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Comment by run4yourlives | Hacker News Reader

Whether or not there is an "inhospitable environment" is irrelevant if women show low interest rates that are linked to natural factors. Outliers must adapt to the environments they are faced with.

The inference of a particular place being "inhospitable" suggests that there is a large percentage minority at least that is being prevented from engaging in the experience because the current set up forces them to disengage.

I'm not seeing that. And as much as I wouldn't suggest that a class on French Fashion trends not need to over-accommodate the single male that is obsessed with this, I don't see any pressing needs to do this here either.

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The main issue I see with your argument is that you're supposing interest to be correlated with anticipated ability and enjoyment of the profession. Unlike French Fashion trends, programming is an important driver of our society, and as such we should look for people who will be enthusiastic and skilled programmers. There's no way of knowing that when most women do not even take an introductory programming course.

My guess would be that most enthusiastic programmers realized they would be interested in the field prior to their first programming course.

I suspect that many (such as myself) also became less interested during their first programming course.

It maybe becoming time to require at least one programming course in college/high school, the same way schools require some math/history/science/etc....

I suspect if we could find a way to teach kids a little programming in grade school we would to them and society a world of good... but as far as I can tell we haven't yet been able to find a way to teach programming at that level.

The main issue I see with your argument is that you're supposing interest to be correlated with anticipated ability and enjoyment of the profession.

I'm not, I'm suggesting that a set-up that prefers those with a natural inclination or enjoyment/ability of a particular field should not be undermined in favour of those with a possible passing fancy.

If the system is detrimental to those with skill/enjoyment/inclination based on a particular set of their shared minority traits, this might be a problem in need of correction.

Unlike French Fashion trends, programming is an important driver of our society,

Whether something is important to our society or not should make no difference in correcting inequities in opportunity.

There's no way of knowing that when most women do not even take an introductory programming course.

The assumption here is that there is a large pool of women waiting to take courses that are being discouraged. I see no evidence of that at all, and that's what I'm questioning.

You're still confusing uninformed desire with informed desire. If someone takes a programming course or two, and decides they are not cut out for programming, that's fine. But what's clear is that women are not taking programming courses, so they cannot make an informed decision - it's just assumed that because women don't want to program, women would neither enjoy it nor be good at it, and this is fine.

It's only fine if it's true that women would neither enjoy it nor be good at it.

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