From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.2 (2018-09-13) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS, MAILING_LIST_MULTI,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.2 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (minnie.tuhs.org [45.79.103.53]) by inbox.vuxu.org (OpenSMTPD) with ESMTP id a7e582fe for ; Thu, 14 Feb 2019 20:30:58 +0000 (UTC) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id DF7489B914; Fri, 15 Feb 2019 06:30:56 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C41BF9B8FA; Fri, 15 Feb 2019 06:30:41 +1000 (AEST) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id DCCB19B8FA; Fri, 15 Feb 2019 06:30:38 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mcvoy.com (mcvoy.com [192.169.23.250]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 892C49B8F9 for ; Fri, 15 Feb 2019 06:30:38 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mcvoy.com (Postfix, from userid 3546) id 21D0E35E133; Thu, 14 Feb 2019 12:30:38 -0800 (PST) Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2019 12:30:38 -0800 From: Larry McVoy To: Deborah Scherrer Message-ID: <20190214203038.GY26831@mcvoy.com> References: <20190214192940.ED58418C0AB@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <1b71e45e-5711-ee8d-2bc8-4ea6298311dd@solar.stanford.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <1b71e45e-5711-ee8d-2bc8-4ea6298311dd@solar.stanford.edu> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.24 (2015-08-30) Subject: Re: [TUHS] Women in computing X-BeenThere: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.26 Precedence: list List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Cc: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" On Thu, Feb 14, 2019 at 12:02:00PM -0800, Deborah Scherrer wrote: > My personal thought is that, in high school, it's the "nerd" factor. If I > were back in high school and saw the kind of guys that are getting into > computers now, I would stay a thousand miles away from them and that field. > But, alas, I don't think anyone has tried to research that idea... I'm decades past high school but have one kid just out of high school and another still in. So some conduit of info there. And I coached hockey at Los Gatos for a couple of years, a little more insight there. >From what I can tell, things are pretty different. When I was going through high school and college, being a nerd wasn't cool, nerds didn't get anywhere near the popular girls. These days, the girls have figured out that the nerds have a future so they like that. In general, there seems to be a lot less cliques and bullying. I would have thought girls seeing nerds as having positives would make them want to be part of the CS world but maybe not. I do think, given that work is frequently a place where you can find a partner (I found my wife, or she found me, at SGI), that it is a problem if there isn't a good balance. If you get 10% women then every time a new one shows up the sharks will circle. Not exactly a welcoming environment. > And/or: I have a friend who was a professor of CS in Amsterdam. She had > many grad students of both sexes. She says she had to practically force the > women to stay in the field. They would see the guys getting overly focused > on the computer details themselves, completely overlooking the goals of the > project. The women would get frustrated and complain to the professor. She > would have to convince them that the guys just did that, and that the women > should stay on track. That's true for specialists. And it is a reason that CS schools should teach systems programming. You really can't do well in that unless you see the whole picture. You can fake it for a while but eventually you need to see the whole picture to figure out where you need to be putting effort. I was visiting my old systems prof in Madison and he said that systems programming is coming back, employers like Google have been bitching that nobody knows how to do kernel work or even think about it. I believe it, I get "bug" reports about LMbench only to find they are trying to benchmark a VM. What kind of idiot tries to measure a VM? Using microbenchmarks? This was a CS grad student!