I have no words - "PCs for (female) dummies"

[WidowWadman]

Just came across this blog - speechless I am

Well, thank heavens I can read some French. That physics degree was really tricky without pink flowers on the cover of the textbooks to buoy my spirits, so maybe now I can finally hone my PC skills without sobbing at the depressing, masculine cover every time I lift the book.

From Pascal to Leibniz, from Babbage to Turing, from Eckert to Steve Jobs or Bill Gates: all blokes! And not just feminists!

Bloody hell, just ignore Ada Lovelace - Babage designed the difference engine, but needed a woman to program it.

Turing was part of a team which had, shock horror, women working along side men.

Grace Murray Hopper developed the first compiler and her work on machine-independent programming languages is directly responsible for how we write software today. She's also supposedly the originator of the word 'debugging'.

That having been said: As a woman employed in the IT industry, I am forever grateful for books like these. I very much doubt my fluffy pink lady brainz on their own would have been sufficient for me to get engineering degrees, specialise in my current field or land the well-paid software development job I currently hold.

For the benefit of us ladiez in technology, I strongly support the introduction of lecture theatres at universities decorated with pink wallpaper and of a special Windows edition for women, that emits baby sounds whenever new e-mail arrives. Obviously this is the one and only way for us to successfully address the gender gap in this industry.

Oh god, the comment on there made my blood boil!

"While absolutely equal to men in every way, most women do think slightly differently than most men."

It's a book about computers, there's no difference in the way you approach computing!!

Wonder if the women of the W3C need their code written in pink in order to understand it

Christ. I hope this is just the French version of the book. And thank god I'm not French.

My mum used to be a computer programmer in the 60s for the MAFF - back in the days of cards and punch tape - all the programmers were women Mind you she can't understand the free view box now so.....