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by ng12 3460 days ago
> She expected the class to be full of guys who loved video games and grew up obsessing over how they were made. There were plenty of those guys but, to her surprise, she found the class fascinating.

So many of these articles seem incredibly sexist to me -- they all boil down to "women are too ignorant to realize that computers are fun".
1 comments
virmundi 3460 days ago
What if that's where we're at right now? Ignorance is correctible. It's not bad if corrected (they could be part of the lucky 10,000 [1]). Perhaps woman are under a false perspective that the material is boring. With time, and experience, this might change.

1 - https://xkcd.com/1053/

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ng12 3460 days ago
Hypothetically, if you really believe the majority of women eschew computer science out of ignorance, why do you believe we should correct it? Here's how I think about it: if I invited a male acquaintance to go to a ballroom dancing class and his response was "no way, dancing is for pansies" -- should my reaction be to try to make the lessons a more comfortable environment for him? Absolutely not. If anyone were to avoid learning to program because they believed the field is full of sweaty nerds frankly I'm of the opinion that it's their loss.
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virmundi 3460 days ago
The article was a little hand-wavey on the details about comfort. But to you hypothetical. Say that instead you tell him (assuming a straight guy), that it's great way to meet women and, oddly enough, get exercise. That might convince him to attend at least one. After auditing, he might like it.

The field has an old rep. Some of it's earned. It's changing now. People are operating from old information. Correcting this information, by means of targeting marketing, might be a good thing.

Now I do see benefit for keeping the view around if it means less workers and therefore a higher wage for me, :).

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