
I code like a girl - sixty4bit
http://volumelabs.net/i-code-like-a-girl/
======
kazinator
> _What is now considered a male-dominated field, was once defined as “women’s
> work.”_

Once? It's naive to think that these attitudes do not persist, albeit in
somewhat disguised forms, perhaps.

At some universities, for instance, engineers regard CS majors as "wimps".
Engineering is hard, CS is soft.

Moreover, think about how there is an attitude that some "softer" or "easier"
programming is lower on the pecking order. While programming as a broad
category may not be "women's work", web design (even with client and server
scripting) is "for girls" and, say, writing drivers for a network switch is
for "real men".

Oh, the hard/soft stereotyping in digital tech is alive and kicking!

~~~
erroneousfunk
I briefly did front end web design work many many years ago. Now I have a
masters in software engineering, two books published in web scraping in Python
and Java, and years of experience in back end Java, database architecture,
data science, and all that jazz.

The vast majority of the recruiter spam I get, as a female, is front end web
development or UI/UX work. I removed all mention of "HTML/CSS" type skills
from LinkedIn, but that hasn't stopped it. I'm beginning to suspect that
removing my photo from public profiles would probably do more to stop the
inappropriate job spam than anything I could actually change in LinkedIn,
however...

~~~
amyjess
> The vast majority of the recruiter spam I get, as a female, is front end web
> development or UI/UX work.

I'm transgender, and I can tell you that I got that kind of spam both before
and after I transitioned. In fact, most recruiter spam I've ever gotten is
wholly irrelevant to my skills.

You're getting that spam because the positions are in high demand, so there
are a lot of them, and recruiters will spam all their positions to every
single email address in their database.

They just plain have no respect for other human beings. Half the recruiter
spam I get uses my old name, even though I legally changed it almost a year
ago and changed it on my resume (which I posted to all job sites) a few months
before that. I also list on every job site that I cannot relocate and I'm only
seeking full-time work. Most of the recruiter spam I get is for positions out
of town and for contract jobs. They never get it. I've written scathing emails
to recruiters lambasting them for suggesting I uproot my life and move out of
state for a shitty 6-month contract. I usually don't get a reply.

One recruiter took the cake. He emailed me about one such position, then
called me the next day after I ignored his email, and I told him I wasn't
interested in any contract work and that I don't ever want to do business with
him. A few days later, he emails me again about the same position. I replied
with a Cease & Desist notice making it clear that he is to have no contact
with me from now on, and then he calls me again to try and convince me to take
the job. I spent the next few minutes shouting at him and berating him for
harassment. I planned to contact his firm's HR department about his conduct,
but I never got around to it, sadly.

~~~
erroneousfunk
That's good to know! It's so hard to tell, having only the direct experience
of being a single gender in the industry, what is normal and what isn't. I try
to stay away from it, but some days, it seems like I'm filtering all my
experiences through Medium blog posts about gender inequality and tech-
conference-horror-story-of-the-day BS.

I might have to go back to front end work if that's really the hot thing
everyone's clamoring for these days... (kidding! I love what I'm doing right
now).

It's always interesting to hear about transgendered experiences in the
sciences and programming. We need more points of view with control groups! ;)

~~~
mreiland
Maybe you should stop looking for gender inequality without direct evidence.

Crazy thought I know.

~~~
erroneousfunk
The point was that I wasn't actually looking. So many of the articles on HN,
and on tech blogs/news sites around the Internet are about gender inequality.
As a human being, I can only encounter so much of it before it starts to
affect how I view and interpret events around me, without realizing it. "Are
they asking me to be a speaker at this conference because I'll provide
valuable knowledge to the attendees, or is this a 'token speaker' situation?"
It gets to you, after a while, even if you're actively trying not too let it.

My whole point was that that situation is bad, and hearing experiences such as
ones from MTF or FTM transgendered individuals in tech can be valuable. I
don't see any reason for you to be a jerk about it here.

~~~
mreiland
I just watched you blame recruiter spam on your gender and you think the blame
lies in all the talk online about gender inequality?

The blame lies squarely with you.

------
lorddoig
Sometimes I get a little happy - maybe even proud - when I read about the
achievements of women who pioneered this field (especially the _awesome_
Admiral Hopper.)

Then I stop smiling and remind myself that, even in praise, _it 's not
relevant._

~~~
rmc
Sometimes people claim that women are biologically, statistically, just not as
good/interested as men at programming/technology, and point to current gender
balance in tech as evidence of this ("There's a reason there's lots of male
programmers, men must be just better!")

Remembering some of these women, and the early history like this, is very
relevant today to show that that's nonsense.

~~~
ajuc
It's not nonsense.

Modern women are statisticaly less interested in programming. That's because
boys 20 years ago got c-64 or PC because they wanted to play games, and girls
20 years ago got barbies.

Turns out barbie doesn't have the same side effects.

~~~
mrits
I got basketballs and golf clubs. I had to beg my dad to get me my first amiga
500. He agreed only because he thought I'd might get rich from it one day. So
my interest, to the best that I can tell, was self originated.

~~~
rmc
Exactly. Geeks used to be picked on, and bullied. Maths and science wasn't
cool.

~~~
ibebrett
there is a difference between it being cool and being acceptable. you had an
identity as a nerd. you were accepted as a nerd, and cool people were probably
happy that you were because it put you lower on the totem pole.

------
xenophonf
It's a damn shame that ENIAC's programmers and those that followed them get no
greater mention in the annals of history than the footnote that "computers
before 1945 were women". I had a really good CSSE education, yet until
recently, if you asked me to name a notable female computer scientist,
Countess Lovelace or Grace Hopper would be the only person to come to mind,
and I would be a little hazy on their accomplishments to boot (then, I would
have said something about Hopper creating COBOL when her work was really quite
a bit more fundamental and wide ranging than that, and as for Lady Lovelace,
even now without peeking at Wikipedia, I think she had something to do with
the math surrounding Babbage's engines and couldn't be more specific). It took
a recent Imgur posting to become aware of people like Margaret Hamilton, who
_led_ some absolutely astounding work for the Apollo Program. I'm sure there
are other women of whom I'm ignorant that are every bit as important to modern
computer science and software engineering as luminaries such as Turing or von
Neumann. If some kind of history of the profession is to be included (and I
think it should), there should at least be some mention of them during one's
CSSE education.

~~~
amyjess
You can also add a couple more in somewhat more modern times:

* Lynn Conway, who co-launched the Mead & Conway revolution that made VLSI feasible for the first time

* Sophie Wilson, who developed the ARM architecture

~~~
kazinator
Did you cherry pick these examples to some ironic purpose?

Sophie Wilson was "born Roger Wilson" (Source:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Wilson](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Wilson)).

"While struggling with life in a male role, Conway had been married to a woman
and had two children." (Source:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Conway](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Conway))

~~~
amyjess
Trans women are women.

~~~
kazinator
Of course, I don't disagree with you, but think of it from, say, this angle:

"Hey, class full of young women with university aspirations! Don't be put off
from entering science and engineering fields. Look, there are even famous
women in tech such as X, Y and Z which are behind some technology that you
probably use, like the instruction language understood by the chips in most
tablets and cell phones. Oh, they were born men and even had wives and kids,
but don't let details like Y chromosomes and functioning penises be a
distraction from this forcefully convincing rhetoric which I painstakingly
prepared last night in my hotel room, on the backs of these two crumpled
restaurant receipts. I'm confident that you can identify with them as human
beings with struggles in their lives---just like you!"

My point is that certain kinds of examples can detract from a thesis, by
drawing focus to some other thesis or factors that may be perceived as
confounding or whatever.

------
MollyR
Why can't we just code like professionals ?

Sidenote: Disclaimer: I was heavily influenced by my Biology professors. I
don't think society evolved in vacuum separate from genetic evolution. So
while I don't appreciate insulting people by gender. I do however think there
are gender differences.

Another person on HN linked me to this documentary, which opened my mind.
[https://vimeo.com/19707588](https://vimeo.com/19707588)

~~~
rmc
> Why can't we just code like professionals ?

What does that mean? Suit and tie? Clean shaven, short back and sides?

~~~
kazinator
Professional means getting paid, but there is a nuance of doing a proper job
to deserve pay (even if there is no pay); a FOSS project that hasn't received
even a dime in donations can be professionally developed.

------
ianstallings
On the topic of equality in general - As an _old man_ and a father of a 22
year old woman let me tell you what I've observed - women don't need your help
and when you act like they need your protection you're no better than someone
who treats them as weaklings. It's a fine line and imho the best bet is to
just treat them as you would anyone else.

~~~
vdaniuk
Ugh. I am considering your intentions good, but your statement sounds evil.

Most human beings need protection and help. Programming is hard. Learning to
program is hard. Leaving happily in these crazy times is hard.

Just be empathetic, dont be condescending and bam, your help will be greatly
appreciated by men and women. That's what I think one should treat anyone else
in this particular regard.

~~~
ianstallings
I'm sorry, did you just call me evil because I said you should treat women
equally? Get your head checked.

~~~
vdaniuk
>.. did you just call me evil.. No, I did not.

> Get your head checked. Is this the kind of treatment you were talking about?
> :D

~~~
ianstallings
Are you trolling me? I don't understand what you want. Be straight forward and
stop wasting my time.

------
smhenderson
A good read. Although I was surprised the grandmother of programming, Ada
Lovelace, wasn't mentioned.

 _Ada Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer chiefly known for her
work on Charles Babbage 's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the
Analytical Engine. Her notes on the engine include what is recognised as the
first algorithm intended to be carried out by a machine. Because of this, she
is often described as the world's first computer programmer._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace)

~~~
Svip
As interesting as Ada Lovelace's and Charles Babbage's story is, their efforts
have had little (if any) influence on the computer we know today. In a sense,
they are not completely relevant when talking about modern computing. I also
feel Lovelace tend to distract the subject on women in computing.

~~~
tormeh
Likewise Leibniz was the first computer scientist. As if anyone cares.

~~~
MollyR
I care. I like to know the truth not the marketing angle. Do you mind
explaining ?

~~~
andyjohnson0
Probably a reference to Leibniz having discovered/invented the binary number
system back in the 1679 [1]. He also worked on theories of algorithms and
designed calculating machines [2].

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_number#History](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_number#History)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz#Compu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz#Computation)

------
zx2c4

        > "Software design and programming were considered clerical work."
    

I realize that there's a certain art of code, and even a science that goes
into the underlying algorithms, languages, and methodologies. Indeed I've
spent the majority of my life now in one way or another transfixed by software
development.

But it seems to me that the vast amount of code written is still, in fact,
"clerical work". Whether it's gluing together
enterpriseBeanBuilderExpressionListMochaBusinessLogicAuditingFactories, or
hooking up your node.js to your express.js to your bootstrap.js to transfer
JSON over REST into your DOM, or even converting your 4000 character, 50 pipe
bash one-liners into nicely polished scripts that properly account for exit
codes, handle non-standard locations for sysfs, and work on a multitude of
platforms, at the end of the day, a lot of this really does come down to
clerical-style work. The difference is that the language, terminology,
abstractions, and platforms are more obtuse than the previous generation's
clerical work. The nouns are different and strange, but the predicates are all
the same.

There are indeed wondrous areas in computer science and software engineering,
but I think for most of us, we're just doing fairly menial work. We feel smart
doing it, because it's still new enough that the objects and content of it are
still uncustomary for most folks, and in fact the best of secretaries and
clerks have indeed possessed great intelligence. But at the end of the day, we
need to recognize that most of what we do is mere clerical work, glorified
only by the odd shapes of the more obscure symbol keys on our keyboards.

 _ducks_

"I swear, by clerical, I meant the clergy!"

 _ducks again_

------
fmitchell0
> It becomes increasingly important to value each member of a programming team
> regardless of gender, age, race, or creed to attract and keep the best minds
> to build our future software.

And this is actually what you don't want to do. You don't want to ignore
gender, age, race, or creed. You want people to understand it, be open to the
value it brings, connect with others outside their comfort zone, and embrace
the differences. Doing things 'regardless' is how we've got here in the first
place. We are all different. Ignoring those differences is not helping the
problem.

------
hobs
I have never heard anyone in real life tell a woman that she "codes like a
girl.", as if that would be a diss anyway?

Given that anyone with even a basic understanding of history would be awed by
some of the women in the industry (ada and grace anyone), you would have to
pretty stupid to come to the conclusion that women cant code.

~~~
wernercd
When a guy tells another guy "You run like a girl.", "You hit like a girl",
"sit like a girl", etc... it's historically an insult.

Recently, there has been an effort to "take the phrase back" and turn "...
like a girl" into a good thing - instead of being considered an insult - Like
the commercials that tout "Running like a girl".

I've never heard "coding... like a girl" either, so you have to frame it as
part of this movement.

------
M8
_" The only human labor noted in the press was the initial design of the
machine, which was performed by men."_

Who gets the credit for e.g. iPhone? Chinese workers? That person who was
tweaking the icons to look pixel-perfect (pre-iOS7)? CEO?

~~~
danparsonson
Apple does - I doubt anyone truly believes that Steve Jobs personally designed
the whole iPhone; also, the Chinese workers are at least in the public
consciousness - apart from the Foxconn labour controversies, each unit has
'Made in China' written on it somewhere.

If as the article says the ENIAC news reports were along the lines of 'here is
a machine that can calculate trajectories, and these are the men who designed
it', who's to know that maybe half of the effort was undertaken by others not
mentioned?

~~~
M8
designed != implemented

~~~
danparsonson
My wording not theirs, and incidental to the point I was making.

------
nadam
It think this has nothing to do with gender: In those early projects those who
got the biggest respect (like John Neumann) have done the intellectual heavy-
lifting. Seriously, that guy was a genius. Today it is the same way: The CTO
or chief scientist of an elite company gets much bigger respect than a
subordinate programmer who mostly does what he/she is instructed to do. This
is not a gender issue in my opinion. Women like Yahho CEO Marissa Mayer or
researcher/Coursera founder Daphne Koller are much more respected than an
average programer guy maybe at a mediocre company.

~~~
detcader
You are naming anecdotes (really just one that is relevant to the era of
history in question) involving individual people, while the writer is pointing
out more general trends. I'm going to sympathize with author.

------
maaaats
I've heard _You punch like a girl_ , _You drive like a girl_ and similar
before, but never _You code like a girl_. Which is good, I guess.

~~~
detcader
Coding doesn't involve as much kinetic and immediate action, and I can't
imagine it being infantilized. When it comes to violence, you can be weak, and
so "like a girl". "Driving like a woman" I think means to drive naively, like
a child, which women have generally been seen as equivalent to for thousands
of years. (Edit: not that I agree with any of that, of course; it's how gender
is constructed)

~~~
sthreet
Now that Ip Man is a popular movie (?) is "punch like a girl" still an insult?

~~~
detcader
I haven't seen it. One can only assume insults like "[violent act] like a
girl" is still used among male youth to horrible effect, encouraging more
violence and self-hatred.

~~~
sthreet
As a male youth with very little experience with people in general, I hate
people who make me look bad.

------
myself248
Tip for anyone having trouble reading this in Chrome: Hit F12, select
"elements", go over to "Styles", and scroll down to find the "font-weight" and
"color" entries, and uncheck them. This will let the default (readable!) font
settings show through. For those of us who spend a lot of time on needlework
and other fine tasks, it helps a lot!

I don't know squat about CSS or how to fix this for real, but I've bumbled
around enough to be able to override this crap when it makes an article
physically uncomfortable to read.

------
kazinator
By the way, note that a "woman's work is never done"\---aha! I missed this
obvious connection to software at first. :)

------
throwawayaway
the title is provocative, but the content is better.

it's funny how grown women are referred to as girls, yet it's less common that
grown men are referred to as boys - in my experience.

~~~
mrits
Women often refer to each other as girls. Men don't usually to each other as
boys.

~~~
dijit
interestingly this might be because girls like to retain some semblance of
youth.

anecdotally my girlfriend (Russian if that makes any difference) absolutely
hates when I refer to her as a young woman, or use the word "woman" at all.
She much prefers to be referred to as a girl.

I have no issues with being called a man.. not saying that this pattern is
everywhere but it's very apparent with her and her family.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Yet lots of folks say "Mr. Smith? That sounds like my Dad! Call me John!"
Which is much the same thing?

~~~
dijit
but "Mister" is not "Man" even my girlfriend doesn't mind being called "Miss"
or "Ms", she might take exception to "Misses".. but I don't think anybody
assumes at her age anyway.

------
huehue
TIL programmers evolved from being secretaries to bricklayers.

------
cbd1984
Why is mentioning transphobia such a downvote-trigger?

------
cbd1984
Flagged for being transphobic and gender-essentialist.

------
cbd1984
Flagged for being transphobic.

