The blogosphere was talking about getting women in technology recently[1]. I propose that we do our part and try to recruit more women to /prog/. Any ideas where to start?
Close your eyes and visualize a /prog/ with only women on it. Realize that it would look exactly as it does now. You may now open your eyes at your leisure.
The real question is how to rid /prog/ of most of the men boys.
I don't see what all this nonsense is about. If women wish to visit /hell/, then I say let them! Don't call those in the technology sector sexist just because the girls are too busy getting liberal arts degrees to care about programming or computers.
I don't see the point in diversifying either, what exactly would a female bring to programming that only a female could? I'm not saying they can't bring interesting discussion relating to programming, I'm merely saying that when it gets down to the bits and bytes, gender does not matter.
>what exactly would a female bring to programming that only a female could?
A vagina.
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Anonymous2010-08-29 22:00
The reason women aren't fond of programming is because programming is all about imperative "how-to" knowledge. It's about formulating and thinking about how to get shit done. Women invariably are unable to get shit done without bitching and moaning and complaining, so they make horrible programmers magicians.
>>9
/prog/ is about bitching, moaning and complaining about shit that actually matters.
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Anonymous2010-08-29 23:08
Just about every tech forum or IRC channel has what I call "cyber beggars", people who are enthusiastic about technology and want help from people on how to get good at using it. This can be a good thing or it can be a bad thing depending on how much work people are willing to put in to study this stuff. The worst of these are people who just say "teach me how to program", "teach me how to hack", "teach me how to install XXX Linux". The better of these kind of people are the ones who simply ask advice and then follow up on it on their own. This builds communities of users who help each other. Surprisingly you can go a very long way to becoming tech literate by begging on public forums. But a person is really serious about this they are going to take classes to learn this stuff.
>>11
You don't need to beg or take classes to get very good at most things in this domain. All you need to do it read the right books and practice a lot. You can find the right books by understanding what you need to find, knowing how to use a search engine, and possibly asking someone who is more skilled for some advice, however one can usually find what they're looking for without bothering other people. It's a bit sad that some people always ask stupid questions that could have been answered had they just used google or some other search engine.
I also didn't mean to say that asking others is a bad thing for specific questions, however for the good majority of questions you can have, most have already been answered (you can search for them), or they can be found by reading the documentation, standards, books, source code, etc. However, some questions may be obscure enough that you might want to ask some expert in some subdomain for help, however such questions are usually never generic newbie ones.
>>24
Good. Now you must leave her so that she may start a thread here.
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Anonymous2010-08-31 3:33
My girlfriend is Windows-only. Well, technically you can run 3D Custom Girl in a VM, but I prefer to reboot since she looks better anti-aliased with the native video drivers.
I'll just jump the shark. I feel sick and irritated today, so I won't pretend political correctness.
Fuck this feminist, sexist shit.
First, I am the most orderly developer you could ever meet. My desk is absolutely clean. Everything has a well defined technical purpose there. Whenever I leave, those purposes cease to exist so I eagerly remove or put away those objects. I could walk in any day, pick up my desktop and get seated anywhere else.
"computer games, science-fiction memorabilia and junk food"?! Fuck that, who cares about that shit anyway? I might have a clean mug, but I ain't never have no fucking plant. How could I be the nit-picking detail-obsessing code freak I am if I was careless with my physical environment in the functional domain? (I don't give a shit about aesthetics, most of the time.) Some of my colleagues' desks seem to be covered with pig shit, and I don't cease chiding them for it.
I treat my female coworkers with respect, I politely discuss technical stuff with them if they feel like. I do make sexist jokes if I was able to get to know them sufficiently before, like any healthy male. They mostly laugh and if they don't, I apologize and tune it down. They don't refrain from spicy topics, we even discuss that kind. My wife's male coworkers behave the same way and I have no problem with that. American overdriven political correctness shall get the fuck off my lawn.
"Missing out on best career opportunities?" Well, concentrate on the fucking task at hand, not irrelevant details. Suppose I'd like to work in a fuckin' bakery but hate that the clothes are white (which doesn't mean in the least that they are clean). So who will start a crusade for me? If the circumstances of your otherwise coveted dream-job are accidental, try to change them. If they are intrinsic, live with them or leave.
I was never hostile towards women in IT. Women consider sexist jokes repugnant in conference presentations? Well, I don't go to no fucking conference, because I hate to travel, I hate to spend money, I hate the crowd. Networking is a lie if you don't work with your peers on actual projects for longer times. Presentations are slow, linear, non-searchable. Give me a fucking transcript, post it to /prog/, and I'm happy. Can't recommend anything else to women either.
In my college class we had this beautiful girl with huge boobs. She was smarter than any guy in the whole class. Did we envy her? Did we hate her? Hell no. We respected her and we constantly tried to bring her in discussions for her insights. Did we talk about her body among ourselves? Hell yes, we're no monks!
The fact is, most girls cannot not care about stuff that's irrelevant in computer science / software engineering, and also lack the necessary attention to detail. They are simply not interested in it. Guess what, they have no place here, just like I could never be a historian or translator or lawyer or doctor, because I hate meeting new people. I'm not "enforcing" this or some shit like that, I simply accept that most girls are like this for whatever reason and I'm not trying to force them into IT. I'd rather be happy if some guys left software development. (Yeah, yeah, I'm conflating IT with compsci / sweng, who cares now.)
I practically don't shave, but I'm clean. I never ever stink. I'm not attractive to women I guess, but I don't give a flying fuck. I've got a beautiful, intelligent, loving wife; I don't need to pretend. I wear sandals with socks because shoes are much too warm in the summer, and without socks I sweat like a pig. Don't like it? Have a good laugh; I don't care. I put on (clean) clothing items that are on the top of the respective stacks in my wardrobe. Are you a female who'd like to work as a software developer but you feel you cannot work with me because of my inconsistent clothing? Be a fucking fashion model, then. I never treat, I never even feel an urge to treat female colleagues negatively because they aren't slender, young, or clothe "gray".
There is no problem with girls in IT. They're mostly not here because they don't want to. Pick any female-dominated non-sex-worker job. Yay, who is protecting the poor shunned males? American media is blowing this shit out of proportion again. (Or if the surveys are right, then american girls are out of their minds, which might be true anyways, with requiring an expensive as hell diamond ring for wedding, or so I read. WHAT THE FUCK?!)
The whole issue is being overcompensated now. On some technical forum I've seen somebody ask for advice on whatever. Another user replied with a link to women.debian.org. What the fuck? Do we have "men.debian.org"? If you're no different wrt. technical matters, then you need no different website. If you need different treatment, then don't be surprised if you're treated differently.