
Ask YCNews: Any lady hackers using the site? - pchristensen
I just realized that I assume all of the users here are guys.  I sure hope I'm wrong.  Any ladies want to speak up?  While girls are few in number in CS, they usually have valuable insights.
======
DaniFong
Hi there. I use the site pretty religiously. I _hope_ that my comments are
insightful.

I know a few girl hackers. They do mention a lot of what might be called
'social friction'. In some cases, they stay around through undergrad because
computers are a really magical, flexible medium.

The good news is that we _like_ a lot of hackers and scientists and technical
people. They're _interesting_. Other fields have their human debris, too.
Lawyers have frat-boys. Lit-majors have bullshitters. But rarely do other
fields have people getting together to make things, and that's just a lot of
fun. :-)

~~~
amichail
I have a lot of respect for women who like the idea of building novel
applications but don't want to get their hands dirty with the
programming/computer science involved.

This is kind of like architects who want to design buildings but would rather
leave implementation details to engineers.

That's the way it should be.

~~~
DaniFong
Well, that's the way it often is. But I hesitate to agree that it's the way it
should be. I try not to shy away from implementation myself, and I think
there's a lot of benefit to exposing oneself to details.

To quote PG: "In principle you could make any mark in any medium; in practice
the medium steers you. And if you're no longer doing the work yourself, you
stop learning from this."

I speak for myself, but this true almost everywhere. Small changes in the
resistance of medium, and in the convenience of doing one thing or another,
often lead to drastic differences in the sort of things people create.

I heard that someone actually managed to play 'Flight of the Bumblebee' on
Trombone. I'm not sure I can impress upon you how difficult that sounds --
there are like 5 notes per second, each requiring precise intonation, and it
never lets up long enough for the poor soul playing it to breath. Apparently,
it can be done. But I'm almost certain nothing of the sort would have been
composed on it.

Programs are often the same way. Sometimes, the idea doesn't occur to you
until you understand how to implement it. Or, as the case may be, until you
actually implement it. I read that Scheme was in part an attempt to implement
an Actor model. When they implemented lexical closures and actors, they
discovered that the implementations were the same!

~~~
amichail
If the medium steers you, then that's not a good thing and you need to fix the
situation.

For example, if writing by pen tends to force you to write a novel in a
particular way that is undesirable, then fix the situation (e.g., use a word
processor).

As a creative individual, you should be the one calling the shots.

~~~
DaniFong
Sometimes, while 'creating', it's less like trying to cast my visions onto
some medium and more like an exploration. Sometimes it's more fruitful just to
let myself be guided by my impulses, my abilities, and the medium. I don't
know if it works for everyone, but it works for me. One might worry that I'm
being commanded by the medium, but what I make seems to be original, anyway.

I actually prefer writing by pen. It's more fluid. And since things can't be
easily rewritten, you give a bit of thought before you commit something, and
are always driven forward.

Knuth et al. notes, in an article on technical writing
(<http://tex.loria.fr/typographie/mathwriting.pdf>):

"Towards the end of the editing process you will need to ensure that you don't
have a page break in the middle of a displayed formula. Often you'll simply
have to think up something else to say to fill up the page, thus pushing the
displayed formula entirely onto the next page. Try to think of this as a
stimulus to research!"

A pen sometimes functions in the same way. And if I find it's results
undesirable, then I'll try not to think of it as a problem to fix, and rather
as looking for a new medium to explore.

~~~
amichail
While limitations of the medium may help _you_ be more creative, it doesn't
mean that the same holds for _me_ or most other people for that matter.

If, for example, you can find a scientific study that demonstrates that people
are more creative with a pen than a word processor, then I would be
interested.

For me, one should strive for ideas that transcend the particulars of existing
mediums. Such ideas are more likely to be influential in the long term.

------
timr
I recently had an intriguing conversation with a female friend who is starting
a CS program, after spending years in another field.

She's about as used to "geek culture" as a person can get, but even she finds
the people in CS to be overwhelming. Her take? CS departments need to focus a
bit less effort on _attracting_ women (a task which fundamentally defines them
as different), and a bit more effort on _repelling_ socially retarded men (who
really _are_ different). I can't say that I disagree. CS is the last refuge
for some really damaged people; I get sick of it too.

IMO, CS101 should be a mandatory class on hygiene and social skills for people
who already know how to program.

~~~
amichail
So instead of having highly rewarding and productive computing careers, these
socially retarded men should do what instead? Become criminals perhaps?

~~~
timr
I don't accept your premise. Very few people have highly rewarding and
productive careers when they are socially retarded. Inversely, a little social
etiquette never hurt anyone.

The culture of computer science is currently unique, in that it gives the seed
of antisocial behavior a fertile place to take root. That _doesn't_ mean that
antisocial behavior should be encouraged or accepted.

~~~
amichail
Maybe there's a good reason why so many computer programmers are antisocial.
Maybe it takes an antisocial person to devote the enormous amounts of time and
effort required to write non-trivial programs.

Also, computer technology may make most people anti-social. Consider for
example flamewars that would never take place off-line.

~~~
timr
I don't know if I buy that, either...is jwz anti-social? pmarca? pg? Joel (of
on-software fame)?

My personal experience has been that the best programmers have a large
personality overlap with the best visual artists and musicians. That's not
necessarily well-adjusted (crazy intensity and burnout often go along for the
ride), but it's not anti-social either...certainly, you can't very well argue
that artistic careers are unappealing to women!

In any case, my gut instinct is that computer programmers tend to be anti-
social, because anti-social people are _drawn_ to careers that involve minimal
human interaction. The computer gives anti-social tendencies room to grow, but
I don't think it causes the problem.

~~~
imsteve
You're retarded if you don't think that programming is one of the most anti-
social activities in existence. You only know of those people you list because
they are successful writers. That has absolutely nothing with how good they
are at programming.

Further, if you think that schools have an substantial share of the blame for
women getting into programming, then your misunderstanding of the topic is
even greater.

~~~
timr
Thanks for providing a great example of what we're talking about, Steve.

~~~
imsteve
thanks and I'm not steve.

------
huherto
Where I work there are like 25 guys and only one girl(She is super smart and
pretty). We have been trying to hire girls but we can't find any. For some
reason they don't want to be programmers. That is very unfortunate.

~~~
mrtron
I feel badly for her, for you just mentioned her attractiveness when it has no
relevance. Perhaps when we (being the male gender we) start considering
females' intelligence as the _only_ factor and not half of the equation things
will change.

Out of the 26 coworkers, you mentioned the physical attributes of the one
female.

Sorry to pick on your one quick post, but it is just very representative of
our society's lingering gender gap.

~~~
Tichy
I think it has some relevance, because it shows that being in IT does not
imply unattractiveness. Talk about unattractiveness of male geeks is quite
common, too.

Also, I think it would be nonsense to deny our human attributes. Men are
interested in women's looks, and vice versa. Actually, isn't it another
complaint of successful women that to be successful, they had to become like
men (a ka Margaret Thatcher)? So if a successful women is still attractive, it
might be a good role model after all.

~~~
curi
It isn't "human" it is "cultural". Still shouldn't deny it, but it can and
will change. (And has changed a lot already!)

~~~
Tichy
So you mean in other cultures looks don't matter? Maybe if the parents set up
the marriages? Do you have any references?

~~~
curi
I don't mean other _existing_ cultures are different. (Although, there are
differences.)

I mean it is a matter of culture (ideas) not "humanity" (DNA).

There are many reasons to believe this. Two are:

\- memes evolve orders of magnitude faster than genes, so once they existed,
they responded to almost all selection pressures first. anything with complex
social interactions that require intelligence couldn't have evolved before
memes (ie, before we had intelligence).

\- people sometimes make changes to how they treat women, how they interpret
appearances, to all sorts of related ways of thinking and behaviors. this
points to culture because our ideas are designed to be changeable at runtime,
and our DNA isn't.

~~~
Tichy
Sexual attraction seems kind of important to the survival of humans, though.
Or at least it used to be (cloning and stuff like that might change that).

Of course there are cultural aspects to how women are being treated. Granted,
there could be cultures where people would not automatically remark on the
attractiveness of a female colleague. For example, if all women are hidden
behind veils, and infidelity can get you killed, maybe people are much more
careful about what they say (just guessing, I don't know).

~~~
curi
Before intelligence, there was no such thing as 'sexual attraction' in the
current sense. There was only the exact same thing animals have: programs that
behave in certain ways, based on certain inputs. Like a DARPA car steers left
on certain input, an animal has sex on certain input.

With the advent of intelligence, came the ability for high-level
interpretation of sense input -- we might say that events took on meaning.
From a survival point of view, the ability to reinterpret arousal chemicals,
and other things, was no serious danger: any culture that did that would die
out. (And even if it was dangerous for the species, evolution doesn't do
advanced planning of that sort.)

What we have today, and call sexual attraction, involves many layers of
intelligent interpretation, which we (largely unintentionally) teach to the
next generation -- ie, it is culture. If parents behaved differently, the
meaning of sexual attraction would change.

Edit: By analogy, DNA = assembly language. We program in higher level
languages. (Imagine programming in 500 years though, so it's much further
removed from assembly). At some level of abstraction, the original details of
DNA/assembly are totally irrelevant to the level we normally think in.

~~~
Tichy
I remain skeptic. Sure, there are cultural signals we learn to interpret
(short dresses, suits, marriage rings,...), but on a basic level, for the most
part, women will be attracted to men and vice versa? Diseases will be
repellent, as will other attributes of unfitness? You think you can raise men
to be gay? (I don't know). Surely there is a lot of research on that, but the
final word is perhaps not out yet?

~~~
curi
People _do_ raise men to be gay. Happens all the time. A few percent of
parents do it (I don't know any reliable statistics). Not on purpose, sure,
but parents don't raise straight kids on purpose either. (Yes, people try to
"make their kid straight" occasionally, but there's no evidence the things
they do actually have the intended effect.)

I definitely think one day we will learn how to analyze what parents do that
causes men to turn out gay, and be able to copy it (or not).

However, I won't be surprised if the answer is: all present-day parents enact
parenting strategies capable of causing homosexuality, but they only behave to
cause it (unintentionally) when triggered in the right way (i.e., by some
characteristic of young children other than homosexuality itself).

------
codewhisperer
Speaking as a member of the homogametic sex, I've been lurking on news.ycomb
for a few months now. About the time I was considering speaking up on an
algorithms topic, this appeared as a leading link:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99255>. The comments included such
insights as "where can I get me some of that" and "those chicks aren't hot
enough for the likes of me."

Now the use of "lady hackers" has raised my hackles as well. (See the American
Heritage Book of English Usage for a deft explanation of why:
<http://www.bartleby.com/64/C005/021.html>.)

I keep lurking because the community here is small enough to wash up a few
pointers I wouldn't otherwise find. But, gentlemen, I take my insights where
they're welcome.

~~~
bayareaguy
As someone who never studied much biology, I must thank you for adding the
word "homogametic" to my vocabulary.

------
sundae1888
Does it really matter? (See if you can infer my gender from this question
alone.)

There are 5 females in my company's R&D, comparing to about 30 males. That was
way better than at my previous employer, where I was the only female in the
25-person team.

~~~
manvsmachine
I'd say it does. Maybe not specifically to yc, but overall for the industry.
Not that the prevalence of women is directly proportional to a given field's
success, but it's like money: having more than someone else doesn't mean
you're better, but if you don't have any at all, you're probably fucking up
somewhere.

~~~
Tichy
It would definitely be more motivating to go to work every day if there were
some female colleagues.

------
rin
I'm yet another one, though I don't spend much time on yc; I spend more time
on reddit and slashdot (not under this name), and actual coding.

------
daniel-cussen
This subject is a huge can of worms.

On the one hand you'll have members of a largely-male audience say that there
should be more women in CS and that the industry is extremely sexist. They'll
say women are wonderful.

Then you have the people who agree and say women are great and sexually
attractive.

You have the people who complains at this objectification and say that it's
people like these that are responsible for gross gender inequalities.

Then you have the people who point at IQ research.

Then you have people that question the validity and conclusions of the
research.

You then have extreme self-righteousness. Then there's blatant sexism.

Then someone mentions Carla Fiorina as a good example, but someone says she
didn't deserve her success.

You get people trying really hard to put a finger on why they think men are
better hackers without sounding like bigots. They can lie on either sides of
the spectrum of intellectual honesty. When scientific studies are mentioned,
they can be rationalizations of bigotry or attempts at honesty and open-
mindedness.

I hope I didn't overrepresent the point of view of any of the many sides of
the argument. I've looked over this post and alternated the order of the
points of view in the sentences and paragraphs above. However, I feel really
weird about this discussion. I suspect that no matter how hard I try to talk
about these issues without taking a stand with regard to politically incorrect
subjects, I'm going to look like an asshole if I don't ultimately rule in
favor of the politically correct viewpoint. But if you go so far as lying
about your viewpoints in order to look politically correct, you're a
bullshitter, and no less of a bigot. On the other hand, being too concerned
about the dangers of political correctness might actually make me more
prejudiced. What worries me is that there might not even be a safe zone
between being a bullshitter and being a bigot. It might be impossible to add
to this topic without being either a bullshitter, a bigot, or a little of
both. But then, every person with an opinion on the subject would be an
asshole in some shape or form, and that doesn't seem reasonable. There should
be a safe zone. Of course, if you believed every politically correct
statement, and you expressed those views, you'd be fine. But how common is
this? Who can say they're totally unbiased? Should we only let he (or she) who
is without sin cast the first stone? If we did things this way, though, guilty
parties would avoid getting a stoning they may deserve.

It's a can of worms. There's not a lot you can say without someone going ad
hominem on you.

It is not a bad idea to put this kind of question on Hacker News; it is
supposed to be an open forum about what things interesting to hackers. But
because it is an open forum, try not to wantonly go around chastising other
posters.

As a reader, you should know what you're in for when you choose to read this
link. People can say whatever they want, and they will. Sometimes they'll be
too politically correct, sometimes they won't be politically correct enough.
On top of that, there's the bullshit from both sides. You might end up reading
something you'll find personally hurtful. But then, this is a forum. People
have been asked not to be mean, and for the most part they'll try not to be.
But if you don't want to risk being hurt, don't go into the forum.

I didn't write this very well. I apologize. I wound up being pedantic, too.
And I said some things that might cost me. But I can't keep rewriting this and
make semantic barricades that I can later hide behind. I can't censor myself
based on what future employers and people like that might think when they
google me.

~~~
yters
Kudos for trying hard to be even handed with a "you can't talk about it"
subject. Difficult even on hacker news.

~~~
curi
people are talking about it. there are much more difficult subjects.

~~~
yters
Let's hear them!

~~~
curi
if i try to give you an example, one of two things will happen:

\- i will seriously offend you

\- i won't seriously offend you

so either you'll hate me, or think i'm wrong. i don't see how i can win.

~~~
yters
I don't think I "offend." I seriously can't think of anything that offends me.
I might consider you immoral though, say if you thought genocide was a good
idea or something. But, I'd do this on principled grounds and explain why.

However, many people's profiles are linked to their real selves, so this isn't
a non taboo area for them.

~~~
curi
An interesting issue is that what you can or cannot say, depends a lot on how
you say it. If you talk in a way that is easy for people to ignore, you can
get away with almost anything -- people just won't pay enough attention to
understand what you meant.

At the other extreme, if you take ideas that are currently say 90% accepted,
and you talk about them in such a way that the other 10% feel strongly
pressured to change their minds, you can seriously offend them. You can
generate resentment, by saying there is no reasonable middle ground, and the
wrong view is wrong, and elaborating in detail on how bad it is, and why it's
so bad, and how they are hurting their friends and family and themselves by
not changing their mind, etc... Even if all that is true, and even if there do
not exist any half-decent arguments for the 10%-and-declining view.

You can even offend people who agree with you, but who think you're putting it
too strongly, or something. Even if they have no rational reasons for saying
your claims are too strong. They may not even consider it a matter of truth,
but instead a matter of being nice, or something. Most people think that way,
some of the time.

What you are actually talking about matters too. On some subjects, it is
easier to trigger defensiveness, on others, harder. So there are some "least
possible to say" things, and they are a lot worse than discussing sexism.

PS I think you may have a typo with that double negative isn't + non.

------
daniel-cussen
Not that I know of. I think there's a lot of stigma on both sides. There may
be stigma against women in chat rooms like this one, and women may have a
stigma against becoming hackers. These are just hypotheses, of course, and by
no means do they apply to all hackers or all women. They're just general
trends I've heard cited. That being said, the ratio of girl haxxors to guy
haxxors in my dorm seems to be getting better. It's like 1:4 where it used to
be 1:7. Another problem is that hacking is not very glamorous.

~~~
manvsmachine
It's definitely a bit of a mental block. A lot of girls who would love to be
able to do things requiring hacking skills, but they don't want to actually
have to learn the foundational stuff, i.e, Data Structures/systems
programming. They want to be able to jump from the intro-level courses
straight to bioinformatics or graphics/multimedia courses, not because they
think it's too hard, but because they almost feel like it's going to do
something to them as a person.

"Yesterday, I gave a talk to our new cohort of Computational Media
undergraduates about the CS classes that they will be taking. One student
asked me about 3-D modeling, and I told him about our computer graphics
classes. Then a young lady asked me a question that bowled me over, "If we
don't take computer graphics and we get a Computational Media degree, is all
that we can do is become programmers?" The last word just dripped with
disdain, as if that was a mid-level in Dante's vision of hell." --Mark Guzdial

~~~
asciilifeform
> The last word just dripped with disdain, as if that was a mid-level in
> Dante's vision of hell.

That's dead-on. It is _exactly that_.

------
ivan
Donna, <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=donna>

but she disappeared several months ago :) I assume she changed her nickname
not to be abused by nice looking hackers using this site. I think the problem
is that PG doesn't allow us to publish our photos, so your question could be
inspiring for him :) YC.news => Hacker.news => YC.Hacker.Dating.news

~~~
albertcardona
Why talking about women needs to bring along dating? No wonder women hide
away.

~~~
imsteve
I believe the answer lies somewhere in our DNA. Please direct your complaints
to Mr. Darwin.

~~~
reitzensteinm
Hey, don't shoot the messenger.

~~~
nraynaud
Why not ? that's totally counterproductive, but so distressing :)

------
yters
What is it about geeks that turns women off? Is it merely the social
maladjustment?

We males tend to adjust our behaviors based on what women find sexy, which is
partially why universities used to be male only. Geekiness correlates with
good intellectual work, but as mentioned, women don't like it.

Which also makes me think that the key to guiding society is by defining what
women find sexy.

~~~
zasz
I like geeks. I'm not a very good geek myself, but I can mostly follow the
technical discussions, with lots of Googling.

I can't speak for other women, but I hate it when people exhibit a lack of
social skills, and it especially infuriates me when they're not funny or
overly shy.

Aside from confidence, health, social skills, and ability to entertain and
amuse, I think the only thing society can define about male sexiness is the
prestige of his financial prospects. Perhaps some other woman will have more
input.

~~~
yters
I'd say the definition of sexiness has changed. Now "sexy" is dashing,
promiscuous, childmen. The qualities essential for good families are not
considered very sexy, whereas they used to be moreso.

------
tlrobinson
OMG a woman on the internet. Pix plzzz!!!

~~~
e1ven
Unfortunately, repeating an ill meme, particularly in a way that seems as if
you are falling into the trap isn't particularly ironic or clever, it's just
socially awkward.

I understand what you're going for, but it doesn't accomplish your goal, and
it just continues a stereotype rather than working to create an environment
that's conducive for discussion.

~~~
tlrobinson
I understand that, and I normally am not the kind of person to say such
things, but I thought it was rather meta-ironic, considering the xkcd comic...

edit: unless, of course, you were trying to be meta-ironic too...

~~~
rin
The problem is, these ironies and meta-ironies are just as old, trite, tiring,
and grating as the same thing meant seriously. Believe me, meta-irony on this
topic has been done before, many times, and not only based on the irony of an
xkcd comic.

It might be the first time you do this, and you think it's funny, clever, and
'meta-ironic' (oooh). I suppose it's somewhat like lists of jokes that people
forward around: funny the first few times, and "I'm going to auto-killfile
this" after a few years of hearing the same ones.

------
albertcardona
Should tell you a lot about the kind of incorrect attention that women get in
this site (and anywhere else in the internet, including chat rooms) the fact
that nearly no women get an obvious female nickname.

Just imagine what would happen if you create a user whose name was "Laura".
Try it.

