

Girls Who Code expands across the US  - Parseco
http://thenextweb.com/us/2013/01/24/girls-who-code-expands-across-the-us-with-summer-programs-in-detroit-san-jose-and-miami/
Girls Who Code is set to expand its female-oriented tech education program to Detroit, Miami and San Jose thanks to $435,000 in funding from Knight Foundation. Good stuff.
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belorn
Maybe a bit tagent, but a comment to the article claims that stackoverflow.com
is a men favored place, and thus there is a need to have a female exclusive
place where female coders can ask questions and get answers.

Could someone explain this to me? I know that stackoverflow actually has less
female participants than software industry in general, but any causes is
eluding me. Are there just a number of hidden stories out there about all the
sexist comments being made (have not seen any story, or any such comment while
using the site), or are question made by females being singled out and left
unanswered? We hear constantly about the evils done in IRC rooms , and we hear
about conferences/work places where females don't get respected when they got
similar amount of experience as to their men co-workers. Do either of those
exist on stackoverflow, and if not, why is stackoverflow not gender equal in
participants?

~~~
natasham25
Hi, a woman programmer here. I asked a question on StackOverflow once while
first learning Python, and got a pretty mean answer. I called the guy out on
my blog, of course: [http://natashatherobot.com/hey-dude-you-dont-have-to-be-
mean...](http://natashatherobot.com/hey-dude-you-dont-have-to-be-mean-to-be-
helpful/).

Before asking the question, I never posted on StackOverflow before, because I
expected a mean answer, and that's exactly what happened. StackOverflow is not
a very safe place for asking questions. It's a place where guys go to show off
how much smarter they are than you. Most of StackOverflow questions start with
"I'm a noob at this..." - that's because people, even guys, feel the need to
pre-qualify the question by proving that they're not complete idiots despite
not knowing the answer.

Asking a question is a vulnerable thing. You are admitting in public that you
don't know something. It's really hard to participate when you know the very
same public you're trying to get help from will turn around and critique you.

~~~
clicks
The supposed mean part of the answer:

    
    
        Learn to write Python code properly according to the style guide – PEP-8 filter highlights only bad code and in your case the whole file is badly written.
    

I am a male. This does not strike me as mean. I'm thinking now though... are
you maybe just an emotionally sensitive person? The response is maybe bluntly
put, but it is probably sincere and hastily said. Which makes it easier to
construe it non-personally -- it's just a guy on the Internet who said it, he
probably doesn't even know your gender. And you know what -- as weird as it
may sound, I _wish_ I had received this kind of criticism when I was younger.
Too often I was showered with positive comments that I became afraid of non-
positive criticism to the point that I stopped taking risks that would
endanger my reputation or feelings. It took me some time to learn to just take
all criticism and make the best of it: detach the person-element, and just
take from it what is truly useful to me, but I'm glad I did.

Edit: I'm thinking 'are you maybe just an emotionally sensitive person' may
have come off as offensive? Sorry if it did, I'm not sure how else to phrase
it, you probably know what I mean here.

~~~
gizmo686
>Edit: I'm thinking 'are you maybe just an emotionally sensitive person' may
have come off as offensive? Sorry if it did, I'm not sure how else to phrase
it, you probably know what I mean here.

I think it is more to do with familiarity of the culture of compute Q/A sites.
My dad recently was looking around the internet for a solution to his
computers overheating problem . He remarked to me about how rude everyone on
the internet forums he looked at was (he did not post, just read existing
threads). As someone who has used this type of site for a long time, I look at
the answers and see valuable information relevant to the question asked. But,
I can see how someone not familiar with the culture would find it rude or
offensive.

Looking at this case in particular, the question was "Every time I save my
code in Sublime Text 2, all of the lines end up highlighted as seen below.
It's pretty annoying, and I would love to disable it, but I'm not sure what
triggered it in the first place or what to Google. Any ideas?"

And the full response was: "The cause is SublimeLinter plug-in and its PEP-8
filter

<https://github.com/SublimeLinter/SublimeLinter>

Your code does not conform PEP-8 style guide:

<http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/>

Learn to write Python code properly according to the style guide – PEP-8
filter highlights only bad code and in your case the whole file is badly
written."

Looking at it as someone fammilar with the culture, I see: A statement of the
cause. Links to the technical resources relevent to the problem.

The 'mean' part of the answer starts "Learn to write Python code properly
according to the style guide", Which I read as advice saying, you should learn
to write Python code following the style guide (which is both good advice (in
my opinion), and directly relevent to the problem being discussed).

The rest of the answer reads: "PEP-8 filter highlights only bad code and in
your case the whole file is badly written." I read this answer as a concise
description of the problem ' PEP-8 highlights bad code, and your whole file is
bad by its standards [because it does not conform to the style guide]'

Again, this is all coming from the perspective of someone familiar with the
culture. The problem isn't so much that SO (and simmilar sites) is unwelcoming
to women, than it is that they are unwelcoming to new people. The problem is
that we want consise answers, and writing consise, non-offensive answers is
difficult and time consuming. So, as a culture, we evolved to view such
answers as non-offensive.

EDIT: as an aside, the original answer has since be edited to be less
offensive, and offer more explanation as to why learning PEP-8 style is a good
idea. Personally, I would prefer getting the original answer as it is easier
to read and parse out the important info.

------
wallflower
I tell all of my friends who program and sometimes talk about "oh, maybe I
should do side project Y and.or learn technology X" and who happen to have
young daughters - "Dude, you want an interesting challenge - I suggest teach
your daughter how to code - use Squeak, Alice3D."

Usually - they are like "The IT industry is doomed.. or I don't want my
daughter to be a coder.. or she doesn't want to learn how to code.. or (worse)
my wife would never want that(! _egads_!)".

And I retort (as nicely as possible): "Even if they don't become coders, they
will learn how to problem solve, how to better think, how to analyze. Make a
game together! Don't even start with code, start with pieces of paper"

The goal is not for them to be coders but to bond with them and teach them a
useful skill that isn't necessarily about a livelihood (like fathers teaching
sons fishing)"

~~~
OlivierLi
Computer Engineering and Computer Science were just declared two of the ten
highest paying majors in the US.

Software is everywhere and in everything.

How can you friends ever think the software industry is doomed?

------
moccajoghurt
I'm worried that there could be a focus on compairing if stuff is less than
three.

Just kidding, I think it's a great thing that females are getting a new role
model in the tech field because talent should decide if you will become a
programmer and not ancient role models.

~~~
Parseco
Exactly, we should be way past the stereotypes that crippled society for ages.
Programming is for everyone, initiatives like this one are a good step in that
direction.

