Comment by potatolicious | Hacker News Reader

Comment by potatolicious | Hacker News Reader

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> "The first programmers (in a certain sense, wiring the first calculation machines in certain ways to achieve certain results) in fact were women"

I'd argue that "programming" in Ada Lovelace's age is more closely related to modern-day science than computer-science. Note also that scientific fields today are in no real shortage of women.

I think the possibility needs to be raised that there's something fundamentally wrong with our field, or at least the people in it - an uncomfortable thought to be sure, but the sheer number of women (growing at that) in every "geeky" field but CS should be an indicator of something.

This reminds me of a conversation I had yesterday...

I'm just going to throw something out there: I know a lot of CS majors, and a lot of science majors. The science majors are a geeky bunch, but are normal, functioning people for the most part. They will just as easily gab all day about some biological principle as they will the latest pop sensation. Their geekiness complements their personality.

Contrast this with the CS majors I know, where their geekiness is their personality. It's almost as if we try too hard to be the stereotype that it is, in the end, all that's left. Not to say all CS majors are like this, but the loudest, most visible ones certainly are, at least where I came from. I know it's a turnoff for me (and I'm a guy), I can't imagine how annoying that'd be for women.

Is there an objective standard for "normal, functioning people" or is this a slightly more sophisticated High School 2.0 way of partitioning hobbies or personality quirks into ones which are socially acceptable and ones which are not?

It's human 1.0, really.

No, certainly there isn't - but my comment is no way disparaging to geekiness, but there's a difference between "I am a person who likes sci-fi" and "I am sci-fi incarnate", I'm not sure if I'm getting the difference across well.

The science majors I've met, and the "science parties" I've been to are full of people of varied interests, just one (or a few) of which are the geeky sort. These are people who are multi-dimensional enough to carry intelligent conversations on topics both inside and outside that of normal geekdom.

Contrast with CS majors (the hardcore ones anyway), and I find that people almost try to be two-dimensional cardboard cutouts of the stereotype. Topics outside of LOTR, Firefly, lolcats memes, etc, are difficult to discuss with anyone.

Again, this is not some way to assign value judgments to hobbies - but rather an observation that for a lot of people in our field that I've met, the "geek stereotype" is all they have. There's no dimensionality to their personality, and it's almost as if there's an active rejection of anything that doesn't fit into the archetype they're trying to project. It's also an observation that, in my experience anyhow, people in scientific fields don't really suffer from this. They're not afraid to do geeky things, nor are they afraid to do un-geeky things. They're just people who like whatever it is they happen to like - which is something I wish our field had enough balls to make happen.

Hmm, I'd say that the best standard is whether the vast majority of people would accept you as being a normal, functioning person. The best standard for hobbies is whether they make you a broader and more interesting person or a narrower and less interesting person.

The best hobbies, I think, are the ones where you're creating something, exploring the world, making yourself a better person, or at least getting some exercise. The worst hobbies, I think, are the ones which involve immersing yourself in a narrow stream of entertainment which somebody else has created for you; Star Trek, Firefly, World of Warcraft, LotR, professional baseball. Nothing wrong with any of these in moderation, but when you elevate the consumption of entertainment to the level of a hobby it becomes just plain sad.

(No, writing Firefly fan fiction doesn't make it any better. That may be "creative" but you're still unhealthily immersed in somebody else's narrow world.)

Ironically, the stereotypical female Firefly fan fiction writer is female. Stereotypically masculine and "geeky" interests like science fiction actually seem to have proportionally more female interest than programming.

Should read "the stereotypical Firefly fan fiction writer". I hate when my brain outruns my typing fingers.

> (No, writing Firefly fan fiction doesn't make it any better. That may be "creative" but you're still unhealthily immersed in somebody else's narrow world.)

What the hell, man? Writing fiction is inherently creative, and it's a very challenging, rewarding experience -- and it doesn't make a bit of difference whose world you're writing in. Why the scare quotes around creative? Why do you consider immersion in a fictional world unhealthy if-and-only-if it's somebody else's world? In order to write fiction, you're going to have to immerse yourself in an imaginary world, and most of it will be your own creation, even if you're writing fanfiction.

I'm hearing some off-hand disdain for fanfic from you, but it's exactly the opposite of consuming entertainment. If you doubt this, then try writing fanfic sometime. Consider me vexed at your ignorance, sir.

I think personality quirks are fair game - if you can't interact with Normals the way they interact with each other, then almost by definition, you are abnormal.

The main social failure that I tend to notice in CS geeks (not all, but some) is complete indifference to other peoples mental states. They don't notice, or don't care, that their conversational partners are not interested in or knowledgeable about what they're saying, they don't seek out a common ground, and they write off any resulting awkwardness as a mere symptom of geek discrimination or (worse) take it as an indication of the stupidity of the other person.

I realize that sometimes this is actually a result of Asperger's, which for whatever reason seems more common in CS than any other field, so I'll always cut a lot of slack to those that have such a disorder. But I also think that a lot of kids that are mentally normal end up getting too deep into the dorking out that tends to happen around computers and lose all interest in social interaction, which is a shame, because it's really rather simple - I know people with Asperger's that have learned to "fake it" well enough to be enthusiastically welcomed in social settings, so people without it have little excuse.

Hobbies are a red herring - you can obsess over Doctor Who, World of Warcraft, or gruesome Internet porn all you want, the issue is whether you can read people well enough to stop talking about them and move on to something else when they are making the conversation less enjoyable for others. For better or worse, most geek hobbies are peculiar to geeks, so when you're around non-geeks, it's usually on you to leave your area of comfort in the name of finding good topics of discussion.

FWIW, at my alma mater, the CS majors who most embodied the stereotype also seemed to have the highest attrition rate. Their concentration was somewhat high in the lower-division classes and very high in the "CS hall" in the dorms, but they weren't nearly so common in upper division classes (to say nothing of the graduate program).

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