> Software is one of the best careers in the world.
In theory it is. In practice...well, let's ask game developers for example. Or other groups who end up with a real-world job they end up hating.
> Maybe they are getting lost along the way earlier in the pipeline
Quite likely.
> because tech is pseudonomyous with the the kind of people who like to talk about things like DeepCreamPy. Maybe they walk into that freshman CS class and see 30 other dudes that fit this profile and give them creepy unwanted attention and they drop it and switch to biology.
Yeah, that's not happening. First, because for example in my country there's no such thing as "switching to biology", so you can't lose them this way. And yet, there's something like 7% of women in my country's informatics-related university programmes. Furthermore, those 7% are 7% of applicants, so there's no "maybe they [walked] into that freshman CS class" because those 7% haven't even seen that freshman class yet. So while you're quite likely correct in that "they are getting lost along the way earlier in the pipeline", it's definitely WAY earlier than you postulate in at least some quite large populations in the world.