[graeme]

How did you develop this 'natural' interest in programming? I am male, but had literally zero role models, and my school system never covered computers. I made it to age 25 without knowing what a programming language is.

But when I found out I was bloody hooked on the idea!

[eXpl0it3r]

Fair point, I might have been "spoiled" with growing up in a rather techy environment, my dad worked with PC ever since I can remember. I however think that the schooling system needs to start including computer science subjects and by that I don't just mean how to use Microsoft Word.

Then again the question is, why do females not get hooked on the idea, even when they don't grow up in such a techy environment. Is it really "our" fault or is even "our" job to trying to confince people how great programming is? We've a lot of events especially made for females where we try to excite them for computer science, but so far it didn't add much to the imbalance. So for me it seems (at least here in Switzerland) that we're doing everything possible to get women into programming, but if their interests are somewhere else, what else is there to do? Do we really need to play a blame game?

That's what I meant with "natural" interest. We can't force women to get "hooked" on the idea, they need to get there on their own.

[kamaal]

>>I however think that the schooling system needs to start including computer science subjects

No amount of teaching CS subjects to kids will ever get them hooked to programming. Because in their case, most kids think programming is synonymous with math and they hate it with a passion.

Instead of teaching them sorting and Big-O, which are nothing but math in different forms what we need to teach kids is a taste for building. It can be as simple as a building complex models with lego, to encouraging them to take part in science exhibitions.

Here in India we had a subject called SUPW(Socially useful productive work). One of the projects I did was to build a mat with cigarette packets. Stuff like that help kids 'get into the zone' or 'get hooked' to productive/creative projects. They can slowly graduate to programming as they start dealing with complex projects.

[_bfhp]

It's probably not the fault of the "programming world", but rather gender roles in their entirety, where boys and girls are pushed toward certain interests and away from others.

Programming is often seen as "geeky" (lesser so today than in the past) and girls are encouraged to "not be geeky," to fit in with their peers. Boys are, I think, much less socially penalized.

[eXpl0it3r]

It's something one can certainly think about and be aware of, but then again it's just a theory. Personally I haven't experienced this. I grew up with my sisters and they had the same exposure to computers as I and my brother did and there was never any pressure from my parents or us that computers is just a boy thing, but my sisters never had the same natural interest in programming. I actually even tried to teach a few things to them, but it seemed to be too complex for them and their own curiosity didn't drive them to learn more on their own, as I did.

While I see and lived that parents have an influence on PC usage at a young age, I wouldn't say they are push children towards or away from it, but I guess there is always something going on. I agree that every boy and girl should have the same chances on learning computer stuff, but I don't see it necessary that one has to artificially push girls or boys towards a topic. If they don't have the interest at the topic, there's no reason to teach them all about it, just so we can "solve" an imbalance.

I know some believe that interest is purely influenced, I can't agree with that. Interests can be hugely influenced, yes, but there are studies showing that there exists natural interests for certain kind of toys of around one year old children.