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I take this as a sign that you are frustrated by your general lack of success in persuading people who are suspicious about "social justice".

Once again you have created an entire backstory to rant against that is unsupportable. That comment would make more sense if it wasn't my first post for this story. I will admit though, it is the second time this week that I have had to reply to some opinionated posters who obviously hadn't read even the first couple of paragraphs of the article about which they ranted.

Do you want to know why I felt qualified to make such a diagnose for someone that I hadn't even met? I recognise the symptoms because I am exactly the same. I too saw that they only asked women and wondered why. In my teenage years, I would have ranted and raged about it too. I would have used my own insecurities to project motives on people. But as I get older, I now know I should actually follow the links to find out the full story before I jump to conclusions. It's the only way that you can have an informed opinion.

In this case, I found out that they did this for Computer Science Education Week. I found out that in OECD countries less than 1 in 5 computer science graduates are girls. Do either of those things sound implausible to you?

Why would Microsoft care about this? Apart from the public naming and shaming of companies that have wide gender imbalances (which I'm sure you don't care about), TFA had this reason (among others):

By 2020, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that there will be 1.4 million computing jobs but just 400,000 computer science students with the skills to apply for those jobs.

So aside from any pure motives of wanting gender equality, this problem will actually affect their ability to employ staff in the future. Hence, they want to encourage girls to take up STEM careers. You could also say that they want to offset the discouragement some girls receive because they are told that this entire field is just a boys club. Does any of that sound implausible?

So why is it so implausible that they would want to do something to encourage girls and that they decided to survey "17 women within Microsoft's global research organization" about what is going to happen in the year '17?

Anyway the given reason is not plausible. It implies that the question was only brought up as an excuse to ask women something. If we want this question answered because it is important, then we should focus on having it answered and not performing some gender equality stunt.

I see. Your problem is that we are actually taking their answers seriously. You seem to think that because they are women they are not qualified to talk about their fields. If you think that this question is important enough that we should focus on having it answered, why didn't you follow the link to the blog post to find out what the answers were? Why wasn't your argument that they seemed like low quality answers? I think that it's because you just can't get past the fact that they are women.

I'm afraid you have no point and little awareness of the broader picture.

Perhaps if you bothered to look at the specifics of this case rather than worrying about the broader picture then you would actually be able to make an accurate assessment. But if you can't be bothered looking at the facts of the case, how can we deem your idea of the broader picture to be valid? If you are so set in your opinions that even having the article quoted to you to show where you are wrong just gets ignored, then I feel my diagnosis of you having a coloured view of the world stands. You shou

The stupidest fucking public service ad I ever saw was the Hour of Code video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FC5FbmsH4fw on YouTube that Google linked to today on its home page.

It's full of women, minorities, older people, and every affirmative action group that has a lobby or a voting block behind it (with a few prominent product placements).

But it doesn't tell you anything about what code is. (Nor does http://csedweek.org/)

There's nothing in here that would actually appeal to some kid who would be interested in code.

It's like the Richard Feynman critique of physics textbooks. You could replace "Hour of Code" with "Hip-Hop Dance" or "Basketball" or "Porn" and you wouldn't have to change the video.

They're just repeating a slogan.

They won't even get that. Teachers who participate (it is optional, so no one is being forced to teach something with a week or less to prepare) can win prizes, and students who attend a follow-up course can win stuff for themselves. Sounds like bribery to me.

Besides, I don't think it is important that things are incomplete, since the week designated is December 9-15. Plenty of time, and I don't think this qualifies as rushed.

And, they probably won't do much in the way of actual code. "Designed as a game that teaches basic coding principles, it will feature guest lectures by technologists including Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg and artwork from popular games"

There is a blurb at the CS education week site http://csedweek.org/ "No math needed. No computers either."

"Weâ(TM)ll host a variety of hour-long tutorials
on the http://csedweek.orgwebsite/ for
students to doâ"some developed by
Code.org, others developed by partner
organizations. Many of the tutorials will be
compatible with tablets and smartphones,
and there will be some âoeunpluggedâ lessons
that require no computer at all. "

So you would have to at least preview each one to see which tutorial to show for that hour. Lots more time involved.

One actual demo, "Blockly", is putting code blocks together like legos, and it isn't completely terrible.

link

Bookend with some talking heads, and you got an hour without talking or touching code.