charlesbradshaw

I want to congratulate you for being the only person in this thread to like the redesign. I'd go as far to say that you're brave for outing yourself like this

What does homogeneous have to do with prison rehabilitation? I'm not attacking you, genuinely curious.

The paper disappoints me because they attempt to think of all the explanatory variables for the differences between countries, then they turn to gender and end on a chart.It's impossible to read the paper and come away with the impression that whites are simply better at coding, because the authors give so much context to their findings.

I am agnostic to the cause of the gender difference, and clearly this study didn't have enough information to give any insights. That's why I find it so unsatisfying that they would put up a chart and mention gender differences if they weren't interested or capable of expanding on the results beyond "[...] more effort is needed to attract higher-achieving female students into CS."

You're making very strong claims against me, but I think we're on the same side. The paper disappoints me because they attempt to think of all the explanatory variables for the differences between countries, then they turn to gender and end on a chart. It's impossible to read the paper and come away with the impression that whites are simply better at coding, because the authors give so much context to their findings.

I am agnostic to the cause of the gender difference, and clearly this study didn't have enough information to give any insights. That's why I find it so unsatisfying that they would put up a chart and mention gender differences if they weren't interested or capable of expanding on the results beyond "[...] more effort is needed to attract higher-achieving female students into CS."

The line you quoted isn't discussion, it is stating results. In the article and the paper there is discussion about the differences in education between countries. For example...

(From the article)

> CS departments and CS education in general have a longer history and are much more established in the United States than in China or India especially.

> A lot more is spent per student in the U.S. than in the other three countries.

(From the paper)

> United States have likely similar math and science levels as students in Russia (Implying the difference in CS scores comes from somewhere else)

But the line you quoted was the only "discussion" on the differences in gender in the article. I think there has to be at least something to discuss.Why is the gender gap smallest in China? Why is there a gap at all for people sitting in the same classes? Are there any other metrics (like age?) that had similar differences? Did the size of the gap change when looking at elite institutions?

To be completely fair, there was some discussion in the last paragraph in the paper, but the only hint at what might be causing the difference was that the women in CS aren't high achieving enough. I wouldn't count that as in depth discussion on the cause.

> The gender gap in skills does indicate that more effort is needed to attract higher-achieving female students into CS [...]

Just putting a chart at stating results the end of a paper and an article isn't a discussion. There is a gap between genders about half as large as the gap between countries. Having questions about that doesn't imply a narrative.

It feels like we're at a point where people have to be sorry if they find a difference between genders. This article put the gender graph at the end and moved on without discussion, as compared to every other graph, so I looked at the paper[1] and they do the same thing.

Is this study so flawed that the results are meaningless and shouldn't be discussed, or are the results meaningful and the authors will get backlash if they discuss their findings?

I'm curious why they even put the gender graph in the paper. They didn't look at differences in Elite Institutions like they did for countries. They certainly have more data than I do, but I'm left to make my own uninformed conclusion.

[1]:https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/03/12/1814646116

This boils down to "If you don't create something then you are more likely to hate your job", which is why he can claim that maintaining bad code is bullshit.

Companies are financially motivated to have these kinds of jobs, and if we only use that metric then we could say that almost no job is bullshit, but that doesn't mean people enjoy them.

That said I'm weary to extrapolate those ideas into any specific plans to change society

This article deeply disappoints me as Hacker news is the last place that I would expect to find Luddites.

> They promised the open web, we got walled gardens

Google doesn't give out its users data in the same way that a bank doesn't give out it's users balances.

> ...many of the dystopian business practices we associate with fast-growing tech platforms [like] operating with a small group of well-paid engineers, surrounded by contractors

The implication here is that before Amazon, no company applied aggressive and unethical cost saving measures. When was Nestle founded again?

> Uber did not cause this precarious economy. It is the waste product of the service economy

This is the kind of thing that makes you sound smart but means nothing. There is not an explanation of the "waste product of the service economy" that follows this quote. In fact this implies it is not Uber's fault at all for disrupting the taxi industry.

> In the case of venture capitalists, [...] their real genius appears to lie in their timing: their ability to enter a sector late, after the highest development risks had already been taken, but at an optimum moment to make a killing

The implication being that nobody made a competitor company before the internet was around. The other claim is that being n+1 to the market gives you a guaranteed and significant advantage. If this was the case it would be trivial to overtake Google.

> The tech visionaries’ predictions did not usher us into the future, but rather a future where they are kings

This line tells me that the author has gotten used to modern day conveniences that tech has brought us and thinks its unpredictable that people who made companies that span the globe are rich and powerful.