ioult

I think people who experience this should look at their development practices. Especially if you don't have a clear goal with what you are doing, you find that you don't have the time to do things properly (like reading code or documentation) or you are changing direction frequently. Chances are you are experiencing a lot of stress, which is one of the "best" ways to make people lose interest in other things.

There is truth to that of course. At the same time it is about percentages. The more "opportunities" you have to do something the more likely it is that you do. If your friends are doing it, you have role models you can identify with, you don't have to give up something that is expected of you etc. all add up. A lot of boys in e.g. the 90s got in to programming because quake was awesome and/or they wanted to be a hacker like Linus.

> [...] otherwise I think hacker culture is pretty ungendered in the interactions of its members.

I think a large part of the culture can be very macho, even stereotypically so, and that arguing over programming and something like martial arts can be very similar. But it depends on where you look of course.

> Oh, so just garden variety tech feminism then.

Dismissing opnions you disagree with as inconsequential or belonging to some agenda is essentially the core of political correctness. (At least if with the definition of "things hard to talk about", rather than which words to use).

> So what specifically do we need to do in tech?

What to do isn't the problem. Not only can you find far better writing on the subject in the wild, but there are people are already doing it. But since you are asking I will give you an example.

Hacker culture puts a large, disproportionately so even, emphasis on hobbyism. Stories like the one in the article, getting started when you were young and not doing much else are meriting. For a women to have be able have the same experience they would have to engage in a largely male dominated culture at an age (as in seniority) when many boys nor girls aren't particularly sociable with people of the opposite sex and when fitting in is especially important. So when we value things in computer culture other than things with technical merit and instead put merit in peoples backgrounds or the tools they use we do so with a culture that largely isn't accessible to women.

Maybe that is vague to you, but not everything is clear cut. As a said, people doing things change this. They give girls opportunities to get excited by technology in their own way. They give women from other fields a chance to get acclimated at tech companies on their own terms. They try to emphasis the things you can do with technology instead of the culture etc.

> How can you disagree with it?

Assuming this isn't a rethorical question, it seems straight forward to disagree with the "because" part. Just because the author suggests something doesn't make it so. Presumably, since most people use themselves as reference, if something doesn't apply to yourself you might disagree with the explanation given and conclude that there are other factor involved i.e. that the problem is something else.

> This article is going to rub lots of people the wrong way, I suspect, but it's level headed, well reasoned and well written.

I get that this is natural reaction, but don't assume that people who disagree with something do so because it offends them. I didn't like the article because I don't find it very insightful. I think it generalizes too much and takes things at face value.

> It also beggars the question. Although very non-PC. That were I a girl I would not be dissuaded from this course. I know this because there was literally zero support from anyone regarding computing as a hobby or profession. In fact the opposite, they actively fought against it.

That's not "non-PC" on Hacker News. A lot of people here belive that there are few to no legitimate reasons for women to not be programmers and that they just don't want to. What isn't PC on Hacker News is the idea that it isn't society who is against women as programmers, but the environment built by "us". That maybe it isn't this environment that is more accepting than all others, but that "we" just fit in.