
Real Tales of Learning Computer Science as a High School Girl - borski
http://betabeat.com/2012/06/real-tales-of-learning-computer-science-as-a-high-school-girl-stuyvesant/
======
Zak
The last response, from Ellie Abrams starts with

 _'What is that?' I asked my sophomore friend in chorus what the jumbled
letters, numbers, returns, spaces, indents, and parentheses on her failed test
meant. She shrugged and responded, 'It’s comp sci. I can’t understand it—this
is all bullshit.' The only other sophomore friend I had was a boy, and he told
me computer science was what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. With
only these two views on computer science to refer to, I entered my intro
course clueless and under the impression that computer science was for boys._

This struck me as somewhat oddly constructed. I'm sure her two friends were
different from each other in a great many ways, but she settled on sex as the
differentiating factor. She goes on to say

 _To put it simply, the reason for [boys having a stronger CS background
before taking the class] comes down to video games. Boys are expected sit in
their dungeons of junk food and fiddle with their PlayStations and computers
(I can’t even think of a popular video game to mention)._

That doesn't make much sense to me either. Most video games don't teach
anything about computer science. They may serve as a vehicle to get children
interested in what computers can do, but no CS skills are required to play
Halo.

More generally, parts of the responses seem forced. I get the impression that
there was a fairly detailed question posed to these students with suggestions
to address certain topics. For example, half the responses contain the word
"humanities". I wouldn't expect most high school students to choose that word
on their own. I'd expect to see more specific subjects like art, history or
English. I'd really like to see the exact question they were asked.

~~~
Swizec
_"That doesn't make much sense to me either. Most video games don't teach
anything about computer science. They may serve as a vehicle to get children
interested in what computers can do, but no CS skills are required to play
Halo."_

1\. First part of the answer is simple: Boys like videogames. They play
videogames. Videogames are a great vehicle for getting interested in "Hmm, I
wanna make a better awesomer videogame ... wonder how I go about doing that".
Curiosity takes care of the rest.

2\. It is, apparently, culturally acceptable for a boy to arse around on a
computer all day, while the same does not hold true for a girl. This makes it
harder for girls to learn subjects that take huge amounts of "being alone and
thinking".

~~~
Zak
_"Hmm, I wanna make a better awesomer videogame ... wonder how I go about
doing that". Curiosity takes care of the rest._

That's true, but it doesn't seem to me that a large percentage of programmers
I know got interested in programming that way. I haven't conducted a formal
survey, but that's the impression I have. It's very possible that my
impression is wrong or that I'd get different results talking to a high school
CS class than programmers in their 20s and 30s.

 _It is, apparently, culturally acceptable for a boy to arse around on a
computer all day, while the same does not hold true for a girl._

I think that's less true now than it used to be in large part due to the
increase in social uses of computers. Some of those social uses lend
themselves to the sort of customization that would get people interested in
coding as above. I'm thinking specifically of things like FBPurity, a browser
extension that hides unwanted content on Facebook.

There's certainly an underlying issue with cultural stereotypes where boys are
expected to tinker with technical/mechanical things and girls aren't. The
distinction might be entirely arbitrary, as girls _are_ expected to tinker
with things thought of as feminine. Few people would be surprised by a girl
making alterations to her clothing.

~~~
Negitivefrags
> That's true, but it doesn't seem to me that a large percentage of
> programmers I know got interested in programming that way. I haven't
> conducted a formal survey, but that's the impression I have. It's very
> possible that my impression is wrong or that I'd get different results
> talking to a high school CS class than programmers in their 20s and 30s.

I don't know any programmers who didn't get in to programming that way.

That said, I do work at a game company, so I meet more game programmers that
not, but even in my university days, all the serious students had started
programming before they entered, and the initial motivation for that was
games.

~~~
Goladus
>> It's very possible that my impression is wrong or that I'd get different
results talking to a high school CS class than programmers in their 20s and
30s.

> I don't know any programmers who didn't get in to programming that way.

My first attempt at programming was asking our TRS-80, in English, if it would
make a laser sound. "Syntax error" was it's reply.

But yeah trading stories about mucking with CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT to get
games working is par for the course when I meet tech people in their 20s and
30s.

------
marquis
This was a very interesting read, it hit home and I wish I had been given this
opportunity. My own story of being 15 and showing ability for programming?
'uh, the computer room is full of boys'. Don't underestimate the power of
needing to be around your own gender as a teenager, or at least, the
disturbance of being around just the other gender in an elective class. I'm
sure some of you had similar experiences being male. I also regret not taking
shop and car repair classes for the same reason - I didn't start coding again
until in my early 20s when the passion to build kicked in after graduating
with an arts degree where other women were around me also building things.

------
gcv
An interesting side note from one of the stories: "some universities with
multiple colleges house [English and computer science] in different schools,
making double majoring... impossible."

These universities demonstrate remarkable short-sightedness. Studying
different subjects, particularly at the undergraduate level, makes people
intellectually well-rounded and far more interesting. Imagine telling Leonardo
that he cannot study painting and engineering at the same time.

~~~
pyre
Imagine telling the engineers that they might have to mingle with the
mendicants! As an anecdote, at U of Michigan the arts college is called LS&A
(Literature, Science and the Arts), but the Engineering school students
referred to it as LS&Play (at least circa 2000).

~~~
lambdasquirrel
At CMU, we called Humanities and Social Sciences "high school studies." In
retrospect, it was kind of immature and shortsighted. Social psych was one of
the most valuable classes I took, and I found I was missing the kinds of
literature classes I had in high school.

~~~
novum
I'm an alumnus of H&SS. I majored in Information Systems, which is (amusingly,
I still think) in H&SS rather than the Tepper School of Business or the School
of Computer Science.

Sure, we had some occasional teasing ("H and Less Stress" was another one) but
I found it invaluable to go through H&SS' general studies curriculum. Everyone
in H&SS studies philosophy, history, communications, economics, writing, and
math (among others) in addition to their core major classes.

------
jlgreco
I'm glad to hear that they are using Scheme in introductory programs like
this. MIT stopping that just depresses me. I'm not sure what universities
still do, except for North Eastern.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Colleges still have trouble trying to decide if they should provide a proper
Computer Science education or if they should be software engineering trade
schools. This is made all the more difficult because students enroll in CS
programs but almost always what they typically want and need is the SE trade
school education.

~~~
jlgreco
A particularly aggravating problem when the college in question already have a
separate software engineering major.

------
nevster
Accessing this on the iPad I'm totally confused about how to read the actual
article - what's up with their interface?

~~~
easp
Yeah, they are using an annoying tool called onSwipe that is supposed to
deliver a delightful experience on the iPad. In reality, it delivers an
aggravating experience on the iPad.

I don't know why sites still use them.

I had to switch to the desktop version, repeatedly, until it actually took,
then everything worked fine.

~~~
rdl
Because they bribe the sites with ad revenue and promises to not have to
develop a mobile version themselves, presumably.

Which would be ok, if the OnSwipe user experience didn't suck so much for end
users. I wish they'd publish a list of sites using onswipe so I could just
skip those sites.

------
Tichy
Nice pictures with flowers in the background. Framing...

------
rsanchez1
I remember when I was in high school, I had a girl classmate who took AP
Computer Science online to pad her resume and get into college. Somewhere
along the line she starts asking for help and seeing how I was the only one
who knew any programming I volunteered to help. I didn't know very much Java,
just knew programming from learning Perl, but Java was easy enough to pick up.

Initially, I was excited. Hey, here's this girl taking computer science. But
towards the end, I think I'm the only one who walked away really learning Java
and ended up "coaching" her through all her homework, basically just telling
her what to type although trying to make sure she understood the concepts each
step of the way. I ended up disappointed because she only wanted to pad her
resume instead of really learn computer science. Maybe it was taking the class
online that didn't let her get interested in the subject, or maybe she just
wanted to get the grade and get it over with.

The point is, I think we need to do a better job getting kids in general
interested in computer science, not just girls, if we want more girls to go
into computer science. Get rid of this misconception that it's just graybeards
in a dark room hacking away through the night and put it in kids heads that
computer science, or even just programming, is something everyone can do and
have fun doing. And maybe try to de-emphasize getting a grade as a goal and
emphasize actual learning as a goal. But most importantly, expand computer
science availability in high school, so you don't have to resort to taking
online classes, which I think are a bad idea in general but particularly bad
for kids in high school who are still developing study habits.

~~~
projct
It's also possible that she chose to rely on you for the easy grade as well...

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gaius
I am flagging every post that is about someone's gender, they always
degenerate into flaming and oneupmanship (no pun intended).

~~~
ionforce
Oneupsperson.

