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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

I've been coding since I was ~13. I can understand why people who haven't might have valid reasons to wish they'd started earlier. I'd just say: beware self-fulfilling prophecies and selection bias. Lots of really excellent software people I've worked with got late starts. Lots of people who started early coasted or are still coasting. In the 25 years I've been coding, only a few years worth of that time really grew me as a developer, so what you work on has just as much impact as how long you've been working on it.

Work with a bunch of different enterprise L.O.B. developers to get a sense of what I'm saying here. The average age of a backoffice developer is higher, meaning they have more experience. Hiring in enterprises is regimented, meaning that they tend to come from CS backgrounds. Are they uniformly high quality developers? No. In fact: there's a stigma attached to coming from a long stint in enterprise development.

As a lever for getting more women engaged with startups, the idea that an early start is important makes even less sense. Much of the day-to-day work that happens even at companies with difficult problem domains is rote and uncomplicated. A few years experience is more than enough to lead a typical web project, and, more importantly, to have a sense for whether a dev team is firing on all cylinders and to authoritatively manage it.

Obvious subtext/bias here: I do not believe that starting women in software development earlier is going to resolve the gender gap. By all means, start early; there's nothing wrong with that. It's just probably not the root of the problem.

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It's possible that it's not the actual coding experience that matters, but the implicit message of "it's okay for you to do this."

I'm male, 33, and I do systems software research and development. My family did not get a computer until I was a sophomore in high school. In high school, I played with technology (some webpages, lots of internet time), but I did not understand it. My senior year, I did some very basic programming in a course. But I did not start really programming until college, in a computer science curriculum. I was impressed how much more some students knew than me. But by the junior year, I don't think that edge made a difference.

So it's tempting to say that I am an example of the kind of person you and some others on the thread are talking about. But I don't think we can discount the "okayness" effect. While I did not start really programming until college, I liked technology before that, and that was not seen as unusual by anyone.

It's possible, then, that encouraging young girls to program early may help resolve the gender gap, but not because they then become young adult women who already know how to be good programmers by the time they arrive on college campuses. Rather, it could be a cultural ripple-effect where if enough young girls program, more people see it as gender-neutral, and when a young adult woman with no prior programming experience wants to take up computer science in college, no one says, "Really?"

I think the key is that when you did get to college and started a CS program with little programming experience, no one questioned that you ought to try. Whereas many women in that situation would get more pushback from their peers and advisors.

Yes, that was my point.

If this was a major barrier then we'd expect the numbers to be closer in learning paths where feedback is negligible or where gender is mostly invisible. I.e., we'd see plenty of self taught women but few college educated ones, and more women in open source than in corporate environments.

Is that the pattern we see?

[edit: based on all the downvotes I'm guessing the data doesn't fit the theory? Oops.]

Feedback from peers within your (current or desired) field is not the only feedback of importance in most people's lives. Disbelief and discouragement are at least as likely to come from social acquaintances, friends, neighbors, and family, whose actions are typically more impactful on the young (not to say many of the old).

In any case, feedback is not the only deterrent, nor is it the most powerful. A lifetime of insinuations and flat-out statements from the vocal majority of your peers and teachers that x is not your domain--before you've even had a chance to think that it might be--does much to shape a person.

But probably some of your downvotes are coming because you're discounting how much louder and more open sexism tends to be online than in the office.

If you have a fixed amount of negative feedback from friends and family and a lower level of negative feedback from codeacademy than from a teacher, negative feedback is lower for autodidacts. If negative feedback reduces involvement, then (male autodidacts)/(male programmers) should be lower than (female autodidacts)/(female programmers).

Does this theory need the additional hypothesis that real life negative feedback is higher for women privately doing things with their computers?

What experiment/measurement (if any) could invalidate this theory?

But probably some of your downvotes are coming because you're discounting how much louder and more open sexism tends to be online than in the office.

This seems implausible. In most technical circles (see, e.g., HN) there is reflexive political correctness and mobbing against anyone who dares question the party line. Witness the comments on this article as a perfect example. We literally have the president of ycombinator making a personal attack against someone who dares to ask why a set of anecdotes is interesting.

(Note that I've never seen sama or anyone else attack someone for "why would I use your lib over sqlite?")

> We literally have the president of ycombinator making a personal attack against someone who dares to ask why a set of anecdotes is interesting.

Describing https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8653669 as a personal attack seems... excessive.

(Looks like he edited it though, were you talking about the original version?)

The original version said "you are the problem". It's hardly cursing someone out, but it is certainly more hostility than is normally desired here.

I agree, that version is absolutely a personal attack.

Like I said upthread: there is a difference between saying that someone with a particular misconception is a reason to build a website, and literally attacking them for holding that misconception. Altman's comment was a little personalized, but in context only a little bit: the only thing Altman could have known about the commenter was that they held the misconception.

To push it over the line into "personal attack", maybe it would need to read something more like:

"You're the reason we had to waste time building this site."

There isn't a "fixed amount of negative feedback"; most people, men and women, will do their utmost to minimize that feedback, particularly when it comes from people who are otherwise decent to us or play a large part in determining the smoothness or roughness of our lives. And particularly when that feedback comes preemptively from an early age.

Reflexive political correctness on HN and other forums, meanwhile, is not preemptive. It is in response to the overwhelming amount of belligerence, innuendo, and offhand sexism that runs rampant when there is no such moderation. If you think it implausible that sexism is more noticeable and notable online than in schools or workplaces, I have to wonder how much time you've spent on BBS, IRC, etc., over the years. Or else whether you just don't notice it. This wouldn't be unusual; sexism is so embedded in most parts of the world that it takes either a great amount of reflection or a small amount of finding yourself on the wrong end of it to notice. (We are, after all, communicating in a language in which "gratify me, a man, sexually" is among the stronger insults.)

(Note that I've never seen sama or anyone else attack someone for "why would I use your lib over sqlite?")

I would not expect anyone to feel as strongly about libraries as they do about how other people are treated; in fact, I'd be glad not to know them if they did.

...most people, men and women, will do their utmost to minimize that feedback...

You clearly didn't even read what I said (hint: what I said was entirely based on this phenomenon).

It also seems likely that you can't think of a measurement that would refute your theory. If that's the case, then it's not even wrong.

The only person on this thread who treated anyone badly was Sam Altman. The belligerence is almost entirely on the part of the PC crowd. If you want to see more examples, browse my history. See, e.g. DanBC's comment from last week calling me a misogynist for asking a simple philosophical question (admittedly, a question that confounded the PC crowd).

Saying that someone was "the reason" YC had to build a page was a little tactless, but it wasn't belligerent. What you're doing here is projecting all of your own defensiveness/tribalism into Altman's words, and through that lens it's easy for you to see aggression. The charitable interpretation is "the fact that there are people like you with this misconception about gender parity in CS is why we wrote that page".

That's not belligerent or aggressive. It's like me saying "the fact that people like you choose unauthenticated Blowfish CBC mode for your cryptosystems is why we had to write the crypto challenges". Again not the most tactful way to say it, but it's not mean either.

That is a more charitable interpretation. Having been on the receiving end of far more obvious belligerence, it is possible I'm interpreting things less charitably than I should. Thanks for pointing it out.

I have to disagree here a bit with your first sentence, or elaborate on it. I agree with the rest of your post.

Because many people mean well and want to smooth our life paths, many people, male and female, will tell women, "You know, tech is a really rough industry. I'm sure you'd be good at it, but you might not want to deal with trying to make it in such a male-dominated field. Are you sure you don't want to try medicine or advertising instead? Or be a librarian? Then you could use your skills but not have to ..."

"You know, research math is really competitive and your likelihood of getting a good tenure-track job is not high. Are you sure you don't want to focus on teaching instead? High schools always need good teachers and they're everywhere, and you could be such a good role model..."

"You know, a startup is a really risky endeavor that takes up a lot of time and really pulls you away from your family. Maybe you should consider an entrepreneurial role in a big company instead so that you could have the security..."

People rarely say outright negative things. They just want the best for a woman -- something a little less risky, a little less hard, maybe a little more nurturing. And nothing I said above was false, and if you are a guy reading this I'm sure you'll say "Someone said that to me once!", but you're not doing the constant swim against the current that a woman is doing (or not).

>when a young adult woman with no prior programming experience wants to take up computer science in college, no one says, "Really?"

Don't you think that a young adult deciding to take further study in a subject they have no experience in - which suggests they have no real desire towards - should at least be asked by educators/parents "Are you sure that's what you want? Really?". If I'd never baked a thing in my life and said "I want to go to catering college" I'd pretty much expect teachers to say "Really?"; why is this different?

I'm not at all suggesting you need experience in a domain to begin studying it at a higher education institute - but I'd want someone to double check that I'd at least considered [considering] the possible consequences of that route of study. I wouldn't want to stop someone following an impulse, just that I'd want to try and get them to do it with at least some thought.

> Don't you think that a young adult deciding to take further study in a subject they have no experience in - which suggests they have no real desire towards

Er, since when does lack of past experience indicate no present desire? Or even no past desire?

I think there should be evidence of passion, which typically manifests in a proactive approach to education and experience.

Edit. As I think of this more, I feel like we're having two different discussions in parallel. The first, how do we get more women in technology. The second, how do we get people involved in their passion. These are two distinct conversations, and the first shoe-horns a subset of the population into a career track for the sake of a misguided notion of gender equality.

No one is advocating for shoe-horning anyone into something they don't want to do. We are advocating for people who may have curiosity to pursue something, but do not for a variety of external, cultural pressures. We are talking about the best ways to remove those pressures - not pressure them into it.

> We are advocating for people who may have curiosity to pursue something, but do not for a variety of external, cultural pressures.

This strongly resonates with me, but I still fail to see how this becomes a gender issue. Intelligence is culturally depicted as nerdy for all genders. It's never been cool for anyone to be a software engineer. If anything I sympathize with black males the most because culturally they're seen as "not being real" or "acting white" for simply not dressing the part.

Catching footballs is cool. Singing is cool. Improving the world with technology is not. I think this problem has no gender preference.

Computers specifically, and technology in general, have been seen as for boys. Elsewhere in the thread, someone links to a great Planet Money episode which talks about how home computers were originally marketed to boys; its a fascinating listen, please seek it out.

cool and socially acceptable is not the same thing.

Claiming someone needs to have 'passion' for a job is just a way of putting up a barrier to maintain the status quo.

There's no reason why anyone needs passion. They need technical ability and incentive. That's it. Just look at any other industry and you won't see a requirement to be passionate about the subject. You'll find thousands of quantity surveyors, radiologists, retail managers, cleaners, etc who are entirely dispassionate about what they do for a living yet they still do brilliant work because they do it for the money rather than the love. And that's perfectly alright.

> There's no reason why anyone needs passion.

Is this advice you'd give to your kid?

Yes.

In the IT industry (here in the UK, and particularly in smaller companies) everyone pretends to be wildly enthusiast about learning the latest tech, and as such companies have realised that while everyone says they live and breathe this stuff companies don't need to give much incentive to people. If everyone gives up their evenings and weekends to learn the latest things then companies profits increase because they don't spend anything on training. Add to that no one gets paid overtime. No one gets a decent payrise. No one gets promoted. The only way to advance is to leave your current job and move to a better job somewhere else. All this because companies know that their staff are 'passionate' and will learn this stuff in their own time.

You don't need to be passionate about what you do for a living. You should like it otherwise you'll not enjoy day-to-day life very much, but if you're spending your own time doing things you should be learning in work you're wasting your life. You can always be passionate about something that isn't your job.

I think you're confusing being passionate about something with it being your favourite activity and being passionate about something with being a walkover for an exploitative firm/boss.

I used to work in IP and was passionate about it, ultimately I realised that my moral objections meant I couldn't continue in it. However I never did unpaid overtime. When I got home I messed with computers, went biking, and other things because I was also [more] passionate about those things. I'd devour popular media mentions of IP related to my work, but that wasn't doing work.

>if you're spending your own time doing things you should be learning in work you're wasting your life //

Not if you'd do them anyway.

>You don't need to be passionate about what you do for a living. //

I agree completely. But if you're spending 40+ hours doing something every week isn't it better if it floats-your-boat just a little?

>You'll find thousands of quantity surveyors, radiologists, retail managers, cleaners, etc who are entirely dispassionate about what they do for a living yet they still do brilliant work because they do it for the money rather than the love. And that's perfectly alright. //

We're not talking about taking a job here, we're talking about choosing a subject for further education, for an undergrad degree. I went to pains to say that passion wasn't a requirement, not even for taking a Uni course; but I'm going to assume passionate engagement with a subject is a top reason for taking a Uni course and that those who do a course not solely because of an anticipated job are more likely to complete. No stats for that sorry.

If you're just wanting a job in IT purely to have a job then why bother with university?

I know 2 cleaners - one does it for work, solely to get money to live; the other is passionate about it and chooses to do it in preference to other things (she's a qualified teacher!). Neither of them chose to spend 3 years of their life studying it though. Also if you're choosing a Uni course based on expected earnings levels of graduates of that course then you need to factor in the necessity of completion of the course, wouldn't it be far more sensible then to do something you have even a little experience in? If you've got the maths grades to get on a CompSci course then you're better surely with sticking with maths or economics and targeting the expected earnings of an accountant or actuary, ForEx trader or something?

>"entirely dispassionate about what they do for a living yet they still do brilliant work" //

Brilliant? Like they win awards for their work, they've been promoted to the tops of their fields? Brilliant. I can believe "good enough", even "better than average" quite easily.

[I'm not motivated by money, so I do find it hard to believe that people would devote their life to something _on_purpose_ that they have no passion towards.]

Most people who want to do something want to do it because they played around with it and enjoyed doing so. When the parent says "no experience", I think they mean people who never even bothered to play around, not just people who never worked in the field.

Sometimes people want to do something, but they've never had the chance until they go to a place that offers a vast array of new learning opportunities. Say, at college.

I think if you've gone through the whole of school with a desire to learn something in a subject area that the school likely teaches in, and the library certainly has information on, without having any experiences related to that subject area then you're not passionate about it.

It doesn't indicate it, which is why I didn't say that, but it suggests it.

Another analogy: if I always avoid eating chicken, I'm often offered it but refuse it - it suggests I'm not especially fond of chicken. It's possible I've just never tried it, that I've always liked the idea. It's possible it's my favourite food but I'm especially weird and so always refuse it. But it seems if I said "I'm going to eat nothing but chicken for the next 3 years of my life" you might say "Really?"; perhaps suggest I try chicken first?

This doesn't rule you out - as I already mentioned - it's fine to pursue a subject on a whim but, and this was the point I was responding to, if you're going to veer off in a new direction [or follow a whim] then it seems right that those looking out for you will question you on it, "really, are you sure you want to pursue a college course in this subject you've ignored all previous opportunities to learn?". There are plenty of good answers, but indeed one need not justify oneself to teachers and parents at 18yo or so - it's still right of them to raise the issue.

A lot of US schools don't offer any CS classes. For instance, 56% of high schools in California, a state notable for tech, do not offer CS or programming in high school [1]. In 2011, 2,100 schools were certified for AP CS out of about 42,000 high schools in the US [2]. That is five percent. Yes, some of those schools without a programming class have a book about visual basic in the library. Some of them might even have something about C or Java. But they don't necessarily have computers.

In my high school I did not have access to a computer on a regular basis. There were about 7 old computers in the library, which I couldn't go to during classes, for about 2400 students. There was also a computer lab in the basement which was used for classes that I never took because I was taking an IB/AP curriculum and didn't have room in my schedule. I was not from an extraordinarily poor school and I was accepted to MIT, as were peers -- the high school wasn't a place low in social or educational capital. Imagine all the schools that are.

Your analogy is fine for people who've been offered chicken consistently throughout their life -- all 5% of US students.

[1] http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_26510658/computer-scie... [2] http://www.exploringcs.org/resources/cs-statistics

That every high school teaches computer science or even offers computing classes beyond "here's how to run spell check in MS Word" is a large and largely incorrect assumption.

We're often talking about taking CS 1 here, not deciding on a career path.

Sometimes, people have no experience in an area because they were never given an opportunity to learn it. Or not enough of one. So, no. Taking courses in college is a common way for people to learn what they want to learn. I see no reason that computer science should be different.

I took my first programming class in college. I was originally going to be an english major, and then changed my mind. I went on to earn a major in computer science, have worked in the field for more than 6 years and was the CTO of a successful startup which I sold earlier this year.

I see no reason why anyone should be questioned for wanting to try out a course of study.

"which suggests they have no real desire towards"

How could someone have desire towards something they have never tried? I never realized programming was the most exciting thing a human can do before I had my programming 101 at university and 14 years later I'm happily employed as a software engineer and fairly competent at what I do.

" If I'd never baked a thing in my life and said "I want to go to catering college" I'd pretty much expect teachers to say "Really?"; why is this different?"

I would think the person would find out soon enough if it works for them or not. Most precious things in human life are often the result of serendipity.

What is a good occupation? I would say it is a one where the basic value adding functionality is enjoyable to a person and brings them energy. A bad occupation is one the person hates. If someone has never done something, but find out after trying that they really enjoy it, I would say the odds are that he or she might become pretty good at it since they enjoy it and they have extra mental energy to spend.

Decisions made based on intuition cannot be logically baked without lots of hard work. Sometimes it's impossible. However, evidence based, empirical proof is easy to gather. If someone does not know would they like something, they should try it.

It's far more efficient to try it first and if it does not stick, then try something new. I would claim it's quite impossible to figure out before hand if someone would like doing a thing just from applying basic logic.

I would say the agile ideas are pretty good for personal life as well. Try new things, see what happens, but do not become victim of the sunk cost fallacy - fail fast and all that.

>Don't you think that a young adult deciding to take further study in a subject they have no experience in - which suggests they have no real desire towards - should at least be asked by educators/parents "Are you sure that's what you want? Really?". If I'd never baked a thing in my life and said "I want to go to catering college" I'd pretty much expect teachers to say "Really?"; why is this different?

Why would you expect that? Everyone has to have a career in something, and chances are, it's not going to be their childhood hobbies.

As an old boss of mine said when hiring, "Does this person have ten years' experience? Or one year's experience, ten times?".

What he meant (i think!) was that someone who's been doing something for ten years might not know any more than someone who's been doing it for a year - they've just been doing the same thing over and over again.

He had actually a very good point (if he meant it that way). I never thought about it like that before.

Reminds me totally of today's SMBC: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3553#comic

I think your old boss's meaning was pretty much the opposite -- 10 years of deep experience in a field can be much better than 10 years spent hopping around from job to job across fields. Applied to programming, this would be something like "I want someone who has been doing ML for 10 years, not someone who has been hopping from hot trend to hot trend every year and just now happens to be doing ML".

In my experience the phrase has the meaning that twic described.

Specialization and diversification can both be good. I think it's spending 10 years making the same mistakes, not learning, that's being criticized here.

To understand this phrase, think of grades 1-12.

"Did this person graduate from high school, or did they take the first grade twelve times?"

Both students have 12 years' classroom experience, but one knows more than the other.

Unless you want an expert in first grade I suppose!?

Which is how you end up with stack-specific experts. Which, hey, they know what they're doing, for sure.

The best argument I've recently heard for "start younger" came from a Planet Money episode (http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-wom...). The computer in most homes was treated as a toy for the boy of the house. By the time you get to college, the guy breezes through the basics in CS 101 while girls are left thinking "Why is this so hard for me?" and drop out.

Luckily, this trend will hopefully be reversing now that all young people get laptops regardless of gender.

I started programming in grade school. I didn't learn anything about algorithms until college. I don't think starting early helps out that much for anything beyond pretty simple concepts.

There are those who pick up amazing amounts, algorithms and all, on their own, but I think that has more to do with the person than with starting early.

I have the distinct memory of being in a college class with someone who had never used a CLI (no understanding of how to navigate from /home/foo to a project directory, only most tenuous understanding of what a directory was), who didn't understand what a variable was, and who couldn't understand why x = 7 + 2 when x already was 10. I have a lot of sympathy for folks who feel like the geeks-doing-this-since-age-7 have a pretty commanding advantage coming into CS101. (I just don't think that advantage is morally problematic.)

and who couldn't understand why x = 7 + 2 when x already was 10

That's a classic example for why functional programming can be a more intuitive paradigm than imperative programming.

I don't think the trend will reverse at all. Think of point-of-entry into programming 20 years ago vs. today. Back then, to do anything with a computer one had some exposure to programming: you either created your own scripts, typed them in from somewhere, or at the very least had to learn to navigate the technical corners of the system to get it to do anything interesting.

Fast forward to modern times, people can be absolutely masters at using a computer without having the faintest exposure to programming concepts. The point-of-entry in modern times is likely going to be through gaming. Making/modifying start up scripts. Installing mods, configuring mods, making mods. Or just being so immersed in gaming that you imagine that building them is just as fun as making them (it isn't but of course they don't know that). The point-of-entry is still male-oriented.

> The point-of-entry is still male-oriented.

I agree with this statement, but I disagree with the rest of your post. To me, it reads like saying that the point of entry for becoming an architect is learning to hammer nails. Actually programming a computer is really just the way we express ideas, it's not how we learn to form them. There are more abstract forms of play that build the base skill set needed to be an engineer. For instance, I've yet to meet a good developer who wasn't exposed to Legos or some similar construction toy as a child. Those toys form the basis for being able to break down the whole into its constituent parts. And that's the essence of what a good developer does...takes a complex system and breaks it into simple, manageable components.

This whole discussion over whether it matters whether you take up programming in your teens or twenties is, to me, missing the point. If you've got a foundation starting with building toys, moving to woodworking and learning to fix things, you'll pick up software development much more easily than you will if you've never been exposed to this kind of pre-programming.

The best example of this that I've ever seen is my parents. My dad was an artist by trade, which means he earned most of his money in construction and roofing. He never went to college and didn't do particularly well in school. My mom, on the other hand, has a PhD in psychology and a masters in social work. As a child, she played with dolls and was taught to cook and clean. Both spent the vast majority of their lives living without computers. When my mom first started using a computer, everything needed to be a set of steps that could be memorized. It became clear that her view of the world is one of rote memorization and pattern matching...build up a set of "recipes" and then look for situations to apply them in. But those recipes are not composable. To this day, she can manage her Word documents without any problem and has a highly organized directory structure but is completely unable to manage her digital photos. Both activities are simply files and folders, but there's no connection in her mind. Meanwhile, when he was alive, my dad was far more fearless in his exploration of using a computer and became very competent. He taught himself JavaScript in order to script Photoshop actions. For him, using a computer was a series of problems that needed to be solved and every solution could be unique.

So I guess what I'm getting at is that we waste way too much time worrying about how people get into programming and not nearly enough time worrying about how people get into problem solving. But that's the key skill that makes a developer good at his/her job. And, as you've rightly pointed out, the points-of-entry into problem solving are still very male-oriented.

Amplified by the chaotic nature of computers (lots of cruft, legacy, ...) that will throw off anybody without deep desire to learn. I've seen uber brilliant students (acing hard Math and Physics cursus) failing at programming because they couldn't find the right switch for bash or gcc. Some teachers were even mocking them.

I think this is related to an implicit assumption that startups are for twentysomethings, where you have to have started early in order to have much experience at all.

Maybe it's just me, but I think the startup culture has an emphasis on youth that leads people to wish they "started younger", instead of "finishing older" -- not that you're ever really finished. Perhaps people feel like 35 or 40 is too old to start work at a startup. I wonder if this pressure is particularly noticeable for women, since it seems like most other pressures of aging are exacerbated for them.

Maybe the only difference between a 25 year old with 10 years coding experience and a 35 year old with the same, is that the former is more likely to be accepted into the startup community.

The "startup culture" also valorizes camping out in a rundown house with your cofounders/roommates and subsisting on ramen while pulling 100-hour work weeks. Young people with fewer obligations are obviously better suited to such a lifestyle.

I agree. I've been coding for decades,but it's a handful of years that made the vast majority of difference. That's not to say you don't learn some things every year, but the major progress is concentrated in a few years (and they aren't all at the start!)

As also someone who started coding at 13 and now mid-40s, mine too has been quantum evolution. Usually from needing a particular technology for a project and then learning it or just a didactic itch I scratched. Novel coding techniques distract you from solving the problem and exploring the novel for its own sake is a common pitfall in the programming world.

    10 Solve problems with tools you know
    20 Learn new tools
    30 GOTO 10

  15 Find known tools to be insufficient

That's always been a big driver for my learning. If I could do the job with the tools I already know, my drive to learn new tools is somewhat diminished.

its hard if you don't have the context to know this though. you may never think what you are using is insufficient if you don't get out of your comfort zone.

True, if I'm never challenged in my work then I never find reason to get new tools. Hopefully we're working on things that do challenge us and do expose us to the weaknesses in our tools - and force us to say "There's got to be a better way, how does everyone else do this?"

I think my little bit of pseudo basic was to extreme. I meant there is a temptation when faced with a problem you know already how to solve to do it with novel tools on the client's time. Like "I should do this in Forth, how hard could it be"

yes, and no. i still think that without exploring you are not going to find things way out of your comfort zone. sometimes its not "weakness" in your tools that should inspire you. you can write perfectly great stuff with imperative languages, but at some point you may want to try a pure functional language to get a perspective shift. its more so to see if there may be a better way, or a different way to do things. i am very glad i took two courses in haskell, despite the fact that i don't ever use it for work, just because it has changed the way i think about certain things and given names to concepts i only had a vague notion of before.

I disagree.

I am glad I took some spare time to learn RoR coming from a .NET background. I had no problems to solve in RoR that I couldn't solve in .NET.

I just explored it and learned about different ways of doing things. I am sure it has made my .NET programming better too.

Also learning some RoR has got me also using Linux and Git. I learned a bit about Nginx etc. I went to some interesting RoR meetups. I gained a lot from it.

So I encourage programmers to learn other languages and techniques, for the sake of it!

10. Learn another programming language / framework tool

20. Have fun with it

30. Realize you can now solve problems you previously couldn't

40. Profit

There is some confusion, you are agreeing with me.

I mean don't try solving novel problems in your day job with novel tools and techniques. Use known tools to solve problems. Lean new tools when not solving problems.

OK i misunderstood you, but I don't see how you can avoid learning new tools when solving problems.

You must often hit the point where you think "surely there is a better way to do this, lets research it" - then find new tools, spike them and then use them? No?

However what I think you are getting at maybe is people who think stuff like "Node.js - that sounds funky, oh.. Hadoop - thats hip at the moment how can we use that?" perhaps for fun, or to enhance their CV. That is dangerous. You end up with completely the wrong tool for the job!

Yes, that's what I mean. Software is all about building tools.

I mean like "I know, I'll do this client job in Lisp, I've never tried that" which is probably a bit of an extreme example but I have learned similar by experience :)

  10 Solve problems with tools you know
  20 Learn new tools
  30 GOTO 10

Sure, but since learning new tools more than superficially means solving problems with them, that is equivalent to:

  10 Solve problems with tools you know
  20 Solve problems with tools you don't yet know 
  30 GOTO 10

And learning new tools -- programming languages specifically here -- often involves learning new techniques, that while not necessarily as natural and popular with your current language, can be applied there, which its good to have in your pocket for when the techniques that are most popular/natural with your current languages aren't great for solving a problem you run into.

There are good reasons that the The Pragmatic Programmer includes the recommendation to learn a new language every year.

I agree, generally, but one of the advantages of starting women in software development earlier is that hacking culture changes. If women were a constant presence in software development from 12 years old onwards, it wouldn't be so odd to find women in your CS classes, or making up a plurality of your hackathons or conferences. It would be something that people had grown up with, on both sides.

Once you've gone through it all, it doesn't really matter too much whether you started at 12 or 18. But if you start programming when you're 18, and you get stuck, it's much easier to decide to drop out. And women drop out of tech at higher rates than men.. everywhere. Women are more likely to drop out of CS in college. Women are more likely to pursue a non-technical career even if they had spent four years working on a technical degree. Women are more likely to leave tech after they have been working in tech for an extended period of time.

It's also great for bragging and building your technical credibility so your peers will respect you. I have had classmates say to my face, "maybe computer science isn't for you because you don't understand X" and the most satisfying response I've found to that is saying something among the lines of "my mom is a software engineer and I've been building websites since I was 9"

>Women are more likely to drop out of CS in college. Women are more likely to pursue a non-technical career even if they had spent four years working on a technical degree. //

Any stats for these - it would be interesting to see the level of disparity.

TBH I'd expect that if members of a particular group drop out of CompSci in college at a higher rate that those left would be less likely to then "drop out" in any way later. Are those initially choosing practical computing degrees (IT, SoftwareEng) also deciding to change path at the same rate? Do people drop out from CompSci and then go more in to programming type careers (SofwareEng)?

Sure. I found some fun stats you can look through. With regards to women dropping out of a software development role, it looks like women are dropping out at higher rates than men because they either want to pursue a non-technical career or they drop out of the workforce entirely because women are expected to be the primary caregiver. And when kids come along and a couple has to choose between sacrificing a husband's career or a wife's career, usually the wife will choose to leave.

> On women dropping out of CS at a higher rate I can't seem to find any hard numbers on how women are more likely to drop out of CS in college, but I imagine it is because if a woman gets a lower grade (such as a B) in a class she is less likely to major in it than her male counterpart [0]. While that study only refers to one professor's economics students, in my experience the effect holds very true. Women who receive C's (which are like harvard B's) are much less confident in their technical capabilities than their male classmates who receive C's.

> On women dropping out of tech after getting a technical degree After 10 years of experience working in high tech, 17% of males will quit and 41% of females will quit. These women will either take on a non-technical job or take time off the workforce (presumably motherhood). But at some point after 10-20 years of experience, around 56% of women will drop out. [1, page 18] It's a pretty well-documented phenomenon that women are perceived as the primary caretaker, and are thus more likely to sacrifice their job to care for children but here's how that, in conjunction with the fact that technical women leave for non-technical jobs, plays out.

[0] http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/catherine-rampell-wom...

[1] http://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/ncwit_the...

fun stats :0(

Thanks. [0] is very interpretative, for example:

>"[...] suggests that women might also value high grades more than men do and sort themselves into fields where grading curves are more lenient." //

It could equally be that women generally find those other subjects easier, or that the subjects they stay away from don't interest them. And, it could be that the grading curves follow the women, rather than the other way around. A corollary of what's being said here is that subjects men do are graded more harshly & that fewer men graduate ... and yet the system is said to be prejudiced against women?

It's interesting that the reasons given are all predicated on differences between the sexes but that the most obvious potential difference [to me] - that women simply don't enjoy the STEM subjects so much as men - isn't even suggested. Men not giving a damn about grades though, that's likely apparently whilst according to the narrative of the article it seems women are delicate little flowers who when they achieve even marginally less than perfection are too devastated to continue.

>"Women, admirably, want to excel — and usually do, academically. We earn, on average, higher grades than men in almost every subject." //

Interesting that from this is drawn the conclusion that women are being acted against with prejudice in the college system.

>"The majority of new college grads are female, yet women receive only 29 percent of bachelor’s degrees in economics each year." //

If it's not down to male vs. female subject preference then it seems most likely that the reason for this are closely related to the reason that men are - in these terms - under-represented in most non-STEM subjects, or in biology, say[3]. What are the feminists that are supposedly sooo concerned about equalising graduation percentages across the sexes in all fields proposing to do about biology [as a subject for study in college]?

All I'll say on [2] for now, as I don't have time to study it, is that in your quote is the line:

>"It's a pretty well-documented phenomenon that women are perceived as the primary caretaker, and are thus more likely to sacrifice their job to care for children [...]" //

But women have a choice to carry a child or not, men don't have that choice. This is greater opportunity for women dressed up as male prejudice. If women choose to give birth, breastfeed, then the natural consequence of that are that they are not in the workforce for some period.

The NCWIT is very interesting, a good source for statistics. It just lacks comparative statistics. We learn that ~5% of women leave a "SET" job in the "workforce" in order to start their own companies. But we don't learn how many men do for some reason, nor indeed how this 5% compares to those who have history majors, say. That makes it very hard to draw conclusions for the data presented.

We do get badly used statistics like:

>"According to a study by the Center for Work-Life Policy, 74 percent of women in technology report “loving their work,” yet women leave technology careers at a staggering rate." (Women in IT: The Facts, p.15)

In other words 25% of women currently in "technology" don't "love" their work [I'm surprised that's so low, not like, not enjoy but love] yet only 41% have quit after 10 years. You see those 2 figures and think, well 41% is really high - but of course the 41% is compounded over time and with the other figures the 74% that say they love their work are predominantly going to be those that haven't been doing it very long. Because of the age profile (more old men than old women in tech positions) the comparative figures for men will have people who have been doing the job for far longer. This 74% statistic then is most likely perturbed strongly if there is a honeymoon effect [which I suspect there is in practically all fields of work]. A more careful approach should have been taken to account for these sorts of things and to make a true comparative study - why wouldn't you study the population you're seeking to emulate and only the one you are seeking to alter?

I've droned on too long:

>"History professor Cynthia Russett, who studies 20th century women’s history, said administrators should focus on ascertaining whether men and women have equal opportunities to enter different majors, but equalizing participation may be an impossible task." (Gender gap in majors persists, 2006 [3])

[3] http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2006/04/27/gender-gap-in-major...

You're right. The focus should be on ensuring men and women have equal opportunities, but the only way to measure that is by measuring participation. And from the disparity in participation, this either means that women have less opportunities than men or that women don't like tech as much and thus are willing to drop out at higher rates. I personally think it's some combination of both.

I'm totally down with the goal of equality of opportunity - but as women in STEM at college in USA have been falling since the 70s do you think there has been a corresponding decline in opportunities for women to enter STEM courses? It seems that despite greater opportunities there is a decline and not because of it - I was really surprised by those figures in your NCWIT citations:

>"Similarly, in 2008 women held 57 percent of all professional occupations in the U.S. workforce but only 25 percent of all professional IT-related jobs — down from 36 percent in 1991." //

I started learning how to code using PHP at 29, and 4 years later I am still an amateur. I can say with confidence that the day I started programming was the last day I got bored, and this no figure of speech.

I am not sure whether a late start is an advantage or not, for I would I have preferred the opposite, however I am glad I started then.

Now I can spend my weekends working on things for myself instead of posting requirements on Odesk and such.

I am in marketing, and the ability to automate tasks has proved useful countless times.

My opinion now is that of a good friend "Coding is today's arithmetic. Everybody should learn it, without an exception." Nothing should be so special about it.

I agree for the most part. In terms of getting more women in tech the most important change isn't necessarily to encourage starting early but rather to encourage tech as a pragmatic career choice. To be honest that's why most men are in tech and in CS programs. And the more women are in CS and engineering programs, merely because it seems like a good way to make a living, the more accepted that will be and the easier it will be for other women to see that as a legitimate lifestyle choice and a career that won't just be a constant upstream fight against the current. That's the sort of thing that leads to a positive feedback loop of women going into tech until it's no longer seen as unusual.

On the other hand, there is something to be said for fostering early passion in tech. A lot of times folks end up in tech because they rekindled or amplified some earlier passion or interest. Your story of coding at 13 is somewhat rare but it's even rarer to find someone who ended up in tech who had no prior interest in the field whatsoever. A young boy at 13 may not have an interest in programming or see software development as a likely career choice, but they will likely see it as a desirable choice. And they will see various techie activities as things their friends do, things they should be expected to do, things that are fun and doable, etc. That sort of thing makes it easier to get into tech early and makes it easier to get into tech later because it doesn't seem like such a crazy jump. Additionally, often times it's the folks who got into tech due to an early passion who end up being some of the most successful.

Anyway, I've left and come back to this a couple times so I'm probably rambling. My point is that each half of the equation (early vs late engagement) relies on the other to some degree, and though it's the late engagement which is more impactful, encouraging early interest is still important.

I think you're making a lot of sense. I would like to see statistics on this, but at least for me and many others who switched to software development after college, it's definitely the case that we had periods in our childhood where we were into programming, or at least tinkering on our computers. I never really realized that this might've made it much easier for me to make the switch after an entire college period of different things.

For myself, I never imagined I'd be a software developer when I grew up, I always figured I'd be a scientist or something else. In college I started studying math because that was what I was good at. I got into chemistry and physics too because I was was also good at those and interested in them, as I'd been for a long time. Computer Science as a thing to study didn't occur to me until a bit later, even though I'd been programming since grade school, and learning computer science since high school. First just classes off and on, then later delving into what my graphing calculator could do and then the family computer. Meanwhile, I was reading books like The New Turing Omnibus and learning how to program and CS fundamentals, just 'cause it was fun.

I had assumed that actual developers did things much different and it wasn't until college that I figured out the truth.

>In the 25 years I've been coding, only a few years worth of that time really grew me as a developer, so what you work on has just as much impact as how long you've been working on it.

Needs to be repeated. This is also why getting a job with people who are working on interesting projects is such an important thing.

I'm not a programmer but I can "do some stuff" and that "stuff" has made money for me.

I got involved early back in the days of teletypes and then green Dec VT100's. The whole idea of sitting in front of a terminal and getting a response from it was immediately interesting. In the same way that I always wanted to be a pilot. One day I just programmed a loop "just because" that ran for a day. Got hauled into the computer center director's office he thought I was selling time on the equipment ( ESR was a TA at said computer center).

My point is it was interesting to me as I"m sure it was to you when you were 13. Like sex you didn't need to be told to take a liking to it. And as I said I wasn't particularly good at it so it wasn't because of some reinforcement that I got by being great.

This is similar to being in undergraduate business school vs. graduate business school. The UG where I went (Wharton) were always interested in business (typically). The MBA's had other undergraduate majors and became interested in it later.

That said both business and programming are things that you learn over time. So there is no doubt that starting early is an advantage but obviously not a non starter by any means.

>This is similar to being in undergraduate business school vs. graduate business school. The UG where I went (Wharton) were always interested in business (typically). The MBA's had other undergraduate majors and became interested in it later.

I can't speak for Wharton, but the majority of undergraduate business majors I know were pursuing the major because they were pragmatic and knew that it was a good major to be in for a good career. Meanwhile, I know plenty of "other major" people (including myself) who pursued another major in order to gain more concrete skills and knowledge for the industry they were interested in (Electrical Engineering in my case).

I think I agree with you regarding a MBA. A MBA is the ultimate "pragmatic degree" in my eyes, where most people are making a calculated quid pro quo trade of $200,000 and opportunity cost in order to gain concrete things to advance or shift their careers.

Want to point out that this was Wharton a long time ago way before the Internet (we had the arpanet) and way before entrepreneurship became fashionable as it is today. I will further clarify what I said as well because it really relates to the entrepreneurship program "back then" as opposed to Wharton or even entrepreneurship at Wharton now. My point being that anyone who went for that type of business training in that time period was really into business at least that was my experience at the time at that school.

> Lots of really excellent software people I've worked with got late starts.

I echo this. I have come across several top-notch people in my career who didn't code until college.

I started programming in elementary school and continued intensively in high school. I look at these people and think "how did you pick all of this up so fast?" But somehow they did.

Lots of really excellent software people I've worked with got late starts. Lots of people who started early coasted or are still coasting.

The thread is so long now that I don't know if you'll see this comment. Anyway I'd like to ask you something. I also started late, around 20, and didn't go to CS college until 25.

The difference for me was that at first it was a game, I didn't own a computer but used a friend's Spectrum. On weekends we programmed simple games, a music program, just for fun.

Later, in college, I saw that it was possible to have a job doing that. A friend lend me a 80286 and I spent many hours at home (unfortunately neglecting classes).

The question is if you think that it's more the social aspects of the usefulness of coding more than just the age. In your experience, is it the same being a programmer's son as learning to code at high school in some toy experience?

It would be interesting to look at those nations, such as Israel, where more women become programmers, and look to see if an early start is a factor there. I would guess that institutional forces are at work at a later age, in particular the willingness of the schools and the military to push math/computers to anyone who seems to have ability. Which is to say, I doubt that starting early is a factor. What matters is what sort of environment the women face when they get done with school.

In Israel, I don't think there is as much of that "early start" mentality.

What is L.O.B?

Line Of Business?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/jj65907...

Yes. Back-office support software.

i.e. More than 90% of all software in existence, by project count (and likely by line of code count or hours invested count).

Legacy Or Boring?

Line of Business, the CRUD that runs very large corp. Boring, repetitive, the COBOL^H^H^H^H^HJAVA of industry.

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