When I was in HS I held a couple of classes for an introduction to programming and programming in C for Engineering undergrads with not background whatsoever in programming. The University Course required them to have a background in C but no formal classes where offered (shitty school system) so they had to learn everything on their own or attend a private tutoring class such as mine.
Anyway.
From personal experience I can say that learning the very basics of programming paradigms such as OOp and specifically functional programming resulted in quite a difficult challenge for the majority of the girls and the minority of the boys. Obviously there were exceptions.....
I don't really see why would a female programmer be worse than a male programmer. A programmer is determined by his natural skill, time spent learning and knowledge accumulated as well as fine reasoning and logic skills. If someone is determined enough to learn it, they should be able to master it. The only explanation one could find for why it's less common to have good female programmers would probably be because it's not a "girly" job and less of them may be interested in it.
I've known a couple of half decent female programmers. They weren't god-like programmers who could do the work of 10 normal developers and whip together the fastest, bug-free, and concise code given an afternoon--you probably know the type. But they were better than average, at least.
Many of the males that program make programming very unattractive for women. Also why get a computer to do shit for you when you can just get a guy to do it.
Name:
Anonymous2010-08-01 12:31
In HS there was this female nerd (as in 5 hours of study a day nerd) who was always just a few marks less than me. She was quite annoying indeed. I had to revise more than often just so she wouldn't surpass me.
Anyway, when it can to programming she was a downright noob. She was so shit she couldn't even figure out the problems in pseudo code. Well for the matter you wouldn't believe she got A grades in CS if you weren't in class with her because she was pretty much a noob in everything computer related including using a word processor.
Then in UNI there was pretty much (no female of the few present) with above average grades even in mostly theory courses with almost no hint of programming.
>>16
CS is not about programming. CS is not about computers and it is not about operating a computer. CS is an applied form of mathematics. CS is magic. CS is about conjuring the spirits of the computer with your spells.