[amyjess]

> My wife, for example, slung C++ and Java while getting her MBA in evening classes. For her programming was a path to earn a living until she got her 'real' job on the executive track. Another woman I worked with only wrote code for a while and moved on to run her father's machine shop. In both cases these women were good at what they did, but saw software development as something to do before the real job.

It's been my observation that the bulk of female programmers aren't hobbyists and just program because it's a job and it pays well enough. When they go home, they don't think about code.

There are exceptions (hell, I'm one of them, and I personally know a couple others), but in general, female hackers are much rarer than female programmers.

I'm not sure if it's proportionate to guys or not. There are plenty of male programmers who aren't hobbyists either (think of the legions of VB drones in the '90s). I don't know if the just-another-job to hobbyist ratio is just more noticable with girls because there are fewer of us in general or if the percentages are actually different.