

Justine Bateman Is a College Freshman Studying Programming - tortilla
http://tv.yahoo.com/news/justine-bateman-is-a-college-freshman-and-blogging-about-it-174435344.html

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markfinger
This is pretty fantastic. She's illustrating the oft-forgotten fact that you
can change your passion and direction at any point.

Your fourties may not mean as much as it used to, but for the many of us that
went school -> uni -> tech industry, her example proves that the decisions
that defined the path of our youth do not restrict our future.

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wyck
This is inspiring to anyone over 40, let alone women.

Her tech company, <http://www.section5.tv/>

Her links: <http://flavors.me/justinebateman>

~~~
johnjlocke
Life has hardly begun by the time you're 40, and some of the best programmers
I've met are women.

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fiveliterstang
That's pretty cool, I hope she grants me a pull request someday

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fatjokes
A step up from turning illusions for money.

Tricks.

~~~
xpose2000
On Reddit this Arrested Development reference gets 500 upvotes. Here, not so
much.

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chris_wot
May it forever be that way.

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Super_luigi
Good for her! I doubt she needs the cash so it's always fascinating to see how
people pick STEM fields for non-career reasons, same way others might pick
history, english lit, etc.

And at 47 she looks way better than any other girl in my eng class when I was
in school!! (OK, there were only 3)

~~~
britta
Odd to comment on appearances when they're not relevant to the news.

But anyway, I think it's great that she's talking openly about her
frustrations and challenges with her classes (on
<http://getacollegelife.tumblr.com/>). Not a lot of people have the confidence
to expose that, so people can get incorrect impressions about the easiness of
learning and feel overly discouraged when they struggle.

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csense
Apparently this person is some celebrity I don't know about. The tumblr linked
in the article [1] was more interesting than the article itself.

But it didn't contain anything I wouldn't expect to see from any other person
blogging about freshman year as a CS major new to programming.

Why exactly is this HN material?

[1] <http://getacollegelife.tumblr.com/>

~~~
qohen
There aren't that many 47 year old female undergraduates, let alone in
computer science. And, in addition to describing her own experiences at UCLA,
Bateman, is publicizing stories of older women going back to school in STEM
subjects, as you'll see from her twitter and esp. her tumblr, where she lets
some of these women tell their stories, at length.

And it's interesting reading about her interest in computer science, what it
took for her to be able to be admitted to UCLA, her experiences with the
courses and projects, etc.

Additionally, if you read her stuff, you'll see she is an entrepreneur, with
her own company, who was trying to get Hollywood interested in doing projects
involving digital media, the internet, etc. years ago but kept getting push-
back.

And that's without any of the celebrity pixie-dust.

As far as that goes: she was on a very highly rated, award-winning TV show,
along with Michael J. Fox, called Family Ties, back when tens of millions of
people would watch a TV show.

And: given that the newly-revived Arrested Development just came out on
Netflix, she happens to be the sister of Jason Bateman, who plays Michael
Bluth.

tl;dr: she's quite HN-worthy.

~~~
gaius
Neither her gender nor her age are relevant. "Wealthy celebrity dabbles in
unrelated field" is a reality TV formula, not Hacker News.

~~~
pessimizer
>Neither her gender nor her age are relevant.

To you.

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gaius
To anyone, unless we are sexists and ageists on here now.

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chris_wot
What, we can't be interested in a celebrity studying computer science without
being sexist and ageist?

Ridiculous.

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gaius
The word for what she is is dilettante. Look it up.

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chris_wot
Goodness. Time to end my interaction with you, calling her a dilettante
implies you know her true motivations, something I considerably doubt. By all
means, continue to judge the motivations of others without knowing anything
about them.

For me, that's a worthless attitude, and not one that requires more of a
response than complete disdain.

~~~
gaius
I look forward to not interacting with you in the future.

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obviouslygreen
_"It's like being a competitive runner in training. You just hammer it as hard
as you can so you'll be the best you can be at your races, but damn, it would
be nice to just walk there sometimes instead."_

Is it? Is 'programming' really like running a lot, from one place to another
(no matter what those places are, simply for the fact that one place is not
the same as the first)? Is it possible that this pursuit is so fucking
stupidly simple that we can dilute it to "hey, programming is like walking to
the fucking grocery store, regardless of which one we were going to or what we
intended to get ingredients for, or how we wanted to prepare them"?

No. No, it's not, and this person is doing everyone who actually knows what
the fuck a programmer DOES a disservice. If she stays with it long enough
she'll realize this, though whether she'll bother to acknowledge it or
apologize is another matter.

Being a competitive runner takes a lot of work, a lot of discipline, and a lot
of conditioning. It is in no way something to laugh at. What it does NOT take,
however, is the mental discipline and logical aptitude to build and maintain
structures and paradigms in which concepts can be realized and business can be
conducted.

~~~
obviouslygreen
It's so easy to downvote. It's far harder to provide a good reason why we
should be idolozing someone with the advantages most of us have absolutely no
hope of enjoying should be idolized or idealized here, on a board where we
supposedly worship the self-starter, the boostrapper, the one who understands
the odds but still tries to beat them.

Downvote this one, too. Go for it... no one's stopping you.

~~~
DanBC
Downvotes are sometimes accidental. Ignore single downvotes, they normally
self-correct.

Complaining about downvotes will sometimes attract very many more downvotes
than the original downvoted post.

I didn't downvote you, but your first post misunderstands a simple metaphor
("it's hard work!") and attacks it vigorously.

