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Comment by uptown | Hacker News Reader

"Our Mission - Our mission is to teach people software development in order to help them pursue their passions."

Doesn't it stand to reason that if their passion was software development, they'd be doing it irregardless of their gender?

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The word used is "passions", plural, which makes it clear to me that the passions are unspecified things outside of programming that can be made more useful and exciting with software. I think the rest of the website backs up this reading.

Even if we take your misunderstanding of what was written, I'm disappointed by what seems to be a "well, if <minority-representation group> actually wanted to be more represented, they'd just hurry up and fix the systemic problems that are keeping them outside the group themselves without us having to do anything" snark. That's not how barriers to entry work.

(Hi. Woman here.) Well, yes. Like anything, if it was a known, lifelong passion, then I’d/women would already be doing it. However, programming is something that sounds interesting, could be fun and I bet I’d be good at it but having been in tech for a few years, the barrier for entry seems pretty insurmountable. The dev teams I’ve worked with have been exclusively male (I’m in marketing) and the culture of shouting and condescension seems like more of a barrier to me than a lost desire to pursue my passions. That said…this seems like a first step in addressing the situation.

It sounds like you have only worked with arseholes. We need less arseholes in the industry, and more civil, caring, and talented engineers.

I've worked with very good engineers, of both sexes.

...the culture of shouting and condescension seems like more of a barrier...

You seem to be confusing a barrier (something that impedes your movement, regardless of your choices) from a preference (something that makes you more likely to make a certain choice).

I don't think there's a confusion. As far as I'm aware, women consistently express a preference against the aggressive and disrespectful communication style that's common to many software projects, meaning that this style functions as an effective barrier to women (and men who don't like overt conflict much either) joining these projects.

I don't think nitpicking the semantics adds much here.

Women disliking the communication style of software people is not a barrier. It's a preference. Women could join if they wanted to, they just don't want to.

It's not a semantic difference - the difference is whether women are prevented from performing some activity or whether they choose not to perform it.

Similarly, I don't like banking environments very much. There is no barrier preventing me from working at Citi, I just never applied for a job there.

Thanks Kris, these are the scenarios that should change. Would love to chat more about your interest/experience with what we're doing - you can reach me at d@hackstaracademy.com

There is no barriers to entry for programming. All the good tools are free, there's free hosting, there's free learning materials. You can get a full working product out the door without spending a dime.

You're right, it doesn't matter what gender you are. The imbalance of the genders in engineering is pretty skewed and we want to improve that. We think a women exclusive fellowship is a great start.

Uhh... is this illegal? While including sex as a weight in the decision process is fine, I think creating a "women exclusive" scholarship may be tricky. See Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. Also, the Civil Rights Act (Title VII) may come into play.

Last I looked, UC is a state funded institution. This is not.

So, no, it is not illegal and I don't see too many "women exclusive" scholarships being mentioned here.

Probably not. Consider IBM's women-only scholarship program:

The American Physical Society and IBM co-sponsor a research internship program for undergraduate women. The goal is to encourage women students to pursue graduate studies in science and engineering. -- http://www.aps.org/programs/women/scholarships/ibm/index.cfm

Yet i don't see any fellowships for males who want to be nurses. Nurse practitioner is higher paid profession than engineering in regards to median salary. It also rated the #4 occupation when using job security,salary etc as the metric. I bet if you search, no one considers this gender bias a problem.

If we can't have a thing, they can't have a thing either? Weak argument. So very weak.

The passions they're referencing aren't software development. You're right that if your passion is software you'd already be doing it.

There are lots of markets that are underserved due to the homogeneity of geek culture. I myself am male but also a sports fan and that market is woefully underserved. All the sports apps I've seen don't have the slightest bit of creativity and tend to be terribly constructed.

Adding more women with software development skills will open up new markets to be disrupted simply because those markets are not interesting/invisible to the current group of software professionals.

Honestly, I think introductory courses are useful. This looks like a good program, and focused on getting you to the point where you can build something simple. At the risk of (gasp!) admitting ignorance, I think I'd probably find a program like that informative. Yes, you can always teach yourself, which is what I usually do, but social reinforcement is great if you can get it.

It's kind of ugly for established members of a profession to react badly when somebody tries to teach novices the basics of that profession.

People are objecting to sex discrimination, not teaching novices.

Perhaps regardless (or irrespective) of their gender, too. </pedantry>

I think we have gotten to the point where "irregardless" is acceptable, it's been used for 100 years and is in just about every dictionary.

It's as much a word as anything else in the dictionary. Whether a redundant double-negative is truly "acceptable" is debatable, but hey, that's the English language for you.

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