[jjirsa]

> I do know that there used be a more even ratio of male/female programmers but I think the field has changed enough from those times that I would be wary of anyone claiming to make an apples to apples comparison

Yea, it's gotten a lot easier, a lot less rigorous. Problems hadn't been solved, nobody even knew if things WERE possible (let alone how to do them), and they certainly didn't have stackoverflow to go ask for help when they got stuck. Now that you mention it, perhaps you've figured it out - maybe all the women engineers have moved on to harder, more interesting endeavors.

> You have to spend a significant amount of time alone coding/engineering to grasp well enough that understanding the customer starts mattering a lot more

There is never a requirement that you have to code in isolation. Period. Paragraph. End of story. This is a fiction. Nobody should EVER code in a bubble, and especially not junior engineers.

> I think the part about alienating women comes from a fundamental misunderstanding

Nope. It comes from reading.