[timthelion]

Unrelated to bootcamps, but one thing really jumped out at me in the article. The author's discussion of BigO time:

"The post went on to detail a need for an understanding of BigO time complexity, which is completely fair. No one wants a double loop in production code. What a bulky monstrosity that would be (imagining a giant disgusting swamp monster made of 0’s and 1’s, eeek!)."

"I certainly don’t want to make a messy newb mistake like creating a method with a time complexity of O(n²) or worse (cringe)."

I'm not going to be critical and say that this is wrong and that the author doesn't know what she is doing. But it does seem that this quote demonstrates a tendency I see among female advocates of women in tech, and that is to slightly awkwardly use technical terms in order to try to prove that they are part of the "in group" of people who understand technical concepts.

In this case, it seems that she is trying to prove that she knows what BigO is. I feel like this is a kind of meta-sexism. What she is doing by explaining to us the gist of BigO is saying "I think that you think that I'm so stupid that I don't know what BigO is, so now I'm going to prove to you that I do."

I know I suffer from the assumption that women don't know how to code. It's a hard thing to get around, since %90 of female programmers whom I meet are women from PyLadies who come to the local python meetup, and really don't know how to program yet. And now our author is suffering from the assumption that I assume that she doesn't know how to code. And in trying to prove otherwise, she trips over herself in her eagerness to prove my assumption wrong.

This meta-sexist thinking and behavior is getting so complicated and convoluted that it is acting to distract us from thinking and communicating on technical topics. I believe that it has become harmful to the cause of encouraging women and minorities to join our communities. It is harder for me as a white man to talk to a woman or a minority because I am thinking about their gender or race. And it is harder for a woman to talk about tech if she is thinking about my thinking about the fact that she is a woman.

Somehow we need to escape meta-sexism and start talking to each-other as equals, without presumption or presumption of presumption.

[capkutay]

> But it does seem that this quote demonstrates a tendency I see among female advocates of women in tech, and that is to slightly awkwardly use technical terms in order to try to prove that they are part of the "in group" of people who understand technical concepts.

That has nothing to do with being a female advocate of women in tech. That has everything to do with being 12 weeks into programming. That's the main reason I don't like this article.

I'm lucky enough to know a lot of incredible software engineers who happen to be women (and were also CS grads or PhDs), much smarter than me, and I don't like this attempt to associate all women engineers with people who clearly only have a superficial understanding of code.

[timthelion]

> I'm lucky enough to know a lot of incredible software engineers who happen to be women (and were also CS grads or PhDs), much smarter than me, and I don't like this attempt to associate all women engineers with people who clearly only have a superficial understanding of code.

I don't know that many experienced female programmers, but the ones whom I do know are not advocates and tend to avoid the subject of their gender. So my own experience leads to the conclusion that I made, not about all women programmers, but about those who advocate women in tech.

[JazCE]

> I know I suffer from the assumption that women don't know how to code.

How the hell do you come to that assumption? I don't understand at all how you can make an assumption that a person knows or doesn't know something based on race or gender.

You need to check yourself because:

> It is harder for me as a white man to talk to a woman or a minority because I am thinking about their gender or race

is not normal.

[monaghanboy]

I thought his points were thoughtful and honest, even if a bit personal. Bias exists, in all parties (even you). No point in shaming him.

[timthelion]

>> It is harder for me as a white man to talk to a woman or a minority because I am thinking about their gender or race

> is not normal.

Perhaps you don't do so. But how do you know it is not normal? If you don't let me share my internal battles without attacking me, then how can you know the internal psychology of others?

[JazCE]

Because everyday millions and millions if not billions of transactions go on between humans of all genders and races, if your view was in the majority, then society would be different. You need to talk to someone about your world view and get help.

[timthelion]

When you read my comments you have a set of assumptions that you have made about me. You cannot escape that. For one thing, you assume that I know English (which I do). Another thing you probably assume is that since I am on HN, I am a computer programmer. You assume that I know the word "transaction" since you use that word. You don't explain its meaning to me. Neither do you explain to me what a human is. You assume that I know what humans are. You assume that I am human, though you cannot see me. Assumptions are everywhere.

When we meet someone, we begin with a default set of assumptions about them and what they know. You cannot even communicate with a person without assuming something about their level of knowledge, of language, culture, and technology. The question is, whether these in-avoidable default assumptions should differ based on a person's race or gender or nationality. I believe that they should. If I come up to you, knowing that you're from the UK, and start talking to you about the post communist privatization process in the Czech Republic, without first explaining to you what it is, you are bound to be confused. I assume that you do not know about the privatization process.

That doesn't mean that I believe that citizens of the UK are fundamentally incapable of understanding the privatization process. If I ask you if you know about this process and you say you are an expert on post communist economics than my assumptions about your knowledge on the subject will quickly change. But for now, since I know nothing about you, it is safe for me to assume that you know nothing about privatization and that in order to be polite, I should not spend the next 30 minutes talking about the current value of privatization coupons without ever asking if you know what the hell I'm talking about.

But when the basis for my assumption of shared knowledge is gender, this leaves an interesting question. If I know that most women who I meet in technical contexts are not computer programmers should I immediately assume that they are computer programmers and start talking about in depth concepts or should I ask first? Is it more rude to assume that my conversation partner understands what I am talking about or to assume that they do not understand? Especially when many newbies are so eager to show that they do understand, that they find themselves unwilling to say out-loud that they do not.