Facebook Launches Initiative To Attract More Minorities and Women To Coding (thestack.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Facebook has launched TechPrep, a new initiative to attract more minorities and women into coding. The project draws a very strong analogy between the learning of computer coding skills and the learning of spoken languages, a field which is important to people whose first language is not English, and which engages with the popular understanding that women are better at learning languages. TechPrep is seeking to engage with parents and guardians to get its target audience into coding earlier in life.

Comments

Re:Why not just hire the best people for the job.

[Orgasmatron]

That sounds cruel.

The underrepresented group is the "low IQ" group, and unless I missed some big developments, IQ isn't something that can be acquired by seeking.

The root problem is that membership in the fundamental group is not distributed evenly across superficial demographic groups. But reality (genetics) can't be moved by wishing, shrieking or blaming.

The implications of IQ distribution by demographic groups has been discussed in gruesome detail elsewhere. Pay particular attention to the parts about thresholds and tails.

Of course, everyone already knows this, and are increasingly recognizing that these stories are about power, not programming.