You (and she) are focusing on the wrong part of the chain of reasoning. The issue is not whether there are gender differences in preferences, but why we have any reason to believe that programming is a “masculine” profession. The fact that men and women sometimes prefer different things due to biological factors does not mean that if you observe men and women preferring different things, that can be explained by biological factors. That’s the basic logical fallacy underlying Damore’s screed. (Pointing to articles validating the scientific assertions doesn’t help, because the challenge isn’t the scientific premise, but the inferences Damore is drawing from that.)

For example, for many years Law was 95% male. You could say that it was a masculine profession because it’s all about conflict while women prefer peacemaking. But today 50% of new large firm attorneys are women. Law isn’t any softer or gentler now—in fact it’s probably less civil. Same for teaching. We explain teaching being dominated by women on the basis that teaching is about nurturing. But in India, the vast majority of teachers are men.

You could easily say that programming is feminine. It’s not at all physical, all about cooperating and communicating with other people, it’s about managing expectations, etc.

Also, the truck analogy has been debunked. It’s explained by the fact that girls have a higher affinity for faces than boys. Which makes sense: infants don’t have any association between trucks and masculine professions like construction work. They can’t. Any gender difference observable at a very young age has to be unrelated to the associations adults have between trucks and masculinity.