[ellevador]

I keep wondering why there are so few females pursuing a CS or other degree. Any real opinions why? I love working with guys but I keep hoping I'll find a girl in one of my classes, and I can pick their brain. I am the only girl in all my classes for the last year, why not more?

This post has been edited by skyhawk133: 25 January 2010 - 09:12 PM

[markhazlett9]

This is a matter of culture I think.... Usually(not saying always) but women don't really enjoy programming... Also, people have this idea in their head that programming is a job in which you sit in a dark corner and work.

The industry has always been male dominated and in my opinion that won't change any time soon. Just the way it is I guess...I have 5 girls in my class this year though so maybe it's changing?

[dorknexus]

Quote

I love working with guys

enough said.

This post has been edited by Dark_Nexus: 25 January 2010 - 09:16 PM

[skyhawk133]

There are definitely initiatives to get more women involved in CS and IT:

http://women.acm.org/
http://www.ncwit.org/

[ellevador]

Well sometimes I wonder if its the way our brains are programmed by gender..Programming is not something that comes to me and I have to read and read and then months later it just clicks. I love the outcome though.

[macosxnerd101]

In my class within my specialty center (for IT), there are about 6 girls out of 35 juniors, and most of them do well in the IT courses. We also have a club called Girls of CIT to encourage women in technology. Currently in AP CS, we only have 1 female student (10% of the class), and we're hoping enrollment will increase for next year. I certaintly agree with you- I'd love to see more women in IT. And yes, us guys love to work with women just like you enjoy working with us.

[ellevador]

skyhawk133, on 25 Jan, 2010 - 08:18 PM, said:

There are definitely initiatives to get more women involved in CS and IT:

http://women.acm.org/
http://www.ncwit.org/

Love it, thanks for the sites

[Jayman]

Programming rarely comes to anyone in the beginning. But I think you will find that the more you use it and as you acquire more knowledge about it, you will find that it gets easier.

Once you've picked up one language, you will find it easier to learn additional languages, as there is a lot of similarities in syntax in the more popular languages.

In my experience I have met a couple female programmers and I have no doubt they can be just as good a programmer as the men.

[skyhawk133]

For any girls interested in a career in game development, SixOfEleven posted the 2010 G.I.R.L Scholarship here: http://www.dreaminco...h...=151994&hl=

[Jubb]

It is not true that the industry has "always" been male dominated. A month ago I read an article about an issue of "Cosmo" from around 1967 that talked about programmer girls. Back then it was such a new field that anyone with experience would get a job, and there were no social stigma's about nerds staying up all night with mountain dew. There were tons of women programmers, and people even speculated that programming lent itself more to the female gender because of their general linguistic ability.

These days the reason more women don't get into CS is the whole image of it. Men in programming and IT have dominated the field with this image of anti-social geeks that code in their dark bedrooms. The majority of women don't want to associate with this image and stay away from it.

I applaud any movements to bring more diversity to our field.

[NeoTifa]

Coder girls don't exist. It's just a myth.

[smacdav]

This is an issue in almost all subjects that involve a fair amount of mathematics. In addition to the stigma of the stereotypes, there are a fair number of teachers out there who believe that "girls can't do math". Unfortunately, many of them are able to communicate this believe to their students at a young age, even without actually saying it outright, so many girls grow up believing they can't do math.

I was a math instructor for 17 years (at community colleges in the Seattle-Tacoma, WA area) and had to fight this attitude the entire time. The fact of the matter is that 80% of my best students were female, despite the fact that most of the higher level classes were only about 20% female, if that.

If you believe you can't do math, that leaves you out of any hard science, computer science, and many other fields in which we find a very low percentage of females. Coincidence? I think not. Luckily trends are changing. Hopefully we'll continue to see increasing numbers of women going into math-related fields.

[neptunusmaris]

skyhawk133, on 25 Jan, 2010 - 08:18 PM, said:

There are definitely initiatives to get more women involved in CS and IT:

http://women.acm.org/
http://www.ncwit.org/

There are also other organizations such as devchix and phpwomen. They are really good with supporting and uniting women in CS.

[Core]

Just pointing this one out - according to some sources, Ada Lovelace was the first person to write a "computer" (well, you can't really call that device a computer compared to what we have now, but still) program.

[NeoTifa]

skyhawk133, on 25 Jan, 2010 - 11:02 PM, said:

For any girls interested in a career in game development, SixOfEleven posted the 2010 G.I.R.L Scholarship here: http://www.dreaminco...h...=151994&hl=

Yes, I already commented on this. It makes me sad that my school doesn't offer game dev as a major, so I'm hoping to go back and get my second degree or something while I go for my masters (since the curriculum is similar and so half the work would've already been done). I don't know, but I really, really, really want to get into game dev, as you may or may not have already noticed with P:N . My schooling situation is fubar atm. I don't know what I'm going to do about the schooling for that. I'm also hoping that if I get a degree in game dev that maybe Sensors will take me on and I can program flight similators or something for the military! (trying to keep my career options realistic, as I doubt XBox would hire me )

This post has been edited by NeoTifa: 26 January 2010 - 09:54 AM