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Why the Widening Gender Gap In Computer Science?
ruheling writes "From yesterday's New York Times: ' What Has Driven Women Out of Computer Science?' In many US universities, over the past decade, there has been deliberate effort to integrate and encourage women and girls to get more involved in the 'hard' sciences, engineering, and math. However, instead of the proportion of women to men increasing, in Computer Science the opposite is actually true. Specifically, in 2001-2, only 28 percent of all undergraduate degrees in computer science went to women. Now many computer science departments report that women now make up less than 10 percent of the newest undergraduates. What's going on here, folks?"
"You don't need a computer science degree for that. You can buy all the books you want from Amazon"
Yeah , just like you can buy all the physics books you need and become a particle physicist.
"There's no need to deal with dry courses about operating systems and so on."
I can't tell if you're a troll or not. If not then you're just an idiot. Anyone who thinks they can teach themselves everything perfectly without any help is either arrogant or a fool. Or both.
Anyway I always hear this argument trotted out by so called coders who've never had any formal training and by and large they're generally useless. Sure , they can knock out some unmaintainable sphagetti code in VB that vaguely does what you want at half the speed it should run but thats about as far as it goes. Ask them to do a proper design or profile and optimise their code and you might as well forget it. And thats before you get into any more of the complex arenas of CS.
The OP echoed my own thoughts (geeks scaring off the girls), but the "real" reason is because women are cool and computer science is not. ;-) They simply aren't attracted to that type of work. And there's nothing wrong with that.
You ever wander past the Health & Human Development part of your college?
It's like an engineering class in reverse - 40 women; 2 guys. (I knew I picked the wrong major.) Men and women are not that same. Men migrate towards "things" and women migrate towards "humans", each dominating their respective engineering & health majors. They don't think the same and they have different interests. Why can't people just accept that?
Yes, women are just not interested in white-collar fields, like science and engineering, and are only interested in pink-collar fields like nursing and social development. And women really love cleaning house and taking care of children, so maybe we should encourage their natural interests by restricting them from working more than 10 hours a week outside the home.
You're a misogynistic putz, with no grasp of correlation vs. causation. Please go back to the 1950s bomb shelter you climbed out of.
I call bullshit.
Once we have a system in place for elementary through college that doesn't constantly tell them "Boys are good at math, you are good at soft sciences," and a culture that constantly tells them "Grow up to be nurturing, not smart," maybe that's a legit statement. But we're not in that culture, and we don't have that system.
Because you obviously don't value your citizenship.
I'm as leftist/liberal as they come, but one thing left or right you should never bring up, is questioning loyalty to your country, whatever it may be. That is, if you value your citizenship.
You CAN be loyal while dissenting, but you CAN NOT be loyal while questioning the worth of your citizenship. To ANY country.
And loyalty is one of the few rights a citizen owes to the state. Else you either work to overthrow it, or move the f^($ out.
Disloyalty while reaping benefits is the worst hypocrisy.
Nationalism, while having many bad sides, it's good sides, have basically built the world.
So the United States, or any other country, it's not only "a place of birth", it's your place of citizenship. As such, you owe it loyalty, even in dissent.
If not, you got your choices.
I'd mod you up, but somebody forgot to include +1 inspired :-)
I can just see it now, as the Scientists address the Intelligent Design fanatics:
"Why yes, we do teach creationism. Of course they're usually past that stage by kindergarten..."
Obama the First, Supreme Overlord of the Western Hemisphere, was elected Dictator for Life by an electorate of his peers all looking for a their share of a $700 Billion Dollar Bailout.