[jrs99]

But the point everyone is making is that there is a white male out there that is poor and doesn't have the resources, time, and educational background, but has the intelligence, work ethic, and desire to learn more and get a job as a programmer.

But this guy out there will never be helped. There simply will never be a program for this person to get out of the rut that he's in.

But a woman with a Stanford degree may be able to get into these programs with a grant.

I'm not saying it's wrong or right, but that seems to be the complaint, that there is probably a better way to spend that money to help people.

my opinion is that when you start looking at individuals' situations in order to give that grant money out, then that's just going to much more complicated and cost much more money.

[mcv]

I'm absolutely for helping the poor, providing everybody with affordable (preferably free) quality education, programs that help unemployed people get jobs, that help homeless people get their life back in order, etc.

But those problems aren't specific for the IT industry. They're society-wide, and need to tackled on a much broader scale.

And in society at large, women are doing increasingly better. They are surpassing men in education (so it's definitely a good idea to take a good look at if there's anything that causes boys to fall by the wayside in the educational system), but that doesn't change the fact that there are still some industries that are remarkably sexist and/or inaccessible to women. And that's just not acceptable.

[ceol]

The point is that a poor, uneducated man will still be ahead of a poor, uneducated woman when attempting to learn how to program; likewise, a man with a Stanford degree will have many more resources available to him than a woman with a Stanford degree. You can't pull examples from opposite ends of the spectrum, because of course it's not going to be equal.

[ps4fanboy]

How are you coming to this conclusion?