Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions | Hacker News Reader

Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

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222 pointsrvivek140 comments

That is pretty awesome.

I remember back in high school in the Soviet Union (then, what became one of the ex-Soviet Union republics, much like Georgia), there were quite a few girls in my class who were doing well above and beyond what boys would be in math, informatics (what we called computer science) and physics. Remember asking a girl for help to understand integrals.

So there is something to it in that part of the world. And yeah I think strong role models help. One of the girls' father was a programmer that helped probably.

And other aspect, I think they didn't have as many stupid and bad role models to look at -- no teen pop models, no Snapchat, our school didn't have cliques, not as much backstabbing. There was not any emphasis on sports as extra-curricular activities (How I know to compare, you might ask? Well I actually went to a year to a US High School as well so got a pretty good first hand view of both sides).

Heck for a while someone invited kids from our school to join a sports riffle club (or target shooting, whatever shooting .22 riffles sport is, always wondered if it was KGB or army looking for snipers to train...). And even there, half of those that joined were girls. And they hit the targets better and most consistently than us boys because they were more dedicated and we just goofed around more.

Maybe I am being nostalgic here, but I think there is something to the differences in culture. Although I wish I had a better idea exactly what it is.

Some of it may be traceable to the enormous number of Soviet men who died in WWII, prompting intense state support for single mothers and allowing the remaining men to avoid responsibility and be spoiled, essentially. This is mentioned briefly in this article if you're interested - http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/all-the-...

Maybe, or maybe it was the basic understand that the communist dream can only come true if everyone, men and women, equally work towards it. In my parents' generation (I'm born in the GDR) there was no debate about feminism. Women were expected to work, childcare was available, it was free and it catered to people who had to work 40h/week. Sometimes I was in kindergarten from 8am to 8pm.

I still remember how I did not get jokes about inferiority of girls when we emigrated to Western Germany - I simply had never ever heard one before.

What speaks against your theory is that men died on all sides in WWII, but in the West (read: democratic societies), women's rights developed in a distinctively different/slower way.

PS: Yes, it was not all rosy, childcare was dual-use, it was also used for indoctrination of the youngest and even to some degree to control/check on the parents.

EDIT: It's probably revealing that my initial impulse is to consider this story as irrelevant because it focuses on the gender. Yes, after 26 years in the West I understand why it is relevant.

Communist revolutions threw out the old order entirely, including the part where women were considered inferior to men. There was never such a revolutionary change in the West.

Writing here to support this. Is all true.

I grew up in a very communist country, where the gender didn't matter, men and women were expected to be treated equally. The misoginism was barely noticeable. Salary didn't pay attention to sex, were really equally paid.

Leter I emmigrated in Germany. I was tottaly surprised how misoginist the society here is. So much, that there are laws that enforce the equality between man and woman. This is now so much tilted towards women, that man are most of the time suppressed, just because they are men. This is also not healthy, but, hey, we lived in matriarchy before, so we will survive just as well.

I can't find the link now, but I remember reading about a paper (probably through Marginal Revolution) that showed that, in the GDR, because men and women worked equally and earned equally (in the general case, party leaders aside), a lot of cultural gender equality just became the norm. E.g. men couldn't impress women with nice cars or any of the other status symbols that are so common in the West, and had to 'convince potential mates' through their personalities and actions.

So a lot of the gender roles of the West were basically obliterated, i.e. there was no real stay-at-home mother in the GDR, all mothers were working mothers. Seems to fit your experience, and the GP as well.

Also, there were almost no nice cars to be had.

Social signalling is relative to the things available for that society. Even if there were no "nice cars" available by your standards, there still were "impressive" cars, relative to the society in question.

I used to live there. East Germans got West German TV. They knew about West German cars.

(And in any case, the range of cars available was much more compressed. Thus there was less differentiation at the high range.)

No I think except for the politicians and military most people just got the standard model of Trabant or nothing.

You could also get a Wartburg, a Moskvitch or a Lada, and a few others. Probably also Skoda, but I don't remember hearing about them back then.

The big brass were driving Volvos. They were nice cars, but Sweden was seen as sufficiently neutral and socialist-like.

>E.g. men couldn't impress women with nice cars or any of the other status symbols that are so common in the West, and had to 'convince potential mates' through their personalities and actions

Is this gender equality? It sounds, and it may just be because you simplified it to fit into a single line, that the men were still having to impress the women. Wouldn't gender equality have been the end of there being a set gender having to impress the other?

> there was no debate about feminism. Women were expected to work

There is something to it. In the soviet era, those three girls would have been praised for their success and presented as a proof that the world (or at least the commie world :)) is a fair place where everybody can succeed with enough determination and work. This was intended to send the message that women are expected and welcome members of the workforce and made for a reasonably sane atmosphere.

OTOH, the author here starts with complaining how the world isn't fair, despite having a counterexample at hand, and then follows with bitching about Y chromosomes and discrimination before even naming those girls. WTF. I certainly wouldn't want to go into environment where nobody cares about my work and I'm basically a tool used by sad people to make others feel sad.

Isn't "everybody can succeed with enough determination and work" the American Dream in a nutshell? (not talking about how it works out in practice, since that's not the point in your "soviet era" scenario either)

The American Dream of success is different. In the US, for various reasons (probably including mobility & lack of local extended family) part of the dream is to have Mom stay home with Kids while Dad works 40 hrs/week to afford the House, Car, and TV. Those are different contours than the more communal ideals espoused in the Soviet Union or even most of Europe today.

This isn't exactly my theory, this is something fairly well documented that I have come across in general reading.

>men died on all sides in WWII

I'm not sure if you're aware of how far the scale of deaths in the Soviet Union exceeded any Western country - East Germany was probably close, which is an interesting correlation: were there any communist countries without major gender imbalances?

I don't think many people were killed in e.g. Slovenia (and the rest of ex-Yugoslavia). Yet we had communism and almost perfect sex equality.

The overall number of World War II casualties in Slovenia was thus of around 7.2% of the pre-war population, which is above the Yugoslav average, and among the highest percentages in Europe.

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovene_Lands_in_World_War_II

It also probably had to do with religion. The US was heavily religious compared to the Soviet block. And religion usually puts women in their place behind men.

As someone who has lived in western Germany all his life but has relatives that lived in the GDR I have come to a similar conclusion. The system of the GDR was horrible but there was an inherent gender equality (mostly due to pragmatic concerns of extending the workforce imo). The west had the "luxury" of role-casting women as the stay at home mom. Married women used to require their husbands permission for quite a lot for quite some time in western Germany (they couldn't open a bank account until the late 60s for example iirc).

In the GDR equality between the genders was supposed to be a done thing, so no one talked about feminism.

Women did work. But we had few women in management and leadership positions.

What speaks against your theory is that men died on all sides in WWII, but in the West (read: democratic societies), women's rights developed in a distinctively different/slower way.

The Soviet Union had by far the MOST male casualties of any side in the war. 30 MILLION people died, far more than anywhere else.

https://www.rt.com/news/265603-ww2-losses-interactive-video/

Another explanation could be that during the hardships of the post-Communist era everyone was on their own, men and women equally. In Russia, the percentage of women in management positions is still the highest in the world (http://www.reuters.com/article/us-womens-day-business-idUSKC...).

The economy was so inefficient that they had to utilize everything they had to sustain it. There is also communist narrative about equality.

Smallbore is the sport you're talking about.

The Soviets were very good at it and made some fine rifles, I used to use an old Vostok in high school, cheaper than a German Anshutz, and almost as good.

Ah yes. Thanks! Remember the arm belt. And a bunch of other technques we learned (the full breath then stopping at a half breath, etc...)

Found a picture even:

http://d2dt9vg05qkweq.cloudfront.net/media/1534055/web_joe-f...

(notice the arm belt).

We had a nice facility. When it rained we used air rifles inside for practice.

First thing I noticed in that picture was that the rifleman is left handed. As a casual marksman, using club rifles, I'm often frustrated by the bolt being on the wrong side (catering for all the right-handers).

We had a shooting range in our school basement (and it was a bog-standard Soviet school). Those were the best lessons ever.

Competitive coding contests are in a way similar to chess or olympiads and it is a sport in itself.

For all the years I have spent and observed on topcoder, Google Code Jam and others I haven't seen a lot of women coders reaching the top, not even from Russia. So what these girls are achieving is a big deal and should inspire many. It is a little disappointing to see comments like they didn't crush because they didn't get the first prize. Consistent winning of multiple contests is definitely something and they are doing it pretty well.

I think most of the negative comments are here, because of the sexist tone of the author of this article. What these girls have archived is something we should celebrate, not as a victory for the sexes, but as a sign that more and more young people are learning to code.

Exactly. It's good to see that young people today are taking interest in coding, be it a girl or a boy that doesn't matter.

Basically they are the Polgár's of programming competition (for those who don't know, Susan, Sofia and Judit Polgár are chess players who were during their teens chess prodigy and some of the strongest women in the world. Judit Polgár retired last year, but she is still the only woman chess player who made it to the top 10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r).

In both cases they were exposed very young to their respective crafts, and I wish there was during my teens (in the nineties) an option at school to learn programming. That was in France and I don't think it has changed since then.

> I wish there was during my teens (in the nineties) an option at school to learn programming. That was in France and I don't think it has changed since then.

That's funny, because I learned programming basics (and was self-taught from there) at school at a time when there was no formal curriculum and our teacher was a CS student who just figured he'd do a few lessons on that because what the heck.

I'm pretty sure that nowadays IT classes in my country are standardized enough that this wouldn't fly. Also, today nobody would dare hiring a CS student with no formal teaching qualifications instead of a professional teacher whose IT competence doesn't extend beyond MS Office. Meh.

There's something that continuously goes unsaid in the US tech industry where we do massive amounts of soul-searching about the lack and/or poor treatment of women in STEM: the ex-republics of the Soviet Union, while they have plenty of other problems, do not have this specific problem.

my personal observation over the years says that the vast majority of new female engineers have come from foreign countries. Or are American citizens who immigrated here after middle school.

We're celebrating a narrowing gender gap, but American women seem to be largely left out.

I wonder which of these other nations are. Perhaps their engineering cultures are more gender-egalitarian than ours.

The best explanation I've seen is that in countries with high economic insecurity, people are motivated to work at lucrative careers with low barriers to entry, despite their lack of inherent interest. Programming is top of the list almost everywhere. The survival instinct surely is egalitarian.

But in countries with less economic insecurity this motivation to work in a field without an inherent interest simply isn't there. Perhaps this motivation is different across genders in wealthier countries (men are more likely to go into fields they don't like), or men simply like technical fields at higher rates.

Equally as important, perhaps they do not have it drilled into them that beauty is all they should aim for. Everything they see is that women should be (model level) beautiful. Should flaunt their women-ness.

Advertising, makeup, dolls, television, films play a bigger part than the so called sexism that exists in engineering cultures

The fact that makeup exists speaks a lot about our culture and how it views women.

Are you saying makeup doesn't exist in Eastern Europe?

Well, it exists everywhere, but so does sexism.

So... it doesn't have anything to do with our culture at all, then?

Human culture, I guess if you step back far enough. I say culture because I don't think makeup is tied to genetics.

What evidence do you have that makeup is actually linked to sexism at all?

That women wear it daily while it doesn't even cross most guy's minds. Also that women wear it, and are expected to wear it, to look better while, again, the concept rarely crosses most men's minds.

If it doesn't cross guys' minds but it does cross their minds, isn't it a reasonable explanation that they personally notice the effects and like how it looks on them?

Culture does not have a view, as abstract concepts cannot themselves conceptualize

Since it exists in every culture that has ever been known to man, it's not actually possible to draw conclusions in the normal way, by comparing a culture with makeup to one without. You can make claims about what it would mean for a culture not to use makeup, but if you do you should realize that those claims are, in their entirety, just some random junk you made up.

I was inferring global human culture, we didn't really develop in vacuums. And pardon my wording, I meant species, but I felt that'd imply that women were biologically disposed to wear makeup, which obviously I don't believe is true(maybe social factors caused by biology, but none still relevant in the 21st century).

More importantly, you're right though, I have zero evidence backing this up, or going against it. I just don't feel like it's very right.

Even in male dominated fields this applies.

There are pink hammers, pink calculators, and plenty of other pink tools that would otherwise not be gendered. A black handled hammer isn't masculine, it's gender neutral, it's functional.

You can't simply be a woman, who is in the tech industry, you have to be a "woman in tech"

Totally anecdotal, but I seem to meet disproportionately many woman engineers from Russia and Iran.

It's not really about egalitarianism per se, it's about what roles women are expected/allowed to take, and what roles men are expected/allowed to take. The decision that engineering or programming is a "male" role is a fairly arbitrary one that we've made in the US.

In some countries programming is seen as a good job for women because it's an indoor job, maybe you can be in a predominantly female environment, it involves typing, it's not that prestigious so you're not fighting to climb a career ladder. It's a commodity job so you can enter and leave the workforce as necessary to deal with family issues.

None of these things is really about the work that needs to be done, unless we're talking about work that absolutely requires upper body strength. It's all just framing, perception, almost marketing. That's why I find the gender essentialist stuff nonsense. Why is being a top chef a male job and a home cook a female job? Because one requires bluster? You will often find that in countries with fabulously successful women programmers, mathematicians, scientists, engineers, these jobs are just considered jobs rather than Magical Jobs for Extraordinarily Smart Ninja Rockstars.

Weirdly enough, these foreign female engineers never complain about "culture problems" even though they make up the majority of female engineers.

But just because you don't hear them complain doesn't mean that there aren't problems.

They definitely do; I've had plenty of private conversations with non-American women in CS about sexism. I think Americans are just more likely to be openly vocal about it.

There was an interesting Norwegian documentary that looked into this[1]. The overall observation was that societies where women were extremely free, usually ended up with the same gender distributions as societies in which they were less free (e.g. few women in STEM).

By contrast, societies where women were only somewhat free, the number of women in STEM exploded (although I don't recall if it was quite 50/50). Without considering other factors, it almost seemed like some degree of social pressure to stay out of STEM was necessary to get the most women to be interested in it.

---

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LRdW8xw70

Was there extra social pressure to stay out of STEM in in the less free societies?

A couple plausible alternative explanations that quickly come to mind are greater reliance on aptitude testing and having more motivation to get a job that granted more freedoms.

(I don't have any idea if those are true, it just seems that there could be lots of things that would explain the difference)

Came here to post that documentary (the entire series of which is freely available, btw[1]). I think you misinterpreted it slightly, however. The documentary presents evidence (strongly denied by the Norwegian social scientists interviewed) that male and female brains are wired differently, to be good at and enjoy different activities. It even goes so far as to show studies that link receiving an excessive amount of the opposite sex's hormones during prenatal development to developing the stereotypical interests of the opposite sex early in childhood.

When a very egalitarian, gender neutral society like Norway exhibits more "traditional" gender distribution in the workforce than a less egalitarian one, the Norwegian social scientists thought this must be because of institutional sexism, or cultural brainwashing reinforcing gender roles, or whatever other excuse you've heard a million times. The documentary instead posits the idea that in a society where you are truly free to do what makes you happy, maybe it's normal that less women than men would want to be engineers and less men than women would want to be teachers or nurses.

Whereas in "somewhat free" societies that have higher numbers of women in "male" jobs, these societies are usually much less affluent than, say, Norway. So of course people will end up doing jobs that they may not particularly enjoy, they have to to survive. It's not mild social pressure "daring" women to go against the grain or anything that could be imported, it's economic pressure forcing people to take whatever jobs are available (or indeed, having jobs assigned to them by a planning committee).

Humans are adaptable, of course. When an intelligent person is forced (directly or indirectly) into a role that they may not have chosen themself, they will most likely learn to be competent. And both intellectual outliers and people (as mentioned above) with prenatal hormone mismatch can account for people that do exceptionally well in a role dominated by the other gender. But the question is, are you really making society better if you are forcing average people into certain roles to fulfill your political goals? Or are you increasing the amount of unhappiness in the world and perhaps even driving down the average competency in that field?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjernevask

If this holds up to scrutiny maybe a better way forward would be to try to increase the status and pay jobs that typically attract women?

Note: I am not saying girls shouldn't code, quite on the contrary I'd hope that all kids, regardless of gender, get more practical subjects earlier in school: coding, woodworking, low-voltage electronics, mechanics, cooking & housework etc etc.

This "nurses or teachers" stereotype is awful. There's plenty of women who are both smart and not people's person.

Pretending that there is this one axis of "free vs. non-free" and that Norway represents best how people behave free of constraint is ridiculous. You are doing the mental gymnastics you accuse your opponents of, in service a thinly veiled promotion of the "men work, women care" theory.

I have to say that while the Scandinavian countries are seen as bastions of gender equality, my personal experience has shown some extraordinary sexism there in academia, far far far more than I've ever experienced in mathematics or physics in the United States. Like men straight-out telling women they don't need to get that science PhD because they'll just drop out to have babies anyway, since all women just want to be mothers above anything else, or a friend being explicitly denied a grad fellowship because her slacker male colleague "has a family to support" so deserves it more (despite fewer publications, fewer grants, behind in the program, stopped showing up to the lab for a while). Scandinavians have an inflated view of their own gender equity (and so does everyone else).

Humans are adaptable.... look at all those women who were competent teachers or nurses even though they'd far prefer something else, forced by economic pressure to take the only jobs allowed...

Is it largely the industry's fault though, or some mix of the dominant culture and the education system that sets a trajectory at a much earlier age which is very hard to reverse? Women are only about 18% of the computer science majors.

EDIT. NPR had an interesting perspective on this, thought I'd share: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...

Coming from an ex-communist country to the US as a 25 year old I was shocked that the whole "Wife stays at home to take care of kids" is actually seen as a real thing to do in 2016. I was certain this was something that only happens in old sitcoms.

Assuming it's actually a problem and not an outgrowth of womens' preferences.

> It might even be a better world, ingrained with the idea that programming is just another skill to be mastered through persistence — with or without a Y chromosome.

I have never heard anyone, in my entire life, suggest otherwise. Sure it's cool that they win competitions but by consistently focus on women, treat them differently, create special groups etc is basically fighting sexism with sexism.

If we shouldn't focus on the sex but the achievements this sort of article is exactly the opposite of that. I am confident that these "women can also" articles/groups/company messages creates more sexism than it solves.

Why can't we just treat each other equally?

While on the topic of girls at Olympiads, one should also add Lisa Sauermann of Germany who is the most successful participant of all time at the International Math Olympiad. http://www.maa.org/news/math-news/germanys-lisa-sauermann-wi...

well not really http://official.imo2011.nl/participant_r.aspx?id=19624 but still impressive

Ok, second most successful after 2015.

While still on the topic of girls at Olympiads, I was recently appalled that a European Girls’ Mathematical Olympiad (https://www.egmo.org/) exists. There were usually plenty of girls at IMO, so I really don't see the point of this.

Great, inspiring story. I hope that news outlets continue to shine the light on people who defy the perceived status quo of who can or cannot be a successful coder.

If you were to tell Mari that girls don’t look like engineers, women can’t code as well as men, or women aren’t as competitive as men, she’d raise a skeptical eyebrow.

Actually, these girls do fit the typical criteria. They are Georgian, just like several women world Chess champions. Georgia is part of the former USSR, where women were pushed for decades to achieve things in math and science and intellectual pursuits.

Having said that, I'd love to see just one or two young women that look and dress like those very attractive actresses (as one blogger said, "present as feminine" https://medium.com/@sailorhg/coding-like-a-girl-595b90791cce...) and yet were strong programmers or physicists or something. It seems the only look that I've ever seen for women who are hardcore into math/programming is nerdy. Perhaps the feedback from appearing a certain way discourages women from pushing themselves in cerebral activities, or perhaps there is a hidden variable that explains this correlation.

In my own university graduate program, there was exactly one exception.

I know it's not politically correct to bring up a woman's "visual style" when we are celebrating women coders, but someone should point out the obvious correlation, and ask why it's happening. Where are the real James Bond Christmas Joneses? Notably, the public reaction was disbelief:

Reception of the film and its casting choices were mixed. The film became the first in the Bond series to win a Golden Raspberry when Denise Richards was chosen as "Worst Supporting Actress" at the 1999 Razzie Awards. Richards and Brosnan were also nominated for "Worst Screen Couple".[3] Despite stating that she liked the role because it was "brainy", "athletic", and had "depth of character, in contrast to Bond girls from previous decades",[4] Richards was criticised as not being credible in the role of a nuclear scientist.[5][6] She was ranked as one of the worst Bond girls of all time by Entertainment Weekly in 2008.[7]

Because people only talked about my clothes, not math, if I wore a dress to grad school. Now that I don't get asked if it's laundry day or why I'm wearing that or if I have a date or what special event is happening, and I don't get mistaken for a secretary, I wear dresses far more often. Simple matter of energy management -- looking pretty in a university grad program is way more trouble than it's worth.

Wow, this was really inspiring. There are probably hundreds of girls/women like this, but they don't make headlines as often. This is awesome.

The youngest sister may even grow up in a world where she doesn't have the same barriers as most women today.

Could this be a sign of positive change?

There are hundreds of boys like this as well. Geniuses get born everywhere, in different bodies, places, social strata etc. The fact that many of them get lesser chances to contribute to the world is an outrageous abuse of the most precious resource that the humanity has, regardless of why it happens.

And how do you propose we fix that, and more importantly, does your solution scale?

If you can fix that, you can fix any human problem. It is like the P=NP of human problems.

> The youngest sister may even grow up in a world where she doesn't have the same barriers as most women today.

If there are fewer barriers, then you might see growth. Unfortunately this is difficult to tell. Some surveys show growth, others don't:

S.O. survey respondents 5.8% women (2016) - http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016

S.O. survey respondents 5.8% women (2015) - http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2015

Google: 17% women (2014) - http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/05/28/google-release...

Facebook: 15% women (2014) - http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/25/facebook-diversity/

12.33% women engineers in tech (2013) - http://qz.com/143967/the-tech-industrys-woman-problem-statis...

10-12% developers are women in L.A. (2012) - http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorikozlowski/2012/03/22/women-i...

International Game Developers Association reported women went from from 11.5% to 22% between 2009 and 2014(?) - http://www.gamespot.com/articles/percentage-of-female-develo...

Why?

In addition to there being fewer women in the pipeline for tech jobs, it's been said that a good percentage of the ones that would've stayed in the workforce were harassed, etc. and left: http://www.vox.com/2016/1/17/10781366/women-technology-sexua...

And then there is the wage inequality problem, shown in the stack overflow survey results- see "Salary by Gender" in http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016

Possibly men are more likely to hire men, which could cause problems with growth in women's share of the market.

Of course there are also problems like having fewer role models when there are fewer in the industry, not having government and schools enabling women via scholarships, funding, etc. as much as they could, or possibly it's genuine lack of interest, but I don't think that's the case.

Development was invented by women, and it would be great if they made up a greater percentage: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/in-celebration-of-...

Why do you consider a role model in a field of endeavour unrelated to one's sex should be the same sex as oneself? Isn't that just the sort of sexism that you're attempting to avoid??

It seems either women are so different that they need female-centric approaches to programming and aspects, including their role models, must be tailored specifically for them. In which case, that's surely the reason there aren't so many women in tech - that it just doesn't follow the female-centric mores. Or, women and men are alike (ie fit within the same spectrum of abilities, insight and such) when it comes to programming and we should just get on with it and stop pretending people need specific help because of their sex?

Let's celebrate the achievement of these -people-

Not these "men" or "women." These people. Stop tokenising gender for your own agenda.

I've taken the liberty to rewrite the article in literal sentences so people can enjoy it without the opinionated flourish.

The interview was preserved as-is, though I added speaker labels to make it clearer who is talking.

-------------

TITLE: These Three Young Sisters Perform Very Well in Programming Competitions

5 min read

Mari would be skeptical of a claim that females are not good at engineering, programming, or competition. Mari, 11, has two sisters who she thinks are good at programming and competition. Elene Machaidze, 18, and her sister Ani, 16, take part in coding competitions. They win more than most other competitors. Other competitors are often men. They have medals from many prestigious programming tournaments such as International Olympiads in Informatics (IOI).

The three sisters live in Georgia. Georgia is a European country with a population equal to just 11% of the state of California. They are well known for being better than their opponents at programming. They are growing up with supportive parents, teachers, and mentors who instill confidence in them.

Elene demonstrated her success in programming first. Mari and Ani have her as a role model. Many successful programmers are male.

We sat down with Elene to learn more about their story and how they achieved so much at such a young age.

Interviewer: “So how long have you all been coding?”

Elene: “Mari just started learning programming last year. Ani has been coding for four or five years now. I started coding when I was in sixth grade. I joined a programming club called Mzuiri. I just graduated from Komarovi school, which focuses on math, physics and computer science. Ani is going there now, and Mari will go there next year.”

Interviewer: “What drew you all to coding?”

Elene: “Our parents actually went to Komarovi school too. My dad is a programmer, and he works at a bank as a security analyst. We were exposed to math and computer science at a very early age, and we all love coding and participating in contests just for fun. I do want to major in computer science, and eventually work as a programmer like my dad. ”

Interviewer: “How many programming contests have you competed in? And how many medals have you won?”

Elene: “I’ve participated in tons of contests and olympiads. But the most significant ones were:

IOI CEOI IZhO GeOI Google Code Jam HackerRank Women’s Cup Facebook Hacker Cup USACO COCI There were more too. I’ve won 2 bronze medals at IOI, 1 bronze at CEOI, 2 silvers at IZhO. Mari, Ani and I competed in HackerRank Women’s Cup as a team last year, and we ranked third place! Some companies that sponsored the event even sent us a letter after the contest, but I had to tell them that we’re too young right now to work for them.

I might call them when I’m a student or graduated. I’m applying to colleges. I took a gap year after high school, and I was actually teaching programming to 7th to 9th graders. I often point my students toHackerRank challenges to learn how to code. It’s a great tool to supplement learning in a very hands-on way. I love how the problems are arranged on the platform. I’ve been using it for years, back when it was first called Interview Street.”

Interviewer: “Wow, that’s incredible. You’re getting job opportunities before college! And even 11-year-old Mari joined the contest?”

Elene: “Yeah, Women’s Cup was one of her first contests.

We all worked together as a team. I did most of the coding, but Mari and Ani helped me think through the problems.

It was a lot of fun, and we were really surprised we won 3rd place. It was an awesome feeling.”

Interviewer: “How many programming languages do you know? What is your specialty?”

Elene: “It’s funny, I actually started coding in Pascal in 6th grade. It’s such a useless language today, but that’s how I started. Then, I learned C++ and I’ve been coding in C++ ever since. More recently, I’ve been learning Python as well.”

Interviewer: “Do you ever feel like you’re treated differently in forums, discussions or by men in general? Do you feel like you have to prove yourself more so?”

Elene: “Some boys definitely think that they’re better than me just because I’m a girl. I might have felt bad about that years ago, but I don’t feel that way today. I’ve participated in many olympiads and competitions.

And even though there are many more boys than girls, I was one of the first few girls on the Georgian team in IOI and I was the second Georgian girl to win a medal.

The boys don’t say anything anymore. Generally, women are strong and I think more women should code.”

Interviewer: “Yes, we agree. And how do your sisters feel being one of the few female programmers? What advice do you give other girls who want to be great at solving coding challenges like you?”

Elene: “For coding challenges, like the upcoming Women’s CodeSprint, remember that if you get stuck, try to think outside of the box. I like to remember the 9 dots puzzle because it’s a great example of thinking differently.

For those of you who aren’t familiar, the 9 dot puzzle requires you to connect 9 dots by drawing four straight, continuous lines that pass through each of the 9 dots without lifting your pen. Most people think to connect the boundaries, which makes the puzzle seemingly impossible. The only way you can solve this is by drawing the lines outside of the square. Hence, thinking outside of the box.

Anyone can code well if they work hard and are willing to open their minds to solving problems differently.

As for my sisters, if a guy says girls can’t code as well as guys, then my sisters just say “well, my sister wins competitions.” Anytime anyone says you can’t code, it’s all the more reason to roll up your sleeves and work hard. Remember, if you work hard, you can achieve anything and prove them all wrong.”

Thanks for this, actually. I'm not sure I love the term "propaganda" used on puff pieces because of its denotation (I think it's a little much and yeah I'm not disagreeing that you sounded a little "butthurt"), but I'm very glad that you rewrote the essay into a more easily read, more accessible, more neutral format.

I wish internet-based journalism promoted writing like your rewrite. It's too bad neutral writing that isn't flamebait doesn't gather attention.

(And this would have gotten way more attention here if you omitted the "butthurt" part from the beginning. HN readers love it when you're nice to other people.)

Noted, I will update my post with that in mind. It really was pointless anyway, nobody should care what I think of the original piece. I just get annoyed when I read something like this; I would rather just read the statements, but people want to make you think it proves their point.

Thank you for the feedback.

This is such an amazing story!

>As for my sisters, if a guy says girls can’t code as well as guys, then my sisters just say “well, my sister wins competitions.”

>I’ve won 2 bronze medals at IOI, 1 bronze at CEOI, 2 silvers at IZhO. Mari, Ani and I competed in HackerRank Women’s Cup as a team last year, and we ranked third place! Some companies that sponsored the event even sent us a letter after the contest, but I had to tell them that we’re too young right now to work for them.

What records did they crush? They didn't even win any of the competitions they mentioned.

It's annoying when the subject of an article is interesting enough to warrant attention but the headline is sensationalized regardless.

If the article is great, then I don't see the harm.

It's worse when an article is completely misleading and the content/subject is underwhelming. This is definitely not the worst example of this.

To take this issue off the table, we've changed the title to something that's factually supported by the article.

You are missing the point, it is not about the girls or records; it is an infomercial aimed at girl coders.

lol

They've won 2 bronze medals at IOI, 1 bronze at CEOI, 2 silvers at IZh

To everyone arguing technicalities over whether they are actually winners, or some odd mental gymnastics of reverse sexism, consider the following:

This article is not written for you. Not everything on the internet has to be.

If this story inspires just one woman to start a career in coding, then it is worth all the collective eye-rolling.

I don't see many people arguing over technicalities here.

at this point in time, the 2nd highest comment is.

Note that new comments are weighted much higher (e.g. I've had top level comments on a thread with several comments immediately show up first) and so the fact that a comment is near the top at a point in time does not mean that it's popular.

fair enough, TIL. thanks!

I'm not sure what you mean by positive change.

Firstly, the article was very sexist and I don't see that changing any time soon.

"programming is just another skill to be mastered through persistence — with or without a Y chromosome.". Can anyone point me to a link where anyone (other than a feminist) has said this?

Smashing of records? They came 2nd and 3rd in most instances. That's not refuting they may be talented, but the title is misleading, in more ways than one.

Look, my wife is a damn good engineer. I am not intimidated in the slightest by good female engineers (I've mentored male and female engineers - despite constant accusations from feminists that this does not happen).

Can we please establish a policy on YC that false, sexist or dishonest articles (like this one) be discouraged? This is a thinly veiled pulp piece of sexist journalism.

There has never been a myth that women can't code. My wife is over 50 and is more than capable with specification, design, coding, testing (unit, integration, regression, acceptance) and maintenance. She also does network design, among many other skills. She's old school and got there on her own motivation and talent, not puff and propaganda. I went to university with many women in the same boat.

This is nothing but a propaganda piece. It's s shame we can't celebrate these young people's success without resorting to sexism and untruths.

I think you're really underestimating these strong women. The title is not misleading because of this point:

"I was one of the first few girls on the Georgian team in IOI and I was the second Georgian girl to win a medal."

It doesn't matter if they are 2nd not 1st place. Bottom line is that these strong, awesome women are setting a great example.

Regarding IOI, that's a common misconception people have about high school olympiads: "The top 50% of the contestants are awarded medals, such that the relative number of gold : silver : bronze : no medal is approximately 1:2:3:6 (thus 1/12 of the contestants get a gold medal)."

> Can anyone point me to a link where anyone (other than a feminist) has said this?

Seems odd to tie this to being a feminist. I would hope all commentators on HN are feminists. What is your definition of a feminist?

> There has never been a myth that women can't code.

I don't think anyone says women "can't" code. I would say in most universities in the US, you could reasonably argue there seems to be more barriers to women majoring in CS than men for many reasons.

edit: For the people downvoting me, it would be great to explain why the downvotes as opposed to participating in a discussion.

> I would hope all commentators on HN are feminists.

I would hope so too, but the empirical evidence is against us.

A lot of people, especially here, believe that matters of equality are solved by treating peers as equals regardless of differences, rather than praise the differences, put them on a pedestal and give the people handicaps for being different.

I'd also love to see all that "empirical evidence". HN is one of the most respectful communities in tech I've frequented. Sexist remarks and the like tend to be downvoted and flagged.

As a minority, I think it is incredibly valuable to see people like me succeeding.

>HN is one of the most respectful communities in tech I've frequented.

I don't think I've ever seen a thoughtful discussion here when the topic relates to gender or race.

> I think it is incredibly valuable to see people like me succeeding

I feel the same way. In fact, most people here feel the same way, regardless of whether they are part of a minority or not. We all love to see people like ourselves succeed. It's incredibly empowering to feel that "this can be you". It doesn't just apply to careers, but in any situation where we feel we are faced with a challenge (this is why, for example, weight loss communities like /r/loseit are so successful).

Displays of success don't have to be contextualized as "they are successful because they are a minority", or "it's a big deal because they are a minority". Doing this cheapens the accomplishment and (I think) that's what rustynails was getting at.

I think people are operating under different definitions of feminism. It's sort of an "if-by-whiskey"[1] thing. If by feminism you mean not discriminating against (or in any way thinking less of) women, then practically everyone on HN is a feminist. And many –including myself– would argue that if that's what you mean by feminism, then the term doesn't need to exist. We don't have a term for a non-racist. Why should we need a term for a non-sexist?

On the other hand, if by feminism you mean rather strident and angry views being put forth by some self-proclaimed feminists... well then I would say most of HN commenters aren't feminists. And I would also say I'm glad for that.

Really though, this whole topic is radioactive. It's best to stay quiet or use a pseudonym when discussing it. Otherwise, you're bound to make enemies.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If-by-whiskey

>If by feminism you mean not discriminating against (or in any way thinking less of) women, then practically everyone on HN is a feminist. And many –including myself– would argue that if that's what you mean by feminism, then the term doesn't need to exist. We don't have a term for a non-racist. Why should we need a term for a non-sexist?

Hmm, along those lines, why would we ever need/have needed terms like "civil rights" or "abolitionist"? I mean, why should we need a term to designate being against racism, or against slavery?

Just out of curiosity.. what barriers?

Here's one for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat

I'm sure if you Google, you can find much better explanations than I am able to provide.

"Failures to replicate and publication bias" as a subheading on that page.

You're most likely being downvoted because you misunderstood the parent post.

Saying "you can code even if you're a woman" is incredibly patronizing. It was never in question.

If I started saying, "Well, I think everyone can code, even red-haired people", it'd be negatively worded against red-haired people.

Hey, have you ever heard a politician bring something up under the guise of defending their opponents?

Like maybe say "I do not believe in these allegations about my opponent being born outside the United States. And even if he isn't born in the US, it's not relevant. We should talk about his policies, not about my opponent being born outside the US."

Indeed. That's because "X occurs, even if Y" means something like, "In spite of the expectation that X doesn't occur because of confounding factor Y, X occurs anyway".

So, your argument is "no one has ever said men are better at writing programs than women"?

Not only am I not arguing (and thus don't have an argument), but even if I were, that would certainly not be my argument.

I was explaining why the comment was getting downvoted.

It is, however, interesting to see how you yourself are adopting a very similar tactic to the one I talk about in the post you replied to. Simply fascinating.

OK, I'll try to be more explicit.

> Saying "you can code even if you're a woman" is incredibly patronizing. It was never in question.

This isn't true. Tons of people question this!

Are those people's opinions respectable?

I know people who question the earth being round. Who question the moon landing. Does that mean the matter itself is "in question"?

I guess I phrased it pretty vaguely huh? Fair enough.

Maybe this is coming from a generational gap, but your experience does not mirror mine at all. I went to an engineering school where women in CS were either assumed to be a management major or people assumed that they were taking the easiest courses available. I've had my wife answer questions for people thoroughly and correctly, and had them come to ask me the same question 20 minutes later and trust that my answer was right.

I've talked to women who left computer science, not because of the difficulty of the courses, but because of the attitude that men at our university had towards them. The data supports this, take a look at the charts of women in CS over time.

And honestly, talking to women older than me, a refrain I hear from nearly all of them is "I'm not a math person". I had a relative in her 80's with a math PhD who would not tell people because she thought it was "too manly."

My coworker, who got into tech because she thought it was the only way she could stay in Seattle, frequently says "I'm not a coder." She just did a code review of one of the projects she's working on that is significantly better than any of the other work I've seen coming out of QA or DevOps at my job.

Your wife is an anomaly. So is mine. It doesn't take much effort to see that in our field.

>take a look at the charts of women in CS over time.

You mean the chart of video game growth over time?

This might be a bit of a stretch but it has rung true with me and many other people. We all became interested in technology and computers because of video games. Our interests in video games transitioned to taking programming courses in high school and college.

Maybe Minecraft will change the industry before any of us can cook up a good solution to the gender gap.

It seems fairly established that profession with highly unequal ratio of men and women tend to have a minority gender with a much higher exit rate than the majority, caused by the majority harassing the minority until they assimilate, quit or switch profession.

The next step should be to ask why women working in a female dominated profession are harassing the men in the same profession, or why men working in male dominated professions are harassing women. Maybe if we could figure out a good answer to that, we could turn the tide of more work professions becoming gendered with unbalanced ratios.

I do not think this seems fairly established at all. I have friends who are male nurses, friends who are male teachers, and the type of behavior they dealt with on a day to day basis was not harassment, they did not deal with coworkers who were constantly checking them out, they did not have people doubt their competence. Were people less quick to invite them into their groups? Sometimes. But they were still able to cultivate friend circles without an actively hostile percentage of the population.

The one place that I agree with you on this however, is childcare. I've dealt with a large amount of bullshit while staying at home with my newborn, and male caregivers are typically assumed to be incompetent.

What kind of study are you referencing there? I quoted a study commissioned by the Swedish government, which in turn referenced a study that looked at work culture in professions with unequal gender ratios.

Did you friends mention how children to men who take up female professions get teased in school because the job choice that their dad took? How their spouses don't want to tell friends what their partners job title is. How male nurses get question like "are you not a man, why are you a nurse?". People who walk up to a male midwife and accuse him of being a pedophile, ready to punch him? Read any of the multiple news article on how male preschool teachers do not feel safe at the job, feeling like they are under constant accusation by parents and co-workers? Same articles that talk how they dislike being the "representative" male, always chosen to do "male" stereotypical job activities?

But more importantly, the data don't lie. Male teachers and male students that are studying to become a teacher exit the job profession in rate about 450% higher than a female counterparts. Are we going to use the same old arguments that its something genetic that a male teachers starts working and after a year or so decide leave the profession?

> Firstly, the article was very sexist [...] a thinly veiled pulp piece of sexist journalism [...] a propaganda piece

Even if the article is framed in a way that's not to your taste, the choice here is (1) celebrating how cool these sisters are vs. (2) angry denunciation leading to flamewar #3238. The latter is not a win for HN.

If you can't turn off the ideological rage here, where can you turn it off? And if you can't turn it off at all, then it's not really discussion, just bile. Good discussion, the interesting kind, requires the discipline to resist mechanical triggers and respond to the most alive details in a piece, which in this case is clearly the story of the sisters and what they have to say.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11538481 and marked it off-topic.

> There has never been a myth that women can't code.

I've seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears perfectly competent female programmers being patronised by male programmers of a similar skill (who in turn do not patronise other males that way). You're basically setting up an unusual situation, where someone has to literally say "women can't code" to qualify, when in reality, women are frequently treated as if they're not as capable as men in our industry.

It's great that your wife is making her mark, but that doesn't mean there aren't problems that affect others. Similarly, there's been articles here on HN about how there were more female students in CS of your wife's uni era, but that these numbers dropped off precipitously in the 80s and 90s.

I'm not sure I'm understanding you correctly, are you saying that men are better at programming or are you saying that no one is saying that they aren't?

> Remember asking a girl for help to understand integrals.

Why does this surprise you? Why do you think a girl couldn't teach you anything about integrals?

So. Fucking. Sexist.

I don't think he meant it like that at all. If he thought a girl couldn't teach you anything about integrals, he wouldn't have asked for help.

I think he used it as an example to show that the cultural distinction in his school between the genders when it came to math weren't enormous. Had there been a clear culture of math as an all-boys-no-girls subject, that exchange (were he as a boy asked a girl for help) would never have happened.

It is an example used to convey that it wasn't common for boys to think a girl couldn't teach you anything about integrals.

If it surprises anyone that a boy can ask a girl for help with maths, then that person is a sexist.

Unless you think girls are worse at maths, then this is a null-story. Shall I tell you a story about how as a child I saw that the sky is blue?

It comes across as you are more interested in being angry than trying to understand what the original poster might have been saying(?)

> If it surprises anyone that a boy can ask a girl for help with maths, then that person is a sexist

I think everyone here agrees with you. My understanding of the original post's point was:

"I asked a girl for help in math and it was nothing special; Just like asking anyone who is good at math for help regardless of gender because we weren't socialized to view girls as somehow inferior here

Your parent poster is from a 3 hour old account with no other contribution to HN.

Safe to assume troll.

> then that person is a sexist.

Whether you think is sexist or not, you can't deny that sciences, maths, and computer science are male dominated. By the end of high school years that can be clearly seen as well. At least I saw it. And my claim was that I saw it more in US than in an Easter European country.

We've asked you before to stop creating HN accounts to break the HN guidelines with.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11538946 and marked it off-topic.

Smashing record? What they had done for humanity?

In my opinion is a bad idea to add too much pressure to kids, making them compete in contest with absolutely no useful outcome.

When I was a kid I entered Mensa but went out soon because of the ill competition "I am smarter than you" stupidity from tests that had nothing to do with the real world. A constant ego battle between (in lots of non testable ways) retarded people.

For me it was mental onanism, most of the people there will score enormously in the IQ scores or playing chess but then fail in life: fail in love, fail in relationships and fail in health. They will use excuses to rationalize the fact that was known to them but I could see why: the environment was vicious.

In contrast at 15 or so I joined a group of crackers that were dam smart and we were doing things. Forty years old experts would say a protection was impossible to break and we will break it that same weekend.

It was so fun and we were doing things that nobody had done before. We did not earn a penny but it was one of the most useful experiences I ever had: Getting used to do things nobody has done before with a good team does improve other people's lifes(and your own as a result) dramatically.

Had I been forced to do that when I was a kid I would never had done it.

I was told I was genius, then that I was not(when I refused to make IQ scores anymore),just a precocious kid, and it was a great release, I had not pressure over my shoulders to please others' expectations.

I could do as much dumb things as kids do. I was happy as a kid, and I am very happy as an adult.

I feel sorry for this girls. Let girls be girls. Don't make them symbols of women fight against XY chromosomes. Let those girls decide if the want to become activist when they had grown up and could decide for themselves.

> making them compete in contest with absolutely no useful outcome.

Performing well at these contests means they will almost certainly be able to get any tech job they want (considering our interviews are just 'solve this algorithmic problem') and produce real useful outcome.

> The three sisters live in Georgia, a European country [...]

... Georgia is not a European country!

Stereotypical American author confirmed (no clue of geography / politics outside of the US).

Next time please take a look at a map before writing a blog post.

And were would it be?

Georgia sings in the Eurovision, play football and rugby in the European cups...

The frontier between Europe and Asia is an artificial construct, but Georgia itself firmly sees itself in Europe...

Eurovision Song Contest doesn't say anything about geography: Azerbaijan and Morocco competed there in the past (being EBU members, Algeria, Tunesia, Libya, and Egypt could apply, too).

To be fair, Israel is included in a lot of European competitions for cultural-historical reasons, too, and few people would call Israel part of Europe.

As a German: why not? What else would it be?

The geographic absurdity of splitting up Afro-Eurasia (and Eurasia in particular) aside, Georgia lies at the exact edge of Asia and Europe but the Georgian people have always been more European than Middle Eastern (ethnicly, politicly, religiously and culturally).

Actually he is right. Georgia is on the Asian side of Caucasus range.

Its the year 2016 and the author of this article is still under the assumption that sex has something to do with skill gained through persistence.

--edit-- My congrats to the girls, its really amazing, I could only imagine the amount of work they put in to achieving everything.

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