Slashdot Mirror
17-Year-Old Girl Wins Boston TV API Programming Contest
An anonymous reader writes "Jenny Lamere, a graduating high school senior from Nashua NH, was the youngest of 80 participants (and one of only four women) in the Hill Holiday TVnext hackathon held in Boston this past April, a programming contest sponsored by TV API providers. Her submission of 'Twivo,' an app that allows TV viewers to block spoiler tweets while watching a show and recover them later, won the contest's 'Sync to Broadcast' category (one of five), and was also named the event's 'Best in Show' (overall winner). At least one tech company has expressed interest in her app (a short demo and interview with the judges starts at 3:30 in the embedded YouTube clip). Lamere plans to enter the Rochester Institute of Technology in the fall, and will pursue a career in software development."
...but with all the hullabaloo around the treatment of women in computer science lately I'm not even sure what to say anymore. Did she win because she's a girl? Did she win despite being a girl? Clearly being a girl matters, or you wouldn't have mentioned that only four girls participated. Do we wish her luck with her career choice or do we warn her off because she's going to be ogled by her predominantly male colleagues if she pursues this career? Would she prefer that we not talk about her chromosomes and focus instead on the blatantly derivative choice of the "Twivo" name for her app?
While you are of course right, there's one interesting thought about this:
There can also be self-censorship. A concept better known as ignorance... especially in schizotypic illnesses (and in a very obvious way in multiple-personality disorders) including religiousness (where the other personality is "god/jesus/satan").
Which obviously is just as harmful and can be done in masses just as well.
Hence it is very popular with the political social engineers. People who are made to ignore things like that think it's their own free will, and would never complain about censorship nor fight it. Quite the opposite: They usually defend it the stronger, the less they know about it or why they think that way.
So every time we refuse to listen, we must all be very wary and ask ourselves: Are this information and my action actually useful or harmful for me?
at least as of 15 years ago or so...
When, as we all know so well, the world was exactly the same as it is now.
Also, in other news, men and women are different and a gender imbalance somewhere doesn't automatically mean something is horribly wrong and must be fixed.
And here's some actual statistics - the ratio last year was 67:33, a bit closer to 50:50 than 76:4.
The current male to female ratio at RIT Computer Science program is 68:1. RIT also has a fruitfall Arts program which brings in a lot of females. This is where you get the 67:33. I never took a computer science class with a female while there. In fact outside of a few liberal arts classes I was free from the distraction. However, every once in a while I would see one of those mythical creatures from a window on the 3rd floor of GCCIS. That always made for an exciting day...