Girls and Software

Did I watch porn before I was of legal age? Yep, and I'm in a happy relationship with no sex problems. Break my computer often? Yep, I'd repair it every few days. I was also exposed to a variety of cultures, read about every operating system on Earth (toyed with emulated PDP-11s and VAXen and C64s for days and days) and wrote in every obscure language there is just because I was a kid and had enough time not to worry about whether spending a week to learn Forth was worth the hours I was putting into it.

Same here. Emphasis on "vast quantities," "unsupervised," and "unfiltered." All three were required.

I'm curious, were you on a linux os? Did you break your software often?

It seems to me people who get on linux early might have an easier time, because they can so easily break their system and rebuild it. It seems like a kid who breaks a windows/ mac os might need to go to their parents to deal with license keys, which might cause the parents to say "no more hacking".

I got my first unsupervised access to my grandparents' computer at age 7, but with no Internet. Then at age 10-11 some foundation for underprivileged kids gifted me my own computer with free unlimited dialup and a separate phone line. This was definitely a turning point in my life.

The fact that my single mother parent trusted me with my independence was a huge amplifier, too.

My parents were nontechnical, but I was lucky enough to have my own computer and a good internet connection starting around 4th grade (8-9 yrs old). Feeling comfortable "breaking" my computer was another thing. I was deathly afraid of breaking things as a kid (unlike my younger brother), and I think it prevented me from coding and exploring things even earlier. I think becoming a great {coder, thinker, leader, etc.} requires internalizing that at some level, it's okay to break the rules.

I eventually found my way onto IRC around age 12, where everyone posed as a 17-yr-old female from LA. I was thankfully super paranoid and fended off child molesters by pretending I was a 56-yr-old man from Texas. ;)

But with unlimited net access also comes extremely violent videos, social networks with all kinds of shady types hanging around etc...

I really don't think it's responsible to let a 9-12 yo alone on the net in their room. Enabling them to access the net easily while still supervising what they do, giving them advice on how to use the web, find what they want etc... That sounds reasonable to me.

I may be a bit bias because while I consider myself a hacker I didn't have the net before I was 18 at home. My parents didn't care for it, only when I moved to my own studio did I get an internet subscription.

Before that I would use floppies (and later USB sticks) to download stuff from the high school library's computers and buying programming books. Didn't stop me from learning C and writing games on my TI calculator.

Maybe I'm just a bit paranoid, but on the web you're always one click away from a video of someone being burned alive or decapitated with a chainsaw.

Agreed! Those were about the ages I was when I learned to program and fell in love with computers. I became too sensitive to social pressures after that. (One memory I have is of being 13 and intentionally typing slowly in a class so that people wouldn't know that I was a fast typer, and therefore a computer nerd. The horror!) But that age was key to forming my passion for programming. Did I stumble upon "age-inappropriate" material? Of course, but so does any kid that rides a school bus.

It depends. There is no strict requirement onto starting at the early age. Yes, there is a correlation, but no strict requirement.

I knew someone, who had really started coding only at around 22, after she had finished a computer science / engineering degree. She was not a tinkerer/nerd, just a regular bright girl, her dad was not an engineer [was an architect]. Only she was really really bright, and she really put in some effort, and just in a few years she became really really good. I've since met many good hackers [having started at 4 and now some 30 years down the line :-/], and I still consider her to be one of the best overall, starting from the love to build things, to clean code and clear thinking, to teamwork...

Probably about half the time as a 10-16 year old (after 16, my parents stopped caring about what I did or where I went at all) I was banned from computer use for various reasons. That didn't stop me though, I'd go to bed at 10pm, wake up at 2am, then use it until school.

Was four hours of sleep every night good for me? Probably not, but kids can get away with that sort of thing.

(I was also banned from having my own email address, using IRC or any sort of chat program, having my own blog... Basically my parents were deathly afraid that I would talk to any of my peers, even though they were sending me to public school. Most of my computer bans were for violations of these rules. Circumventing enforcement of these various rules was a significant driving factor in my self-education)

Now programming is my job and my hobby. Turns out my parents are smarter then I gave em credit for at the time.

The collaboration between my brother and I to get around these restrictions is one of the earliest memories I have of fruitful "hacking." At the time we both played (and I was obsessed with) a particular MUD, and a half hour per day was not enough playing time, so we wrote a very crude proxy server in VB6 over a week (7 hours between us) that hid in the system tray with a very "system" sounding process name and icon. That way we could connect to the MUD in secret from the laptop, hidden away in our bedroom. I think we later wrote a terrible, barely functional HTTP proxy too. We pulled a few more tricks like reverse engineering the screensaver password (it was stored as a hex string in the registry or something), which turned out to be the same as the BIOS password, before my parents caught onto what we were doing and kind of gave up (maybe they even saw it as a positive learning experience, who knows).

That summer introduced me to the idea that a computer is totally malleable in the hands of a determined and motivated person equipped with the right tools. I haven't looked back since.

>This point cannot be overstated. I'd never have been a hacker without vast quantities of unsupervised, unfiltered internet time around age 9-12.

Sure. What about ages 3 to 7? I had access to a computer for those years, but no bbs or internet access (partly it hardly existed, partly we didn't have a modem). You definetively need to parent (all) media access these days - but I generally think if you can't trust your 10 year old to mostly do the right thing you already have a problem... Then again I also think that if you aren't involved with what your (young-ish) children are doing -you're not being a very good parent..

[edit: my point is that today this is a decision that needs to be made up there with bed times, comming in at night/evening times, watchingb(which) movies.. and for non-technical parents that's a decision they'll need help makimg]

  > This point cannot be overstated.

It is interest what counts. As they say, one man can lead a horse to the river but even forty won't be able to make it drink.

While starting early is obviously a tremendous advantage, it's a shame that it's often discussed in such an exclusive way.

For reference, I am a female programmer who got a /relatively/ late start. I took my first cs class because I was embarrassed that I used my computer like an Internet Explorer box. Barely three years later, here I am knee-deep in code with a job offer from Google. Am I an exceptional hacker? No. Can I hold my own with the 'started-at-12' crowd? Pretty much.

It saddens me that more people don't feel empowered to dive into a new field. Many people, especially high-achieving students, suffer from the misconception that to succeed in various technical fields, you must specialize early. Whenever an outsider expresses any interest in programming or math, I encourage them to try it. "It's too late for me," and "I'm just not an X person," are common responses. These attitudes are caused in part by the way we STEM folks don't bother as much with non-children. You might tell a little kid about how cool programming is, but do you even attempt a real explanation of your work with a young adult? Your uncle? If so, gold star. If not, you are only contributing to the wall between the tech-savvy and general populace. It's never too late for someone to learn.

Too much stress on the early start just adds another barrier to entry for people like myself who lacked either the exposure or awareness to get started sooner.

If our goal is to make the tech universe more accessible, we shouldn't be perpetuating the idea that you need a certain background to participate or excel.

Kids do not need to be warned to stay off the computer. They need to be taught right from wrong, to do the right thing, and to respect others.

When I was a teenager, coding or being technical in general wasn't cool either, and most of the people who were involved were or at least seemed insecure and embarrassed. Perhaps the climate in middle / high schools has changed since, but if not, we could also ask: what makes many boys persist in their uncool, embarrassing, low-ish status activity?

http://www.atariarchives.org/bcc1/showpage.php?page=61

[The Best of Creative Computing Volume 1 (published 1976): Learning About Smalltalk, Marian Goldeen]

"My name is Marian Goldeen. I'm an eighth grade student at Jordan Junior High School in Palo Alto, California, and I would like to tell you about how I got started working with computers at Xerox and the class I taught.

It all started in December, 1973 when I was in the seventh grade (...)"

How would you keep this up through their teenage years?

Sadly, my two daughters seem really rather interested in the whole affair (probably one two many nudges from dad in the past).

One thing about Minecraft though, even if kids can't make mods, they can learn useful aspects of logic just from playing about when redstone. When my daughter managed to make a set of points that switched automatically when her roller-coaster cart went over a pressure plate, she was well chuffed.

"SJW", while neither an apt nor particularly nice monicker, does (to some) refer to a practicing particular brands of off-putting rhetoric that are uncompromising to a fault. I see people largely in agreement talk past each other because one person's mind is already made up in a way incompatible with someone else's experiences.

A HN commenter once suggested that agreement has become a form of social signaling. I don't know if I believe that, but it would be dangerous and counterproductive because arguments need iteration. If you can't make your case in a way that convinces people with your same goals, you're not going to convince people that don't yet share your goals.

This. This. A thousand times this.

Sure, Jobs did. On the other hand, Woz was the tech genius, not Jobs.

I've never heard of a tech genius who also cared much about the qualities you mention. This seems more than a coincidence. If it were, then there'd probably be at least one counterexample. Is there someone who is at the level of Woz or Blackwell who also cares about popularity, beauty, and fitting in?

You added an "also." The criticism was of "women-in-tech" advocates who are solely "women-in-tech" advocates/PR people/designers and who are not programmers.

Did you even read the article? The point she made is that feminists are trying to "fix" the gender ratio in tech by expanding the definition of hacker to people who have no idea what solder even is and have never printed a hello world in their life.

>dismissing behaviors that she doesn't find valuable (in her words: "ephemera -- popularity, beauty and fitting in").

These things are in no way relevant to producing good code. They're completely orthogonal.

>Are we defining "hacker" to include only people with bad social skills and no interest outside of technology?

The only person putting forth that argument here is you.

It was that I had the good fortune to peek over her shoulder at some BASIC code she'd written in our completely noddy, intro-to-computers class. She wasn't going to put Grace Hopper to shame, but it was surprisingly well-structured and showed she knew how to reason about causes and effects within the machine. Which is, like, the first skill that you need to be a decent programmer.

But the thing about pretty girls is that they often find it is more immediately profitable to be pretty than to be bright. And staying pretty and popular -- keeping that limelight on you -- is a lot of work. It's a full-time job with potentially ruinous consequences without some sort of balance (look at Miley Cyrus). So she eventually forgot about coding and went on to become a television personality.

My point here is that you become what you invest time in becoming. If you want to ascend to elite-level hackerdom, then you almost have to put things like attractiveness and popularity on the back burner. You don't have to have poor social skills to be a hacker. But the people who are best at being popular and fitting in are the people who invested time and effort into doing just that, just like the best programmers are the ones who invested time and effort into programming. And we only have so much time to give, so yes, you kinda gotta pick and choose.

I read that more as "where do your passions lie?" People have many interests, but few passions, and passions demand sacrifices. When push comes to shove, hackers will give up popularity and fitting in for the sake of hacking - not because they don't care about those things, but because they'd rather be hacking. Girls who are told that the most important thing for them is to be beautiful and popular are deprived of the opportunity to develop a passion for hacking, because their passion for popularity chokes out other competitors.

I don't think it's harder to be a hacker if you're interested in social media or graphic design, but if you'd rather be tweeting about your latest logo design than figuring out how to fix a bug, you might not be a hacker.

I never said any such thing. I didn't say "you are pretty, what are you doing here?". I said:

>> you're not a programmer, what are you doing here?!

I am a highly social hacker, and a polymath to boot. I have a vibrant love life, good friends from all walks of life, and plenty of non-coding interests: writing, reading, psychology, music, crafts (I do leatherwork, weave rugs, sew, do native american loomed seed beadwork, etc), backpacking, martial arts, and more.

What I don't do is walk into a room and tell a woman who's good at something I'm not -- a dancer, for example -- that she's being graded not on her ability to dance, but on whether she looks like my idea of what a dancer should be. I don't demand that her math skills (something just as orthogonal to dance as fashion is to coding) be evaluated instead of her dancing.

In my not-so-humble opinion, if you can't code, you don't get a vote on how it is or isn't okay to be a female (or any other) coder, period. Wave that "feminist" flag all you want, I'm not buying it. Women in generations before me didn't burn their bras so I could be judged on my fashion sense instead of my work.

Also the ephemera are gateways to something less ephemeral: social contacts and human capital. I don't think this can be understated. Most women are social to a degree that most men will never be, and this is ok because being social is being powerful in every way that matters in day to day life.

The thing is, I am not sure one can really be technical and social in the same moment. These are very different thought processes. Social context is fluid and changing, and it can't be directly measured. So these are different.

It's funny. I suspect that my grandmother (who introduced me to computers and punchcards(!) would agree with everything in this article. Of course she mostly programmed in Fortran relating to her work in astrophysics (a field she entered in 1964).

> it makes me think: this might be a problem. Is it harder to be a hacker if you also have an interest in social media and graphic design and popularity and friendships?

I do think that brain cycles are finite, and while I am male I tend to find that if the very things that make me good at solving certain sets of technical problems can make me socially out of touch at times.

  Start with a young woman who's already formed her identity. 
  Dump her in a situation that operates on different social 
  scripts than she's accustomed to, full of people talking 
  about a subject she doesn't yet understand. Then tell her 
  the community is hostile toward women and therefore doesn't 
  have enough of them, all while showing her off like a prize 
  poodle so you can feel good about recruiting a female. 
  This is a recipe for failure.

On the one hand the stream-of-consciousness rantyness so accurately describes what's actually going on and it's beautiful to see it written down so poignantly.

On the other hand it has a pretty strong "I got mine" component to it, where she laments the negative effects these changes have had on her personally but doesn't acknowledge that while she's in a position she likes that doesn't at all mean it is, or would be, like that for many others.

The risk here is that sexism often manifests itself as 'all good until it's not,' in that the small things are always easily brushed off and if you're lucky to run in circles where you don't experience the bad stuff you tend to think it's all way overblown... until you get to a point where something happens that can't be brushed off and you realize you aren't actually as supported as you thought you were, at which point all minor transgressions are no longer just brushed off but are rather interpreted as 'still a transgression, even if only minor.'

And yes, looks like it will take after Tasha Yar, and die repeatedly.

Unfortunate that such an online article could only have been written by a woman, as the likelihood of being on the receiving end of outrage is too high had it come from a man.

I got a certain amount of crap from others for "letting" him be so into a girl thing, and I remember getting crap as a kid because most of the figures I looked up to are men. Is it hypocritical of me to be both frustrated by the lack of stuff about girl techies and irritated that our society pushes kids to pick such things only from same-gendered examples?

As I understand it, Goldie Blox was founded precisely to provide an alternative to that. They already have a product out. I wonder how well they'll do.

Being socialized into thinking that Barbie is the only thing she can play with or into thinking that she can not figure technical stuff so there is no point in trying anyway will do it.

It is more about your general attitude then about plastic mold that was used for toy.

I think that the inner motivation to be a hacker or programmer comes from liking to know how things work, and how to build stuff. I remember dismantling and reassembling my toys when I was a small kid. If we are able to give a try to kids that feeling (which it was extremely satisfying to me), we may "lure" more people with potential into tech. If we teach that tech is cool, that nerdy t-shirts are amazing, and you'll make a lot of money, we are spreading the wrong ideas, something that will deviate the focus from "what's really tech about" with "perks around being in tech". People that are attracted for those "perks" will never be truly happy and probably, will never be good professionals.

That sentence gave me a nice smile. feminist research is poor at best, non-existent at worse.

Take affirmative action in education. Give me a single study that shows that it a) produce long-term professionals, b) is better than the base line, and c) if it has any of the negative and well documented long term effects inherent of single-sex education.

There are plenty of feminist research that shows there exist an gender imbalance in STEM, and most studies gives one or other kind of theory around the why. The theories are however rarely if ever tested. The "years of feminist research" has not gotten to that part yet, and won't until we demand more from researchers than summery of latest census data.

Obviously, both men and women should be able to do what they want, whether that be raise a family, provide for that family, some of both, or not have a family at all.

But does is a higher ratio of men to women in a given profession causatively show that women are disadvantaged? Is it only a good ratio when it is exactly 50/50%? You believe so, and don't consider any other alternative.

Or could it be that it is a matter of personal choice based on a biological bias toward certain choices? You don't see the male 99% of garbage collectors as being an issue to be resolved.

Maybe women tend to turn down the high pressure jobs and prefer to spend more time socializing and with family compared to men. Many studies have suggested the same. Could it be an issue of the ratio of testosterone vs. estrogen? Those types of hormonal differences are known to greatly influence the types of choices we're discussing here.

What about the possibility that men and women are different, and in particular that men are more naturally inclined to do things like sacrifice time and flexibility in order to make more money? There's no reason to expect a priori that men and women are identical in this regard. Indeed, evaluating Homo sapiens as a sexually dimorphic bipedal ape whose sexes have different reproductive incentives, it would be very surprising to find otherwise.

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker.html

It is just very hard for a 20+ to become interested in something that is not related to something prominent in their life thus far. A boy whose life has been about cars and football is not very likely to pick up an interest in butterflies.

  technologist
  addiction
  solving puzzles
  building things
  "victory!" moment
  impose will on electronics

When you learn to program has nothing to do with when you become a hacker.

I don't think she's doing that. Note that she doesn't say that you haven to have been programming since age 2, just that you have to have a natural interest in "solving the puzzle or building something." I came late to programming since I didn't have access to computers I could tinker with, but I was still putzing around with k'nex and getting yelled at for taking household appliances apart from a very young age.

Special robotics classes for girls are not the way. Making robotics cool again, like space travel was cool in the 60s and 70s, is the answer. Most schools in the US see these pursuits as some kind of uncool dorky stuff, and girls who face a ton more peer pressure than boys for their age, tend to be directed away from them.

Excluding sometimes seems worse than the biases these programs aim to solve.

High school boys in tech are much more likely to be misogynistic and socially inept than other high schoolers are. They make girls uncomfortable (they make me uncomfortable too, and I'm not event the subject of their creepiness), and this discourages girls from trying to program or build things.

There are women who can handle this quite well (the author of the piece is an example), but there are also many women who don't deal with this so easily. Those who can deal with the male-dominated environment will always be free to join mixed-gender events and groups, but girls' robotics classes target those who could gain a lot from having friends of the same gender who share similar interests.

Women aren't self-selecting themselves into tech, but there's no reason they couldn't. Women-in-tech events aren't fighting sexism with sexism, they're providing counterexamples to the misconception that programming is only for men.

I think this may be one of the more tragic results of the 2000-2010 decade. Where have the developers gone, and how could we get them back?

There's no such thing as a "misunderstanding of feminism". Feminism hasn't been a coherent movement in decades. It's a highly stratified network of ideologies and schools, some of which are only vaguely united under the pretext of social justice, but which have radically different views. Some are even openly and proudly transphobic.

I'd like it if we stopped pretending feminism is some zenith of civil rights. It did help in the past, but it is now worn out and has long been a parody.