One man's "toy" is another man's tool. (As the wag above who nominated Java above points out, Real Programmers only need assembly code.)

I might have said Lua, since I only poke around with it occasionally. Game developers and various (often Brazilian) researchers use it more seriously.

There's also the "can write a compiler/interpreter in itself" criterion for "real languages" ... which Scheme famously passes.

So, to summarize, a "toy" language is a) one that isn't Turing complete, or b) a language the speaker has little understanding of and no respect for.

The correct term for stun guns and pepper spray is "less lethal". People HAVE died from stun guns. I don't know about pepper spray, but I could imagine a fatal allergy or a blinded/stunned person taking a fatal fall. (Leaving aside the flammable propellant problem, which AFAIK is no longer an issue.)

That said, I would prefer more stun guns and fewer firearms on the streets, so if I were the judge I'd rule they were at least as protected as modern firearms are. OTOH, I'd *also* prefer all weapons regulated with mandatory background checks and waiting periods at the very least.

Did no one learn from Ray Milland in _The Man with the X-Ray Eyes_?

1. Voting becomes compulsory.

2. Party in power manipulates poll hours and ID requirements so that working poor and other groups can't vote without taking time off work, standing in long lines, triple-checking their papers, etc.

3. Working poor, etc., not only still have no voice but owe money for being excluded from voting.

(4. PROFIT!)

We need to make voting as easy and transparent as possible, not to impose rules the disenfranchised can't follow.

To all the people who say "women don't want to work in tech", note that women were the MAJORITY in the early days of computing, right up until the advent of personal computers. (Source) From the article: "... families were much more likely to buy computers for boys than for girls — even when their girls were really interested in computers."

So it's quite probable women WOULD go into tech fields ... if they had encouragement, a pleasant working atmosphere, and at least some assurance that motherhood wouldn't throw them completely off their career track.

It all started with this business of writing things down. People can't remember epics anymore! -- some old Greek dude

Weather is also a factor. Our power has gone out sporadically (usually preceded by the loud pop of something getting fried), and it usually comes back within an hour or two of my calling. Except during the Great Dallas Ice Storm which happens *every year* and which *nobody* seems to plan for. The last two years the power has been out for days, which is especially fun with an elderly invalid. The fact that the city/county response to ice is to toss some sand and ice on it, compounded with Dallasites inability to drive even during good weather, prolongs response times even further. But I still blame Oncor.

To my mind, the best managers set up conditions for their staff to succeed and defend them against higher-level managers. That's it. Managers should take care of head-count and hiring and meetings and all the other boring but apparently necessary stuff; they shouldn't be responsible for *any* analysis and design, let alone coding. Because all the "boring" stuff will eat up someone's time, and better the designated victim, I mean manager, than someone responsible for making progress.

The *worst* managers, in my not-too-atypical experience, are the rock-stars, micromanagers, timekeepers, and corporate climbers. True rock-star programmers should be writing code, not going to meetings ... and if they can't cooperate with the rest of the team they shouldn't be on the project at all. Micromanagers second-guess their staff and the staff waste valuable work time indulging the boss. Management by Gantt chart is even worse, since estimates in software are rough guesses, not contractual commitments; the work takes as long as it takes, for a set amount of work, and forcing the staff to work harder to satisfy a bogus schedule only makes work later (or buggier). Worst of all are the managers who are simply mouthpieces and boot-licks for their bosses, because they'll throw you under the bus for any perceived failure and claim credit for all your successes, often both at the same time.

It depends which parts are "agile" and which are "waterfall". From my not-exactly-vast experience, whatever mix you choose has to address four concerns:

1. WHAT ARE YOU BUILDING? Seriously. This is where the extra planning of "waterfall" -- itself a misunderstanding of someone else's comments -- comes in. One of my first jobs was a derivatives trading app in a perpetual tug of war between an outspoken exotic derivatives trader, back office and compliance folks wanting to automate trade reconciliation, risk managers wanting to manage risk, and the rest of the trading desk who just wanted to price whatever deal they were trying to do (vanilla or not). The end result was a kludgey mess that everyone hated.

2. HOW DO YOU ALLOW FOR GROWTH? There are right ways and wrong ways. Agile has a good tip: build only what you need, and as cleanly as you can. Better said than done, of course, and sometimes (as the Pragmatic Programmers have said) you *know* there will be a database in there sooner or later, so plan your architecture accordingly even if it's a little awkward short-term. Then there's the wrong way, which I saw in one project: build a "flexible" architecture with "configurable" components so that you can do "anything"! 1) KNOW WHAT YOU'RE BUILDING, even in broad strokes (see above). 2) For software to be reusable, it must first be usable for *something*. 3) If your "flexible" and "configurable" architecture takes more time to modify than writing straightforward code would take, it has failed; start over. 4) It's better to use open-source architecture than build it yourself. (Buying is also better, but beware of vendor lock-in and every-increasing fees, especially if you only use a small part of an elaborate framework.)

3. HOW DO STAKE-HOLDERS REQUEST CHANGES? No specification will be adequate out of the gate, and unless you're working for NASA or the military people CAN and WILL request changes, sometimes while you're building the product and certainly once people begin using it. Do you jump when they say how high? Do you have a long and slow review process? Do you work individual tickets? Do you have potentially disruptive "projects", and if so how do you integrate them back into the main project? Different applications have different rates of change and different tolerance for defects, but it's best to work out change process before the complaints come in.

4. WHEN AND HOW DO YOU CUT YOUR LOSSES? Despite your best efforts the whole thing will become obsolete or unmaintainable, sooner or later (hopefully later). As in point #1, have some idea which you're building, and at what point do you deprecate it to build something better. (This is the hardest part for many organizations; why can't the floor wax also be a salad dressing?) At some point make a plan, refactor your code base -- over time! -- to separate the parts you'll keep from the parts you don't need, and toss out the latter. If a radical rewrite is the only way to go, bite the bullet and do it, with appropriate safe-guards like regression tests. If you can't evolve or replace your product, a competitor -- maybe within your own organization -- will do it for you.

That's my long-winded advice, from someone who's watched many "successful" and "unsuccessful" projects die. Nearly all in-house software is a Potemkin village designed to keep the tzars happy. If the tzars aren't happy, the fake village is set ablaze and you, the fake peasants, go to Siberia. The only real question is how to keep your frantic peasant dance going as long as possible without dying of exhaustion or being sent to Siberia.

TL;DR: Plan the limits, goals, requirements, and large-scale architecture up front (erroneously called "waterfall"). But planning never really ends; stay agile to correct your course or take advantage of opportunities ... and be willing to throw the whole thing away if warranted. Also, keep your resume updated.

"On average, girls are - for whatever reason - less interested in math, physics, chemistry. ... Likely, these preferences are based in biology ..."

The Code.org article said none of this. In fact, it freely acknowledged social pressures that discourage women from entering or staying in tech. It's not unreasonable to suppose stories from women in tech discourage the next generation from even attempting to enter computer-related fields. It helps to read the freaking article.

As others have said, people -- mostly male upper-class Europeans -- have used biology to justify slavery, denying women/minorities the vote, giving harsher sentences to black or Eastern European defendants, and so on. (And I'm not even Godwinning.) Read Steven J. Gould's _The Mismeasure of Man_, then read Carol Tavris's _The Mismeasure of Woman_.