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Mattel Sells Out Of 'Game Developer Barbie' (cnet.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger writes:
The Mattel people have released a new Barbie doll figurine touted as Game Developer Barbie. Dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, she was apparently designed by a game developer.
It's already sold out on Mattel's web site, with CNET saying it provides a better role model than a 2014 book In which "computer engineer" Barbie designed a cute game about puppies, then admitted "I'll need Steven's and Brian's help to turn it into a real game," before her laptop crashed with a virus. Mattel says that with this new doll, "young techies can play out the creative fun of this exciting profession," and the doll even comes with a laptop showing an IDE on the screen. Sandbagger's original submission ended with a question. Do Slashdot readers think this will inspire a new generation of programmers to stay up late writing code?
It's already sold out on Mattel's web site, with CNET saying it provides a better role model than a 2014 book In which "computer engineer" Barbie designed a cute game about puppies, then admitted "I'll need Steven's and Brian's help to turn it into a real game," before her laptop crashed with a virus. Mattel says that with this new doll, "young techies can play out the creative fun of this exciting profession," and the doll even comes with a laptop showing an IDE on the screen. Sandbagger's original submission ended with a question. Do Slashdot readers think this will inspire a new generation of programmers to stay up late writing code?
Link is article is borked I think...
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
Is it just me, or is the main link (the one actually referencing Game Developer Barbie) just an anchor tag without an href...?
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Does this doll represent a "female game developer" in the sense of a woman who likes math and computer programming, who studied computer science at a real university, who works on commercially-successful games selling millions of units, and who because of her abilities and experience is respected by her fellow game developers, both men and women alike?
Or does this doll represent a "female game developer" who was born a man, suffered from severe identity issues and gender confusion, started calling himself a "woman" despite having a penis, studied game development by reading a book about JavaScript, works at a grocery store, and launches one angry tirade after another on Twitter attacking alleged "racists", "misogynists", and "homophobes"?
I ask because these days the concept of a "female game developer" is, sadly, more commonly associated with the second sort of person than the first. It's shameful how the great accomplishments of real female game developers are overshadowed by a few loudmouths on Twitter.
Why?
Other than someone says 'we need more women in STEM', why do we ACTUALLY NEED more women in STEM?
Put your SJW bullshit aside and actually in a objective and factual way describe to me why we NEED more women in STEM.
WOMEN DON'T FUCKING LIKE STEM STOP TRYING TO IMPLY YOU KNOW WHAT THEY NEED TO DO AND FUCK OFF. Women are more than capable of taking over any industry that want to take over, its happened countless times and there are large swaths of women dominated professions.
We need more women garbage men too, but you aren't fucking whining about that are you? More women in STEM is not going to get you laid or fix your social issues that prevent you from getting a date.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
We need the indie developer ken, complete with bangs, thick glasses, shallow beard and a face that you must to your best to not punch your screen, complete with a starbucks coffee cup and a mac.
Well at least this one doesn't seem like it has impossible body style?
No, but it does reinforce the stereotype of nerd girls wearing glasses, having funky colored hair, print t-shirts and canvas jackets. Put some cat ears on the headphones, and it would probably sell well ... to a different audience.
Are female programmers the only women who wear jeans and t-shirts? That is what makes a person a programmer?
First off, we need to realize that not all that many men are into programming. Long hours, so-so pay, especially considering the hours. And zero social prospects. A real niche group.
I can see the stories now.......
Barbie eats cold pizza at 2 in the morning while trying to clean up some code for Friday's big rollout.
Barbie gets told to do duty at the IT help desk because "You know computers and stuff, right?!"
Barbie gets to wear her blue jeans and shirt at work the couple weeks she would have been at the beach because her vacation was cancelled so she can clean up some shitty code that the guy who up and quit left, and they gotta meet Friday's deadline.
This is not a field for many people - male or female. Finally, are young females so shallow that a little plastic doll's clothing can determine their choice of careers?
If so, that is what needs worked on, not putting a plastic doll in a t-shirt and bluejeans.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
This is just more of the "diversity" bullshit.
Hiring women gets you nothing. Hiring minorities gets you nothing, Hiring skilled and well qualified PEOPLE will make your company better. Demanding the hiring of more women, more minorities, etc. is nothing more than judging people by their race and gender, which is what we're supposedly trying to get away from.
I'll take a shot at this from an economics point of view... The number of cretins claiming there are not enough domestic tech workers is legion (e.g., Ellison, Zuckerberg), and these cretins are spending money hand over fist buying up politicians who want to increase H1-B visas. I don't wish to turn this into an H1-B discussion, but the Cliff's Notes version is: more H1-B visas = downward pressure on tech wages, as Sanjay in Hyderabad does your job for pennies on the dollar. If you increase the domestic supply of tech talent, then you'll undercut a key argument for increasing H1-B's. You may still end up see some wage headwinds but not nearly as much as if foreign workers flood the U.S. market place.
Off the top of my head, I'd say it's because it's better for the industry and the field of study.
It's fundamentally better for the industry and profession as a whole. For a field that tends to pride itself upon its egalitarian ethos and the importance of logic, the idea that an irrelevant criteria (in this discussion, gender) is so wildly over-represented is wildly hypocritical.
You accurately noted that there is a wildly disproportionate representation of men amongst garbage collectors and yet that doesn't bother me in the least. That's not because it's unglamorous or because I think it's beneath my notice, but rather because I don't think that physical act of garbage collection will be improved through fresh insight, voices, or perspectives.
I will admit that I would like for there to be at least a few women in garbage collection, just as an indicator that, "No, seriously, 50% of the population can actually choose to do whatever work they damn well please, just like the other 50%," but that does not improve garbage collection itself, just society as a whole. Since it isn't improving the actual practice of garbage collection, let's set that aside as "SJW bullshit", shall we? I can accept that.
I absolutely do think that the logistics of how to handle garbage collection on a city- or region-wide level is a field that can benefit from fresh insight and voices. I know nothing about the sanitation services management industry, but I strongly suspect that it's run by old white men. Rather than gender being the issue, in this case, I'd be more concerned about class, race, and representative makeup of the public being served.
That's why your counterpoint is in no way related to the topic of hand.
"WOMEN DON'T FUCKING LIKE STEM STOP TRYING TO IMPLY YOU KNOW WHAT THEY NEED TO DO AND FUCK OF"
The 1950s called, they were looking for more archaic closed-minded dumbfucks... I'd be happy to provide a reference for you.
I work in education (teaching robotics and programming after working in the industry for 20 yrs). I
have girls/young women in my classes, don't fucking tell me girls/women don't like STEM you total fucking moron. Girls are some of the better ones in my class.
It's asshats like you that I have to contend with in getting more young women interested, and people like this.
https://www.theguardian.com/te...
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Fuck you, you sexist asswipe.
It is out of fear for the dickless wonders like you that more women aren't in STEM.
Whooosh much? If you had bothered to read the entire post before commenting with froth around your mouth, you might have discovered that it was irony and ridiculing STEM males. Others managed to catch that.
I wonder how 'HR Dragon Barbie' would go over?
If I already have all the money, and all the men are already heeding my wishes and obeying my commands, where is there left to go?
The answer is, get the women into the workforce, where I can exploit them as well.
Do you get it now?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Because a demographically diverse group is going to bring a greater range of ideas and perspectives to the table.
And an educationally diverse group is going to bring an even greater range of ideas and perspectives to the table. That really sounds like an argument for experimenting with high school and college curricula and educational techniques than anything else.
Ezekiel 23:20
Cliff's Notes version is: more H1-B visas = downward pressure on tech wages, as Sanjay in Hyderabad does your job for pennies on the dollar
I see this a lot, and it's deeply stupid even by /. standards (and racist besides). Even the very dim should be able to understand that if Sanjay is in Hyderabad then he's not in the fucking US on a visa, is he? Offering Sanjay an H1-B means he now has to pay to live in the US, and he now makes a higher wage and removes some downward wage pressure. Sanjay of course is no dummy, so he's going to get a Green Card as fast as he possibly can, at which point he just another American tech worker, same as anyone else.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
OK, it was a little fun.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Life. (Bonus: this link actually works!)
USENET. (Hacker Barbie's Dream Basement Apartment. "To me, the most realistic thing is how if you put in her in the chair in front of the monitor, she'll stare at it for hours without blinking or taking her hands off the keyboard.")
Well if we're playing with assumptions on anecdotes...
I went to two majority-female universities over the course of seven years in the 90s for several pieces of paper. In my STEM courses, females were a huge minority. Of the students in my courses, they often were among the top scorers.
MY observations were that the majority of the women I talked to on campus has no interest in STEM stuff. A decent amount of the men that were in my courses were in it because they were expected to have went into it, or thought it would be a well paying job. The majority of the women in my courses were in it because they enjoyed the field and felt they had talent in it.
My conclusion would be that the girls in STEM wanted to be there, were driven to succeed in there, and it showed. Some of the guys just 'expected' to pull out 'a pass' and it also showed. The women that couldn't hack it dropped out, and the men that couldn't hack it stayed until they failed out. End result: the women in the courses placed rather well, but in no way meant that the majority of women 'secretly want to be in STEM and we are losing top engineers/coders because of it'. I've no doubt that there are some women who would have flourished had they chosen a different major, but I looked it as more that 'too many men thought they could take a piece of the 'new rising field''.