The Reading Room
Mar. 2nd, 2005 10:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ljpliceaseI have this room where I have to sit down and wait for part of the day. I christened it the reading room. Anyway, I am in the reading room and I pick up one of the (ok, the only) books in there which is The Cartoon Guide to Computer Science and I do as I usually do with this book, which is open to a random page and start reading as I... um... wait. The pictures on this page are amusing, but largely irrelevant so I will just quote a bit shall I?
All I have to say to that is boy am I in the wrong programming department. Although, personally, I think old Larry is on crack. I was going to be a photographer at one point because I noticed there were a lot more women in my photography classes than in abstract algebra, and there was that time that I was going to switch my major to Russian because I noticed there were a whole lot more female language majors in my German class than there were females of any major in my compilers class.
I did meet a female hacker [2] once - although she wouldn't describe herself that way - and of course I immediately fell in love because, really, how often do you find a girl who says she likes to program? Needless to say, she didn't fall in love with me, because girls like that are in high demand for the obvious reason that there are hardly any of them. None of this is my actual point.
This hacker friend of mine told me that she only had so many years in the software business before she would have to get out because male coders can't relate to women coders and the system tends to get rid of them early on. She didn't really seem that upset about it, she said "it's not good or bad, it just is." I'd like to say that it's not true, but I look around me and... damn... there aren't any women programmers in my division over the age of 30.
All I have to say is, male coders are dumb.
[1] Sometimes, as in Jeff's case, even that is in doubt.
[2] Hacker, as in one who enjoys playing with technology.
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...there's a difference between the image of hardware and software workers-
Hardware types are engineers... into gadgets... mostly men... bound by the laws of physics... Programmers have no tools but their brains [1]... they're more often women... supposed to be solitary dreamers whose ideas have nothing to do with the laws of physics. Larry Gonick in The Cartoon Guide to Computer Science ©1984 |
All I have to say to that is boy am I in the wrong programming department. Although, personally, I think old Larry is on crack. I was going to be a photographer at one point because I noticed there were a lot more women in my photography classes than in abstract algebra, and there was that time that I was going to switch my major to Russian because I noticed there were a whole lot more female language majors in my German class than there were females of any major in my compilers class.
I did meet a female hacker [2] once - although she wouldn't describe herself that way - and of course I immediately fell in love because, really, how often do you find a girl who says she likes to program? Needless to say, she didn't fall in love with me, because girls like that are in high demand for the obvious reason that there are hardly any of them. None of this is my actual point.
This hacker friend of mine told me that she only had so many years in the software business before she would have to get out because male coders can't relate to women coders and the system tends to get rid of them early on. She didn't really seem that upset about it, she said "it's not good or bad, it just is." I'd like to say that it's not true, but I look around me and... damn... there aren't any women programmers in my division over the age of 30.
All I have to say is, male coders are dumb.
[1] Sometimes, as in Jeff's case, even that is in doubt.
[2] Hacker, as in one who enjoys playing with technology.
