If you attended one of
camps, you better not stop clawing your way to the top. You better keep
clawing util your fingers are bloody, nail-less nubs. You attended a Ruby
camp? That's sweet, but you're applying to a Java shop, and you cannot "fake
it till you make it" with your cargo-cult practices. You can't even begin to
describe what an interface is, but hey, that $70k/year job is calling your
name, isn't it?

Hell, maybe I'm just bitter and jaded at the ripe old age of 21 after doing
this professionally for 4 years, or that I've been attending the prestigious
LMGTFY University since I was about 9. Or maybe I'm a little brain damaged
after my copy of Sedgewick dropped of the bookshelf and onto my head. Maybe
those early, informative years spent cutting my teeth on assembly have done
some irreparable damaged to my psyche. Stop pandering, lend a hand, lend
encouragement to the folks who need it. Everyone had helped along but way, and
I spend way too much time tutoring folks, but stop pushing folks into the
industry who are chasing the almighty dollar or just aren't interested. Help
them get their feet wet, but if they don't like it, don't force them off the
diving board. I'm gonna be maintaining their cruft long after they're gone.

------
DannoHung
I don't get it. They put together documentation. If that doesn't count for the
Hackathon, why does building 3D models count?

------
ElComradio
This article is problematic. It's common knowledge that women need special
handholding and encouragement to succeed at software development as well as a
shield wall of allies to fend off constant microaggressions, so we have to
ask, in the most nonjudgmental way possible, why the author is so obviously
acting against her own interests.

[Edit: /s]

~~~
josephspens
Your assertion that women "need special handholding and encouragement to
succeed at software development" is insulting and distasteful.

My mother and grandmother were both software engineers at IBM, at a time where
the male dominated tech culture was MUCH worse than it is today, and they both
did really well. My boss, a woman, is arguably the best software engineer at
our company.

Women don't need handholding. They need incentive. They need to be exposed to
tech culture. Lowering the bar for women and putting them on a pedestal for
showing up does a great injustice to women like my mother and grandmother who,
despite working in a culture which heavily discriminated against women, became
kick-ass engineers.

~~~
jff
Carefully re-read the parent comment and ask yourself if he was being truly
serious.

~~~
josephspens
It's not obvious, I've heard similar remarks from people who genuinely believe
it.

------
Somasis
Not really a big fan of the conflation of womanhood with a vagina.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
Given the heavy prevalence of BIOTRUTHS and gender normativity on this forum,
I'm not at all surprised by the trans-erasure.

Disappointed, yeah, surprised, no.

