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Do Women Write Better Code?
JCWDenton writes "The senior vice-president of engineering for computer-database company Ingres-and one of Silicon Valley's highest-ranking female programmers-insists that men and women write code differently. Women are more touchy-feely and considerate of those who will use the code later, she says. They'll intersperse their code ... with helpful comments and directions, explaining why they wrote the lines the way they did and exactly how they did it. The code becomes a type of 'roadmap' for others who might want to alter it or add to it later, says McGrattan, a native of Ireland who has been with Ingres since 1992. Men, on the other hand, have no such pretenses. Often, 'they try to show how clever they are by writing very cryptic code,' she tells the Business Technology Blog. 'They try to obfuscate things in the code,' and don't leave clear directions for people using it later. "
Hey look, you can read Miss McGrattan's own blog entry about the interview and perhaps provide some intelligent, constructive comments. Remember not to obfuscate!
Even if this statement is true, which I'm certainly not saying it is, in my experience women are also far more likely to clash with each other. We used to have a single woman programmer in our development department, and everything went smooth. She would make her points, most of the men would usually gang up on her and explain the opposite, it'd be one big fun-fest. About 20 minutes later, a major breakthrough would be achieved where both parties are happy.
Another woman works here now. IF they finish arguing in an hour, it's not because they've come to a conclusion, it's because their throats are sore. They still can't even decide on some simple coding standards that the rest of us have already just been sort of using.
Women together generally makes for a bad experience.
These are just things I've noted, nothing sexist about it.
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.. haven't _ever_ worked with a woman programmer in my 10+ year career.
That's a bad thing.
However, compensating by ascribing generic traits to gender (tidyness, empathy, etc) is not going to help, and IMHO this is exactly what this VP does.
I'm glad I don't work for her. She seems quite sexist.
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"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
Up to 1960s or so. Military and some businesses would hire rooms of "computers", people working with mechanical calculators and graph paper. The autobiography "Surely you are joking Mr Feynman" has a segment about this. Some of these same women carried over to early vacuum-tube computers. Grace Hopper, inventor of the first widely used compiler, was of this generation.
At one of my early summer jobs in a large corporation there was a gender split between "scientists and engineers" and "programmers". The guys did write code on large "coding sheets" of paper. But the females programmed keypunched the coding sheets, submitted the job decks and collected the printouts, and the guys would analyze the printouts. You were lucky to get one or two turn-arounds a day. The new people had did their own programming on teletypes of terminals (inverted 1974) in school, so declined programming assistants. Some theold guys NEVER touched a keyboard in their careers. They were either promoted into management or laid off during the late 20th century corporate restructurings.
So early programming acquired the "taint" of effeminity and being "trade" taught in vocation school. That taint delayed computer science from becoming as degree offereing at places like MIT, Stanford, and Harvard, some untilt he 1980s. I attended all three of those schools and remember the faculty debates about this. Computer scientists hid out in other departments, typically math and electrical engineering. I guess it was when you started seeing coding superstars like Don Bricklin and Bill Gates (yes Bill wrote a legendary BASIC compiler OFF-LINE that worked within a day of finally getting the hardware) that commercial computer science became more acceptable.
I've always held Grace Hopper in high regard myself. She was involved in the development of the first compiler for COBOL, as well as the language itself. She also pushed for standards in computing, and is at least partially responsible for the term "bug" in software. On top of all that she was a Rear Admiral in the Navy. What more could you want in a woman? She was truly one of the greatest female geeks in history.
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!