Posted on 04/10/2014 8:54:00 AM PDT by Izzy Dunne
Google wants public high school students, especially girls, to discover the magic of coding. Each eligible female student who completes our computer programming lesson will earn DonorsChoose.org credits for your classroom.
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You’ll receive a $100 DonorsChoose.org gift code for every female student who completes the course. When 4 or more female students complete it, we’ll email you an additional $500 gift code
(Excerpt) Read more at khanacademy.org ...
I agree with you list. And being nice got us Obama.
As a female who started computer programming on mainframes in 1980, I find this scheme obnoxious. When I first started programming then there were FAR more women in the field, apparently, than there are today. 90% of programmers in the UK are male. And the percentage of females in the US has been steadily declining from when I was in the business. Although my classmates who were learning to program that same year I was were slightly more male than female, I think it’s safe to say it wasn’t overwhelmingly so. Back in those days we learned PL/I as our first language, than Assembler, COBOL, RPG II and Basic — plus a few other things like JCL After a little less than a year working at a small local shop who sold micro computers (the IBM PC had come out when I was working there) and then Kaypro for about a year and a half, in 1984 I was hired to work on a Cad/Cam project for Tomahawk Cruise Missiles. Our team consisted of 1 male project lead who had 1st trained as an EE and went over to programming and worked his way up. The technical lead for the core of the project was a female grad. whose degree, I believe had been math and computational science, or whatever Syracuse called it. She was the ripe old age of 28 — and she brought a number of us either up to speed on the PL/I were were using on the project or gave us a quick refresher. WE all had to learn IBM’s DB2 database, which the company sent us all on a crash course to learn. Our lead female designed the structure of the main core of the software used on the floor to assemble the missiles that the technicians putting them together used. She had one young male who was her assistant coder for the core program. I designed the software and interface used to take in bar codes from the technician’ badges to either interface with labor collection or swipe a barcoded input from the major parts the individual at the time was working on so they went to the next work instruction to be done from the last time the part was worked on for final assembly. I also assisted with ancillary bits of functionality that were needed on the mainframe using SPF screens. 1 male handled being the DBA for the project, along with doing database design and handling said documentation for same 1 male 1 female worked on streaming necessary information on to business systems for for work on other projects, and we had a female on loan from Convair who used a graphical digitizing software to change the paper drawings into graphics displayed on computer screen, and another female to do ancillary programs that were needed as modules for the main Work instruction display manager, and we all worked on various bits of software necessary as either modules off the main program or other odds and ends as needed. And we had So, that project had 1 male project manager, and 3 males on software, 4 females on software - and the tech lead was female. So male to female was a 50/50 team effort. And our project wasn’t particularly unusual. WE had about 150 in Data system’s cad/cad back then. I also worked for SAIC later and it wasn’t much different there. Females who went into programming THEN were NATURALLY interested. [Oh, I must say we also had one male mechanical engineer from Convair division and one industrial engineer from Convair, who was also a female who had her degree from Perdue.
I talked to a boss of mine who was about 10 years older than me and he said that when he was learning and first working with computers back in the late 60s and early 70s the places he worked at also had a similar ratio but at minimum 40% female tending towards closer to 50%.
What happened, that turned off the females born later? I suspect what happened in part was that the GAMES designed early on were largely for young boys on the little PCs like VICs, commodore 64 — were almost always shoot-em-up games...and most girls just don’t like those games as well, as say things that were in the minority like the adventure games like Indiana Jones or Monkey Island — you could Think your way around problems rather than shoot your way out of which requires faster reflexes than a lot of girls have. So as time went on, young girls associated computers with geeky little boys and were turned off by them, except to use them for other things like writing — and of course, SOME of the games were fun — but not many that understood the psychology of what apps girls would enjoy playing. Oddly enough today, the most common gamer of on line games is....TA-DA women over 55. [I’m a proud member of that set myself.] But now there are lots of things out there like Farmville. Look we can re-arrange a farm, grow stuff, decorate, visit FV friends, do resource management. Those sorts of games weren’t around nearly as much in the 80s and through the 90s. WWW certainly perked female interest as now many blog etc. So who knows? Maybe more females will naturally turn on to it and can see more personal uses.
Let’s not forget Ada Lovelace is considered the first programmer — the language ADA was named after her - -and of course the mother of COBAL, Admiral Grace Hopper, USN. Who, if memory serves was around in WWII and served long after most retired. And also Hedy LaMarr, a 40s movie star who is an interesting case, who did work which, if memory serves is an important part of computer technology today used in computer communications today. Her wiki entry is fascinating.
I think EVERY kid should be encouraged to try programming out, because it makes them think in a logical sequence. But don’t over push it on kids who are simply not interested. CERTAINLY *no Cash rewards* like this. What about the boy who is keen but poor? HE could well use the money wasted on the girl who just did it for the money and couldn’t care less. IT’s unfair to the boys and encourages the girls for all the wrong reasons.
Sue for discrimination.
Thanks for your story, gem.
Apparently you were born before the “equality of outcomes” became more important than the “equality of opportunity”.
There’s nothing inherently male about programming, but women don’t gravitate toward it in the numbers they once did.
Perhaps it’s due to the games industry, as you say.
Let’s suppose it is. Let’s suppose that boys like shooter games and shooter games sell more than construction games such as Farmville and such.
So?
Is it society’s job to “correct” that? No. Women shouldn’t be denied, but they shouldn’t be coerced, either. I didn’t like working on banking applications, but I did it for a while.
Build a better game. Sounds like a business opportunity !
Hmmm. And since you’ll work for 77 cents on the dollar (or so I hear), sounds like an opportunity for me, too ! ( /sarcasm)
I personally learned to program at a small private college called Coleman College in San Diego(as it turned out another fellow, the DBA on the Tomahawk project, also got his 2nd degree from Coleman.) It was little more than a glorified 1 year trade school in crash computer programming. I also previously had a degree in History, from UCSD — which I don’t at all regret. [And I ran into quite a few other grads from Coleman during my time at GD and at other defense contractors in the area.]
I think also a big problem now is that people don’t realize that you DON’T HAVE to be a whiz at math, necessarily to do programming. In the applications I worked for 17 years I NEVER had to do anything that required more than basic arithmetic, or the VERY simplest of algebra. Not much more than 12 = 6 * X - solve for X. Now I know depending on the type of computer work you may be interested in doing, robotics or firmware or specialized apps, you will need more, but quite a lot of areas you don’t. [If you want to design computer chips and the like you better be good at math too.] Before I entered Coleman, I was looking for a job that paid more than what I was doing — so I saw an ad, thought “computer programming” that pays well and sounds cool. And it was all up and coming, and I just ran into a guy I went to UCSD with, and he had happened to be a computer science major who helped write the UCSD-p system as an undergrad, and he was still in his early 20s and was earning big bucks. So I went down to take the aptitude test. 20 questions basic arithmetic and 20 logic questions of the sort they now longer do on SAT tests, but do do on IQ tests. This is to THIS as That is to “what selection of four answers.” Well, I always kicked ass on those. I think I actually got one of the arithmetic questions wrong because of rushing through, but 20 out of 20 right on the logic business. It was a “welcome to Coleman, sign here.”
So I spent a year there learning to program — they Xfered all my UCSD credits over for general education classes (they didn’t teach anything but programming and a couple of accounting classes. If you wanted an AA or BS you took the distribution requirements for general ed credits elsewhere. ) We all had to take a basic accounting class, and if you were going for a degree you took an extra advanced accounting class. And all accounting is basically glorified arithmetic. They figured a lot of us would be going into programming business applications.
So by teaching introduction programming that perhaps OVER emphasizes math applications it either intimidates or bores girls who aren’t into math — thinking they have to be some sort of calculus expert.
So the type of software kids first learn to write can have an effect too. What sounds like more fun? “Learn python by learning how to program games” or “Learn c++ let’s find prime numbers.” I’ll go with the games, thank you! I did find free online books that could be downloaded to learn programming python with a games approach that could be used by youngsters as young as 10-12 which assume you know NOTHING about programming and there’s also “scratch” that kids can learn to program with when they are as young as 6 — free and hosted by MIT. They concentrate on simple animation projects that are attractive to the eye and not heavily math oriented which focus more on the creative side.
Also women do like graphics design — so starting with html,css dreamweaver projects and all the other things — it’s not a short hop to get interested in learning to program backend stuff like php, javascript, sqlplus etc. The more tools you gradually pick up, the more you can earn. So if approached right and not “frightening the potential fish” by making it sound like all programmers need to be as good at math as civil engineers or something - they *could* potentially get more women interested, if the education is done with the right approach at an early enough age.
And you’re right. We were just happy to have the “Equality of opportunity” now they expect “equality of outcomes” which is just plain WRONG. You need to EARN it. Otherwise you won’t be respected. Personally I have always found it that other WOMEN are more likely to hold women back, because of pettiness or jealousy than MEN holding women back. Sure there are men who think “oh, a woman would never be able to do that” but they are in the minority. I have found that IF you can actually do the work and act professionally, men will accept you as a co-equal in doing the work. What I HATE is when women get slotted in to something they are NOT suited for, or get a higher position then they’ve earned, because then the men (and competent women) wonder “who did she sleep with” and they might have an initial prejudice or wariness about a new woman team member, wondering if you got the same deal to get ahead. But once a man sees that you ARE good, he doesn’t pull the petty crap that a woman would pull. Not ALL women are that way, but they can be a LOT bigger trouble makers in a woman’s career than any man would be.
BTW, my math grades in High school? 2 Cs in the semester grades in Algebra. And straight As (enough to throw the class extra points curve off in 5 different sections) in Geometry — which I loved. Math without numbers, really. Just pretty much straight logic with a few numbers thrown in . Back then you could get into UCSD with just 2 math classes, now you need Algebra II at least. Then I took freshman calculus for dummies. Got an F, repeated then got C, C, D (on differentials. [we were on academic quarters. didn’t pass the year long class with any academic glory (although on the 2nd part of the class did just miss a B by a few points, which kinda ticked me off! If I knew I was going to be that close, I’d have studied harder!) So considering what a lousy student of algebra I was, and given I only had 2 years of High school Math, I did alright. My ‘rents didn’t stress ‘cause they always knew I wasn’t going into civil engineering! But there you go - I was great at geometry, because it was all proofs and logic - and fine at basic arithmetic — and that’s all I really needed. Logic, and math an 8th grader could do.
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