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I started programming when I was about 11. I did it on my own at home, and also at school, where our classroom had an Apple II computer. At school, I was joined by (especially) two others strongly interested in programming, one boy and one girl.

Looking back, I could not identify anything whatsoever that would have made our programming activities especially appealing to either boys or girls, nor especially undesirable to either boys or girls. Really, I had the impression that pretty much everyone else -- boys, girls, and teachers -- thought our interest in programming was kind of strange, and being a boy (or a girl) had nothing to do with it.

An anecdote, of course, and I have no idea how, or if, it fits into the bigger picture.

It's definitely hard to see. That's part of the problem. But if you look at the number if programmers under age 18, I suspect the gap will be even wider than > 18. Something about society is pushing young women away from it.

Some of my suspicions:

1. The internet is generally more hostile to girls. If you stumble into the wrong chat room or forum, you get "show your tits". When I started programming, I got on the internet for help and met some amazing friends who helped me become a better programmer.

I absolutely hate when gender topics come up on HN because I generally like this website, but gender topics tend to bring the assholes out of the woodwork. I got a female CS student friend of mine reading HN regularly, but when she ran into one of these sorts of threads she was appalled. And rightfully so. And HN isn't nearly as bad as the internet at large.

2. It's tied to video games being male majority. I played computer video games a lot more than any girls I knew as a kid. This exposure to computers (and config files, etc) set the stage for programming.

The video game realm is making a lot of progress in getting girls playing (I think more or consoles than PC, but the general trend is up everywhere), and I've seen this positively influence girls' predispositions towards programming.

3. There is a positive feedback loop in social circles, particularly in formative years (middle school). Kids encourage the status quo. So it's hard for a kid to develop hobbies outside of their clique. I think this relates to the gender problem because girls at that age tend to be even more exclusive than boys (at least in my experience and everyone I've asked).

But those are just suspicions and the real problem could be more fundamental.

I start programming below college age as well. I also have some friends who learned programming by themselves. The major difference I can tell between those (used to be) young programmers and those who started programming in college is their motivation and passion. Those who started programming as boys/girls usually learned it by themselves and were motivated by curiosity. Knowledge can be learned, experience can be accumulated. But the passion of learning things almost defines one's behaviour. I saw too many people don't want to learn new things because they simply don't like to learn.

Sorry, a little bit OT.

Your comment is self-contradicting: If there's a "giant" gap between boys who start young and girls or boys who don't, then acknowledging that gap at the application stage is not preferential treatment. Ignoring it because it doesn't favour girls, on the other hand, is preferential treatment.

Edited to add: The time to intervene, if it to be equitable, is around the age of 12. But getting the interest of 12 year olds who wouldn't otherwise participate is a more difficult task than changing admission criteria at colleges.

Where is the contradiction?

I was pointing out essentially what your edit suggests. Somehow we've made a society in which young boys favor programming more than girls.

I wasn't saying that people who have been programming since age 12 should be on equal footing in terms of the admissions process. As I said in some comments below, I think that the non-preferential treatment is instead geared towards people who have dabbled in programming a bit (AP Computer Science or a similar course in highschool). So at face value, the person who has 1 year experience in Java will appear to be a better fit for the program than someone with no experience, but by graduation time, there will probably be no correlation between those who came in with 1 year experience and those without any.

Someone who has been programming as a hobby since age 12 will probably be highly correlated with success by graduation time. I don't think CMU is disputing that. Rather, they are disputing the first case of someone with some experience vs. someone with no experience.

So I think there was just a misunderstanding when you read my comment, since I was pretty much saying (longer-windedly) what you did in your edit.

> Where is the contradiction?

You referenced, approvingly I assume, emphasizing "potential" over skill in admissions.

You'd like for it not to unfairly impact boys who've had a genuine interest since a young age. Unfortunately CMU's policy seems to be to disregard all levels of prior experience. They contrast the newer polices with the old, which gave preference to "lots of previous programming experience". (not just a little bit) They target aptitude and "non-academic strengths". (a lot or a little previous experience doesn't fit here). Finally, if you are actually giving weight to experience, explicitly stating "no prior experience required" is a funny way to go about it.

One last thing: a corollary of my edit is that an intervention that changes requirements however they need to be changed, just to get more girls in the door, is inequitable.

I do think that girls at that age are less likely to be interested in solitary hobbies like programming, as opposed to more social hobbies. That said, I also think this is one of the key distinctions between hacking around as a teenager, and programming as a professional: the latter is a deeply social activity.

Girls engage in other solitary activities like literature, music, art, crafts etc.