[ng12]

> A lot of people in engineering went down that path because they were inspired by someone when they were younger.

Who? I started programming because computers are fun. If you really care about getting more women and minorities involved in tech volunteer at a local high school -- there are dozens of programs which seek to get young people exposed to programming. Anything else is just blowing smoke.

[idrios]

Well if we're using personal anecdotes, I had never touched a line of code until college and had just assumed I wasn't smart enough for it. I did study engineering though, which was an easy choice because I had tons of family who were engineers. Freshman year I took Java as a core requirement and discovered I was pretty good at it, so I stuck with it.

It shouldn't be a stretch of the mind that programming would be more accessible to someone who was raised knowing programmers, than to someone who was raised without.

> If you really care about getting more women and minorities involved in tech volunteer at a local high school

This is great advice. That doesn't discredit the impact that having diversity in tech has.