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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. "
I know the plural of "anecdote" is not "data", but in my experiences this is far from true. I have found female coders in my jobs to be downright malevolent in their coding. All women I have worked with that write any sort of code obfuscate the hell out of it, document absolutely nothing, and will barely explain how to even use their product. If everything is not run "their way", then it seems like armageddon.
Case in point. We have a coder who wrote an application for our office. Because of the fact that she refused to use any variable for the Program Files folder (hard coded as "c:\Program Files\") and she insisted that all workstations need a D: partition (to hold a 100kb support file), we had to rebuild 4 servers.
Say what you will about women coders being "touchy feely." I won't fall for it, any more than the NOW propoganda that all women are natural caring mothers, even the coked out alcoholics.
Not worse, nor better really, just ... different
So yes, I can see women writing 'better' code, but I still think that's more likely to be a matter of training and discipline, as much as anything else. Or perhaps the 'female geek' effect - in a word where you'll be faced with massive prejudice and pressure, the 'female techy' is typically (and yes, I realise this is a broad generalisation) even more hardcore than male counterparts - simply because she's there because she _really_ wants to, and has had to face a lot of uphill struggle to get there. This seems to hold true in petrolhead circles too (see, I can do car analogies too) - the few 'girl racers' I've met, have extremely extreme car mods, and rigs, because they're competing against everyone else _and_ the gender stereotype.
First, Perl is not an acronym, see the FAQ. Second, there have been studies [JFGI] that show that women give directions differently. Men use spatial reasoning (go north 5 miles), women use procedural methods (turn right at the bargain outlet).
I've seen 1, ever, a DB programmer, she was supposedly good. Heard of a few others through the grapevine, but only heard of them because how utterly useless and cruddy their code was. Just like I've heard of a few male programmers that I've never met. The phrase "complete rewrite" kept coming up from my associates after they (females and males) were canned.
Oh, wait, I have met a few others. They were no longer coding, they somehow had left the field and had a change of careers (working minimum wage jobs through a contract agency...) Actually, no different than after the big dotcom bubble pop and I met several (male) "network admins" who were (and still are, 7? years later) driving delivery truck. Seems they can't find a job in their field of choice again. I think the companies were looking for any excuse to let them go as these guys were from some very large manufacturing companies that really weren't effected by the dotpop.
Seriously, how many women, percentage wise compared to men, are in the field? How can they come up with some stat that says women are better programmers if you've got (pulling number out of air) 1 woman to every 1000 men in the field? How about a statement like "a percentage of women who become programmers and are successful at it (as in my experience a lot are not, but that's no different than men), tend to be better programmers than men"
This brings me back to my first post college job. It was 1991 and the guy sitting next to me had a picture of Paula Abdul as his desktop background. Someone complained to HR and he was asked to remove it.
At the same time my boss who was also his boss had an anatomical poster "Penises of the Animal Kingdom" on her wall with to scale anatomical drawings of about 10 different species penises - including homo sapien. HR never asked her to remove it, and she was in a position of authority.
Never really bothered me, but did show me that sexism and sexual harassment rules are applied differently to men than to women.
As for female programmers, I was a CS tutor at my university growing up and I can state from experience that any female that was able to make it through CS 101 was a much better programmer than their male counterparts on average. Unfortunately these females were all on the education path so they didn't go into dev work.
Interesting sidenote; the females that didn't make it did cry a lot more but would forge on, the guys just threw hissy fits when they couldn't get concepts and drop the class. Maybe there is a bit to the female capacity to persevere and the male stubbornness :)
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
I have not the slightest doubt that your experience is completely true.
I had an experience like this at Hewlett-Packard in Camas, WA in 1993. I was assigned to tear apart fully-assembled printers so that the parts could be used for prototypes of the next generation. I worked alone in a room filled with printers. No one had access to this room except from me and my (supposedly) male boss.
After a few weeks, I put a close-up picture of Claudia Schiffer on the PC's wallpaper. My boss saw it and flipped out. He ordered me to remove it immediately. I said that I liked it and that no one could be offended because no one had access to the room.
A day later I was fired from Hewlett-Packard for 'creating an environment conducive to sexual harassment'. I couldn't get unemployment benefits.
To this day I hate H-P and I don't believe anything anyone says about it being an advanced or great company. I will never sign off a purchase order for any of their products for any company that I work for. I suspect that most of the so-called great companies in the electronics/computer industry are the same way.
>Men use spatial reasoning (go north 5 miles), women use procedural methods (turn right at the bargain outlet).
How much of that is social? I would think how a girl grows up is very different from how a boy grows up. If a boy joins boy scouts, goes hunting with dad, etc then he'll see a map as something with directions and distances. If a girl doesnt get these experiences, she may never see a map until she learns how to drive and at that point has internalized her surroundings by using landmarks.
I think many of the things we write up to genetic determinism really have social roots.