Comment Re:Nerd factor? (Score 1) 596
The person that needs their arm twisted to come to Computer Science doesn't want to do it. There is nothing wrong with trying to expose young men or women in high school to CS to try to gain their interest but if you need to practically sell them a bridge of false expectations then that is really wrong. Whatever geekiness associated with CS will not be removed my CMU putting a bunch of women on their website. A lot of CS requires someone who can just plain knock out code at some point. You cannot turn intro programming classes into a survey of the possibilities of computers. Eventually someone has to take programming class and if they do not have the IT then they don't have IT.
I used to tutor intro CS programming classes and I can't tell you how many people washed out of CS after the first CS110 class in Java and decided to do MSIS business major. There is a danger in watering down CS if people have an allergy to programming and are being socially promoted so Brown and CMU can quotes higher females in CS stats. I am not going to get into what real CS majors think about MSIS majors.
At the end of the day you haven't changed the cubicle setup of many CS jobs. I think the less inclined my make it through but won't get the jobs they have the "education" for because the bottom line has still not changed.
How is it that CS is really failing because there are not enough female perspectives. You just cannot say that cause it sounds good. I am not sure where computers aren't doing what they are programmed to do because a women wasn't consulted.
And lastly, I have run into a few people with CS degrees who don't really know CS, men and women. They somehow made it through without really learning, I am sure that is in every major but CS you just need to be able to do it at the end of the day or your coworkers will right away know you can't hang.
I would like to end on an analogy even though we have been told not to. Trying to convince women that programming is not important to CS is like trying to convince people anatomy is not important to medicine because anatomy is wall some people can't make it over.
I used to tutor intro CS programming classes and I can't tell you how many people washed out of CS after the first CS110 class in Java and decided to do MSIS business major. There is a danger in watering down CS if people have an allergy to programming and are being socially promoted so Brown and CMU can quotes higher females in CS stats. I am not going to get into what real CS majors think about MSIS majors.
At the end of the day you haven't changed the cubicle setup of many CS jobs. I think the less inclined my make it through but won't get the jobs they have the "education" for because the bottom line has still not changed.
How is it that CS is really failing because there are not enough female perspectives. You just cannot say that cause it sounds good. I am not sure where computers aren't doing what they are programmed to do because a women wasn't consulted.
And lastly, I have run into a few people with CS degrees who don't really know CS, men and women. They somehow made it through without really learning, I am sure that is in every major but CS you just need to be able to do it at the end of the day or your coworkers will right away know you can't hang.
I would like to end on an analogy even though we have been told not to. Trying to convince women that programming is not important to CS is like trying to convince people anatomy is not important to medicine because anatomy is wall some people can't make it over.
