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Getting More Women Coders Into Open Source
Nerval's Lobster writes: Diversity remains an issue in tech firms across the nation, with executives and project managers publicly upset over a lack of women in engineering and programming roles. While all that's happening on the corporate side, a handful of people and groups are trying to get more women involved in the open source community, like Women of OpenStack, Outreachy (which is geared toward people from underrepresented groups in free software), and others. How much effort should be expended to facilitate diversity among programmers? Can anything be done to shift the demographics, considering the issues that even large, coordinated companies have with altering the collective mix of their employees?
just stop
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Id much rather that the executives worry about their product, and not work quota. While they worry about how to get X into Y, they are not using that time to better their product or their service.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I really wish my company had more female coders, because I'd like to see if they would provide a different perspective. As it is, we only have one, and she is good, but does not work in our sustainment group (instead she works on capital projects only).
Maybe coding is just something that attracts more men than women. I know it's always been that way for me. I've known very few women who take coding up as a profession, and those I have known were always very good (or at least, I've known men who were way worse).
However, it's entirely likely that men and women simply gravitate to different professions. We are not the same, to assume we are is to deny our differences.
We shouldn't mandate a 50/50 split, but we should ensure that there are no barriers to anyone wishing to pursue this profession. Once any barriers are removed (and I'm not sure there are any now), then we would see what the true diversity in backgrounds for coders would be.
You know how more women can be involved into open-source ? When there are more women coding open source. That's it. This is not a f**cking social issue.
If diversity improves the quality of code, then let every open source project or company decide that it is suffering from al lthose nasty bugs and lack of vision because there isn't enough estrogen in the mailing list. It isn't my problem. It isn't society's problem. It's not like women are banned from computer science and coding. And frankly, nobody how cares many women are coding, good for those who are, and good for those who aren't. It's coding...not suffrage or human rights or anything of fundamental importance to society. It's like cribbing about how all the cobblers in my town are men , no women. Well, boo fucking hoo.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
Is there a vagina-to-good-code ratio? Please cite the evidence for this.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
How about we invite people into the open source community based on merit rather than based on the unholy offspring of SJW fantasies and affirmative action??
One of the things that draws me to Open Source is that the barriers to entry are absolutely fucking zero. You want to build an Open Source app? Do it. Release it. If people want to use it and contribute to it, they will. If not, they won't (see the billions of abandoned/disused apps on sourceforge, github, etc). Run it however the fuck you want.
However, this really smacks of "Oh, but doesn't feel welcome in the community!" that's been going around lately. So the fuck what? DO IT YOURSELF. Don't wait for my approval. Don't wait to look around to see if anyone cares. If you want to do it, DO IT. You don't like how some maintainer is maintaining a project? FORK IT and make SOMETHING BETTER. Show them how YOU would do it. Just SHUT THE FUCK UP AND START DOING instead of WHINING.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Obviously, all women that want to be coders and have the aptitude to be good ones have a more than good shot at becoming coders. That is what matters. As most women do not want to be coders (just like most men, incidentally, the tiny reminder is just larger for men), "getting more women into coding" sound like trying to trick or coerce people into doing things they do not want and what they have no reasonable aptitude for. That never has a good outcome.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
you're a dick
You think so? Well let's try something then.
Diversity remains an issue in hospitals across the nation, with executives and project managers publicly upset over a lack of men in nursing roles. While all that's happening on the corporate side, a handful of people and groups are trying to get more men involved in nursing school. How much effort should be expended to facilitate diversity among nurses? Can anything be done to shift the demographics, considering the issues that even large, coordinated companies have with altering the collective mix of their employees?
If you find TFA acceptable, but my alterations not, then I am (not) sorry to say that it is you who is the dick, not I.
Hey girls! Do you want to do programming work for zero compensation? Do you want to spend your free time doing labor? Then OPEN SOURCE is the place to be! Join us today!
Who judges merit? How do they judge it? Is it a fair judgement? How do we know? What about all the biases that everyone has?
If things like gender are to genuinely supposed to not influence our reactions in the workplace, then we need to stop fucking focusing on them and accept people, men and women, for who they are, or whatever interests they happen to have that may, or may not, happen to direct them into a particular industry.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
How many women would give up their nursing jobs to get more men in the field? How many Teachers?
Sound ridiculous? That is exactly what these vagina counters are doing to men in STEM occupations - they aren't creating new jobs for women, they are taking jobs away from men to give to women...
Ken
Who judges merit?
The users.
How do they judge it?
By using, or not using, code.
Is it a fair judgement?
It is the only judgement that matters, whether it is "fair" or not.
What about all the biases that everyone has?
No one gives a crap about the gender of the person that wrote the code. When I submit a patch to an open source project, no one asks me about my gender. It is irrelevant, and often unknown.
Eh, I was unaware code was turned away because it came from either gender. Again I don't know how open source projects collaborate, but on the face of it you would think what a person looks likes matters least there. But maybe it doesn't work the way I think it does.
In my long (over 30 year) career, I've never once seen anyone hired because they were male despite there being a more-able female candidate.
I'm not saying it doesn't happen - I've just never seen it.
On the other hand, I *have* seen a less-capable candidate hired because they were female.
I'm not saying it's common (not least because I don't think it is) - but I have seen it.
In my experience, whether you keep your reproductive organs internally or externally has exactly ZERO influence on how good your code is - so can we just cut all this SJW bullshit, and hire the best person for the job?
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
Most people who get into computers and programming are naturally introverted.
This is a stereotype, and not really true.
On the other hand, it's important to understand that men and woman at NOT the same, and they may have different ideas about what they want to do in life.
The idea that in every field, we must have 50/50 is simply stupid.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
"Diversity remains an issue in tech firms across the nation"
It's a bullshit issue, and its importance is artificially inflated by SJW groups. Frankly, these companies that think there has to be a 50/50 split in everything need to get their heads out of the collective asses.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Build your own fucking community, run by your rules. Shut the fuck up and build something.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Considering we're talking about open source, how it is not open and accessible? You can take whatever code you want and contribute as much or as little as you want. If you don't like the way the project is going, you can fork the code and head off in your own direction and if the community thinks you're doing a better job, eventually you'll pick up contributors.
Forcing morals on everyone else and telling them that if they don't accept it they're being discriminatory is not making things better.
5) We need wives and mothers.
Ah, now the truth comes out.
We need husbands and fathers just as much as we need wives and mothers. In fact, we probably need them more at the moment, because the ones who work in the corporate world currently aren't around for their families as much as they should be or want to be. Women are allowed to have a family-work balance; indeed, they are expected to. Men are not.
If we as a society valued care as much as we value making money, institutional sexism in the workplace would be mostly gone within a generation.
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Because I'm lazy right now, lets just go back to the Hitman debacle. She goes off and says the room is there for you to basically kill the strippers and have your perverse fun with their dead bodies. Go google a quick Lets Play - Nobody does this. At all. The few people that even do take the path by the room, they avoid them completely, and just run by. If you even pay attention to the dialogue in that area, you would see that you are supposed to be sympathetic to the strippers plight (dealing with the 'vacation' one of them is taking), and showing how fucked up it can be to work in those situations.
Lets see, there was also the fact that she thinks that Bayonetta is her own mother and doesn't seem to understand how her suit works, or the fact it is made up of her own hair. Oh! Lets not forget that that one game (its name is escaping me) where she cried just viewing some game footage that its a Damsel in Distress trope, yet the female lead SAVES you from being eaten alive from zombies in the opening scene.
If you are not seeing the videos and posts that address the points she was making, you should know something that some people suffer from confirmation bias and really only look in their own echo chambers for information.
Am I saying that she doesn't receive harassment? No. Am I saying that most of threats she receives are non-credible? Yes. She gets the same flack that anyone does online, even if they are non-controversial. Welcome to being in the public spotlight. I don't agree with the harassment that people in the public spotlight get, but to say that this is purely because she is a woman or a feminist is disingenuous at best.
"Who judges merit?
The users."
Wrong. We are talking here about open source. It is not users the ones that have access to a repo or apply the patch. Merit is judged by peers in control positions.
"How do they judge it?
By using, or not using, code."
Wrong again. Peer programers in control positions judge the code they recieve by two main criteria:
1) They understand the code solves interesting problems
2) Code provided doesn't put those peer programers in control positions into undesired troubles.
"Is it a fair judgement?
It is the only judgement that matters, whether it is "fair" or not."
I concur.
What about all the biases that everyone has?
"No one gives a crap about the gender of the person that wrote the code."
The peers in control positions shouldn't give a crap about gender and usually they really believe they don't give a crap. Not clear if that's always the case.
You see? the parent poster was begging the question about answers not being so easy as seem at first glance. Your answer (and mine) show him right.
This sort of environment is going to repel a significant proportion of men as well.
"But that's not how it works in real life."
It's only that, well, yes it is. The vast majority of open source software projects, either successful or not, are the creation of just one single person. See? "person", as in "I don't give a damn if they are man, woman or aliens from XK-578".
Anyone can, say, open an account at github and publish their code to their leisure, accept patches from whoever they want and publish about their code and the community of users and developers they want to build around it as much as they want. It's difficult to think of any other human activity more agnostic to personal identity than producing software. And still, there's a gender bias: maybe it comes from somewhere different.
You absolutely and completely nailed it.