I'm commenting here as a response to a few posts that highlight my use of the word "hostile" - a somewhat inflammatory word but my time in the journalism world taught me to bait clicks.... c:

I wouldn't say -hostile- in the sense that there's an active conscious attempt to bar women and people of color from computer science, what I mean is that in the computer science world there's an underlying structure which is rapidly ejecting (as one example) women. A structure which is reducing the number of women in computer science every year. Let's look at reports from the Computing Research Association:

"In the United States, the number of women represented in undergraduate computer science education and the white-collar information technology workforce peaked in the mid-1980s, and has declined ever since. In 1984, 37.1% of Computer Science degrees were awarded to women; the percentage dropped to 29.9% in 1989-1990, and 26.7% in 1997-1998.[2] Figures from the Computing Research Association Taulbee Survey indicate that less than 12% of Computer Science bachelor's degrees were awarded to women at US PhD-granting institutions in 2010-11.[3]"

that's a quote from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing

which separately sources that paragraph to this study: http://www.cra.org/uploads/documents/resources/taulbee/CS_De...