Jeanette Winterson on why women should code

[ErrolTheDragon]

And design robots...

Girls must code to curb power of sexbot geeks, author says

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sexbot-geeks-will-inherit-the-earth-so-teach-your-daughters-to-code-urges-jeanette-winterson-rjpl3mlnv?shareToken=d8f385c4d7fc6a7d3ace2441d86b9e2b

Not the article I'm looking for but knitting is coding!

medium.com/@eishande/how-knitting-is-like-coding-57a5e0880a39

The article I'm looking for was about how in a school in the US a maths teacher taught all her high school students knitting as part of the maths lessons to support their understanding of coding.

Coding is a big thing is primary education now and I've heard of a number of friends' girls going to extra curricular clubs to code.

As long as they can keep it up, and not bow to peer pressure, I do feel the future could be rosy for female coders. Just need to wait around 15 years...

DDs school had two full GCSE comp sci set. It's a girls school.

As women we can always go beyond code. There's nothing stopping us from doing this.

What is stopping progress is the fact that women are no longer going to give their precious minds and services to enable men to get all the glory.

I remember reading that the algorithms used for analysing social media presence etc of potential employees for tech companies are completely skewed towards stereotypical requirements (like an interest in anime etc) thus women have fallen through the gaps before they even get to peopled recruitment process.

@haXXor I think that sadly the attitudes you describe to women managers or would be managers are not restricted to women that dont know how to code.

Read Invisible Women to understand how women are taken out of society and yet are the force that make it.

I think what I am saying in summary is that of course women can easily learn to code and also become software developers. And lots do.

The problem is the sexist attitude of the tech industry and the men in it. Of the women that do go into tech lots drop out or move into related areas. And its not because they can't do the job.

medium.com/tech-diversity-files/the-real-reason-women-quit-tech-and-how-to-address-it-6dfb606929fd

I know fuck all about coding but suspect the now fashionable push to encourage everyone and anyone into coding will mean any value it used to have will be massively diluted.

The more people who can do it will just makes it more likely to become a minimum wage or barely above minimum wage job. Like driving.

There’s big bucks in Tech for sure and is the future. Bankers are becoming the poor relations at the highest levels. But as in any industry not everyone will reach the top and the being a big standard coder will eventually have the same value as many other skilled but low paying occupations

Bog standard damn autocorrect. I’d be a shit coder

Not everyone can code well though, and fewer have the combinations of technical/scientific/design/creativity required for innovation and successful new developments. But in this context there's no reason to assume there are fewer women who have the potential than men. So, more positively we should hope for women who are good at it filling the skills shortage and then maybe displacing some of the more mediocre males.

No doubt there are mundane coding jobs which may not pay well, that's not exactly what we're thinking about here.

@Caucho I think everyone in a vaguely technical career will soon (if not already) need to know how to code. And not being able to will be as weird and career limiting as it would be to handwrite a document and expect a secretary to be available to type up. So I do think it should be taught in schools. But it will still require a certain mind set as it's very abstract so will probably suit the sort of people who like maths.

I imagine that people who can design and write complex software will continue to be in demand for the foreseeable future. If anything the work seems to be getting more complicated and highly skilled.

Oh and there are lots of different languages you might code in and libraries to get to know. So coding isn't all one activity but rather a group of related ones.

So a data scientist might need to learn one set of tools and languages related to their field and a biologist another.

On the other hand a software developer would need to be able to adapt to using lots of different languages and tools that would evolve over the course of their career. I cant see it would ever be comparable to driving as an activity.

It would be the basic principles to be taught at school I think.

I am currently reading a book on women in gaming. Sickeningly so far the 2 most powerful "women" in the book transitioned in middle age, having made their name and money whilst living as male being married and fathering children. The fact that this gave them an advantage isn't covered in the book. They are now married to each other and describe themselves as lesbians.
The whole computer/ gaming/IT world seems very anti-woman.
Agree with Jeanette that it isn't safe to leave it to the men

the algorithms used for analysing social media presence etc of potential employees for tech companies are completely skewed towards stereotypical requirements (like an interest in anime etc)

Because watching cartoons somehow improves your programming skills. What the actual fuck? That's not about hiring the best programmers AT ALL, that's about hiring people who like what you like and share your values about the appropriateness of tentacle porn so that you never have to face criticism for your porn habit and the way you treat your girlfriend at the office.

I think that sadly the attitudes you describe to women managers or would be managers are not restricted to women that dont know how to code.

Well, yes. Women in Silicon Valley have to be shit-hot at their jobs, way more than men, to get half the level of respect. And even, that respect will evaporate and be replaced with unmitigated misogyny the second she complains about booth babes or the strippers at the office party. Basically, be (or pretend to be) the "cool girl" who is a-ok with male sexual entitlement flaunted right in her face, or face censure. It's only less overtly awful in the UK because we have laws to stop the worst of it.

Being able to code doesn't in any way mean you will have any chance of influencing gender politics of the present or future.

If you get a job in programming you would start at the very bottom (ie a "code monkey") where you just work long hours for relatively little pay. And it would be boring and frustrating stuff like debugging and trying to find out why something isn't working as it should.

If you get a job in programming you would start at the very bottom (ie a "code monkey") where you just work long hours for relatively little pay.

Yep, and coding to order, with the success criteria dictated by someone else. Whereas, if you get into requirements analysis, you dictate the success criteria.