[orangethirty]

I offer a learning program called Protocademy (http://protocademy.com). The focus is to learn by building things from the start. Rather than endless reading about syntax, or simple hello world programs. In the current group, there are two young ladies who are doing very well. Their feedback has been very encouraging. But the best thing they told me was the following:

"What we like is that there is no one here judging us for our gender. There is no pressure from men. Some of them feel very threatened when a woman is more skilled or even better at computers."

That is quite the statement, and sadly, true. During all of my years as a programmer, I have come to suffer from such attitude. If you can't code a binary tree with your eyes closed while singing the Start Spangled Banner, then you suck. There is too much ego. Too much macho "I am better than you" stuff going on. Even in interviews, where you get technical leads showing off their knowledge, rather than allowing you to show off yours (isn't that the point?).

I met one of the women in Protocademy while buying a MacBook. She saw my nerdy glases, saw the computer, and asked me about OSX. From there, we started talking about computers and then to video games. Turns out, she is a college student doing a major in IT. Her dream had always been to program, but could never come up with enough guts to do so at college. She is doing quite well these days. Python is like second nature. A good programmer. All she needed was some space to grow.