Ought every language's standard library to include set addition and Cartesian product, vector addition and multiplication, matrix addition and multiplication, polynomial addition and multiplication, Minkowski addition, Galois field element multiplication, nimber addition and multiplication, and every other meaning of addition and multiplication known to mathematicians?
No, but there's no reason to not include the more common datatypes and operations on those datatypes instead of providing the facility for the programmer to implement them. A few datatypes with operations covers maybe 95% or more of mathematical constructions.
Analogously, there are many many string operations - yet most languages have a builtin string datatype. Turns out this was a good idea. Do the languages cover all operations on strings? No, they don't, but they provide enough operations that overloading is not even needed for most operations.
Wouldn't it be stupid if language designers said "Well, we don't provide string copy operations nor string datatypes, but you can use the operator overload to write your own string datatype!" This is what they are doing with operator overloading: mostly they get used for matrices or similar. Anyone doing work in those fields you listed above would be better served by matlab.
It is just the typical activist syndrome. They get what they want then have to up what they're asking for until people say no or they get resistance.
Perhaps, but I have a different opinion: the social studies graduates as a group are mostly useless to society. To make themselves feel useful they pick a cause and then pursue it using the fractured statistics that they learned while partying through their degree. Ironically, the problem of too few women in CS would have been solved long ago if only those women in majored in gender studies had majored in CS instead.
When you ask them why they didn't major in CS themselves they say that they weren't interested... ironically missing the fact that they are blaming the lack of female CS workers on lack of interest. Further irony that they seem to miss is the fact that they are implicitly stating that CS is more important than gender studies, not realising that the average non-activist gets the message and wonders "if CS is so great, why isn't she doing it?" or "She places more importance on CS than gender studies, so perhaps I should rather listen to what the CS people say"
They are part of the problem and the sooner that the world gives their major the same respect that underwater basket-weaving gets, the better. All indications are that this is currently in progress, notwithstanding the likes of those few sexist assholes who keep telling women that they worth more to society if they take CS than if they follow their own interests.
So you agree that men define themselves by their actions....
More accurately: Men want to stand out from a group, women want to fit in. Women can solve the problem of too few women in CS by simply discarding their desire to fit in.
If operator overloading is only useful for mathematical constructions, why not simply bake those things into the language and be done with it
Because there are an infinite number of possible mathematical constructions. You can't bake them all into the language; you need to provide facilities for the programmer to write his own.
There are also an infinite number of arithmetic constructions, but it's still possible to support them all within a range. All languages already do this. I'm saying that they should extend this to those things that operator overloading is most used for. Then there wouldn't be any reason to overload the operators in the first place.
They can be. They can also be a boon to your custom logging facility like this:
#define LOG(x,...) logfunc (__FILE__, __LINE__, __func__, x, __VA_ARGS__);
...
size_t size_t_var;
char * char_ptr_var;
...
LOG ("Free-form logging, using %zu and %s free formats\n", size_t_var, char_ptr_var);
Function pointers are unsafe (MISRA).
They are for certain segmented/banked memory platforms (yes, I worked on a weird motorola chip once with banked memory). Casting a void pointer to a function pointer resulted in the correct address but in the wrong bank! In any case, MISRA has a more than few stupid rules - I think this rule came about in the days of banked memory and C89 not defining the results of casting a function pointer to any other pointer and back again. Hell, this one might even predate that all the way to K&R C.
Multiple inheritance is bad.
No opinion on this one.
Heap allocation is unsafe.
Once again it depends. I've spent a large part of my life writing code for tiny little processors with limited memory. The general rule, especially for the military stuff,
is that you are not allowed to run out of memory while executing. So either your binary image fits on your device after compilation or it doesn't. It must not fit, and then run out of memory days later during execution. The only way to ensure this in a formal manner is to have no malloc or equivalent calls.
What horrible error-prone hard to follow code. Fair enough, it looks okay for this trivial example with only three pieces of logic in it, but real-life code has more than three pieces of logic in them. Look at this code from this library over here, line 85, function xp_new_xcfg() (unfortunately/. won't let me post the actual function code - "please use fewer junk characters").
Using your multiple-block example this short 12 line function becomes a 30-odd line monstrosity that is harder to read, much more error-prone to write and extremely difficult to debug due to redundant lines, yet this is still a trivial, rather short function! Can you imagine the mess that would occur if you tried to convert a more substantial function with error-handling goto's into your multiple-block version?
We were all taught the multiple-block approach to avoiding goto's when learning programming in university/school so it's not like none of us goto-using ancients ever tried it before. The problem with that approach occurs when a codebase is touched by many coders. They may not be as adept at making sure, when they modify that multiple-block version, to (for example) free the previous five pointers in the 6th failure handler "if" statement. Then we get a memory leak.
The goto version greatly reduces the probability that someone, when adding a new line of code with error-checking into the function, will forget how many foobars were allocated prior to that line and free too few in their error-handler "if" block. All they have to do is ensure that they jump to the handler that free's all.
"yeah, operator overloading's really nice when you're building an API for mathematical constructs" (like complex numbers, quaternions, and matrices). So it's there in C#, Python, D, Rust, Scala, but (from the little I've seen) people seldom abuse it these days.
Why is it there, then? If operator overloading is only useful for mathematical constructions, why not simply bake those things into the language and be done with it rather than provide operator overloading which can, amongst other things, also be used to build those libraries?
After all, those are libraries. They can easily be provided as part of the language with no impact to the actual language or the language usage... if that is all that overloaded operators are used for! Unfortunately the truth is that overloaded operators are a bad idea but language designers have a checklist of items that their new language needs to have to get in with the damn hipsters. Operator overloading is one of those things.
The real kicker that's going to bake your noodle in 3 years time: After millions of dollars and at the expense of thousands of young boys, the demographics don't change (or perhaps they change but not in a direction you thought it would). What do you do then?
Let's face it - you've marketed this "thing" to girls at great cost in money and at great cost to society on the evidence-less assertion that all the girls need are more appealing marketing to find CS desirable. What the hell are you going to do come 2018 and the girls still aren't interested? More aggressive marketing? More exclusionary policies? More money? All three?
Or will you just give up? For a long while now I've been pointing out that those societies which are more oppressive towards women (Iran, India, etc) have more women in CS. That's right - in countries where women have no choice they are found in CS. In other countries, such as most western countries, where women are told from birth that they can do whatever they like they go ahead and do something other than CS.
That data point alone illustrates that the situation is more complex than you think, and simply spending money, excluding boys and general misandry might noe be enough to get girls to go into CS. All over the world, girls with no choice or say in the matter go into CS, and girls with choice and say in the matter choose something else.
Anecdotes are not data, but here's one from a colleague of mine who was involved with a computer science masterclass series for school-age children:
Well here's one that is NOT from a friend. My current wife[1] has a three-year computer engineering diploma from before I met her. She works as a book-keeper, which required her to complete a three-month course. She makes about a third of what a computer programmer makes. She was taught to program in Java, she can assemble PC's, solder circuitry, etc. Yet she works for far less money as a book-keeper. Even though she completed all her programming courses she has no will to actually use any of it to make money[2].
What do you make of that? Do you think that she is abnormal? An outlier? Out of her class who finished with her at college, none of the women work in IT, so I highly doubt that she is an outlier.
[1]Yeah, I tend to go through a lot of them...
[2]Maybe because for her, right now, working is optional - I bring home the bacon. But who knows... she might change if I'm not around to do so.
Girls don't want to get into technology.....A real scientist revises his theory when the data proves him wrong.
A real scientist presents data. Where's yours? Maybe they do want to, but are being discouraged. You don't know because you're coming to conclusions before collecting data. Stop it.
Well, the claim that women are being discouraged is being made, so I'd rather like to see data that supports that claim. Lots of people would. The problem is that the social science majors who are making the claim don't understand even undergrad level stats. Maybe if they had studied STEM majors instead of humanities there'd be more females in STEM.
At this point in time, probably. People trust youtube reviews made by gamers rather than the never-go-below-7 reviews made by traditional game reviewers. The problem is that the game reviewers are never critical (hence, not game *critics*).
There's also those devs who missed out of their bonus, because the meta critic score was 1% too low.
You'd have to be insane to take a job where your pay was dependent upon a metacritic score.
He's referring to the disaster that was Depression Quest. Only professional critics gave it a high score. However the user score on metacritic set a new record for "poor", and the guy in charge of changing that was fired.
You expressed a belief in this very thread that woman are being dissuaded from tech.
eeeynope. Actually, I checked. Turns out today ISN'T national make-shit-up day. Would you like to try again with a claim that is actually correct?
You seriously need to learn to read. I do appreciate the irony of me typing that in a form of written communication.
Like you always do, you've provided no citation
I think it's a bit harsh to expect me to come up with a citation to support a claim that you hallucinated me making.
From reading the two hallucinated posts over here and over here, I come up with your position as follows:
1) The assertion "most women are not interested in tech careers" is false, and
2) The change in numbers of women in the field is evidence of their past/present interest in that field.
3) That the only two plausible explanations are that women are being stopped or that interest has waned.
For #2 above, it is obvious to almost all scientists that evidence of change is only evidence of change - it does not serve as evidence of reasons for change.
For #3 I gave one out of possible hundreds of explanations. The one I gave was even falsifiable (unlike one of the two you proposed). But on to your logic as summed up in the three points above taken from your two hallucinated posts in this thread to which I handily linked... so the fact that your position can be summed up in those three points is not under contention - you or any other reader still reading at this point can easily click the links and see for themselves.
Existence of P is only evidence of existence of P. The existence of P does not in any way imply the existence of a Q that causes P. You can replace P and Q with anything you like, it will still be true; "Evidence of 'higher than normal fuel consumption in your car' is only evidence of 'higher than normal fuel consumption in your car'. It does not imply 'that the engine is broken'. It does not imply 'that the steering needs to be replaced'". This is a line of reasoning everyone with an IQ above, say, 90, can understand. Now let's only perform text-substitution (and nothing else).
In much the same way, and using only text substitution mind, --- "Evidence of 'changing demographics in tech' is only evidence of 'changing demographics in tech'. It does not imply 'that women are being stopped from entering tech'. It does not imply 'that women's interests have changed'.
There is a reason that, in formal logic and most mathematics, all the emotive connotations are removed from the problem by using P and Q as text substitutes. When the emotion is there people see the emotion and not the logic. Replace with P, Q, K or whatever and suddenly the argument is much easier to see.
Oh, and, er... if you really want to argue that the existence of "P" proves the existence of a "Q" which causes P, you might want to google for "begging the question" (quotes included). Probably something in Latin - post hoc ergo propter hoc, IIRC from my undergrad logic classes.
We're still waiting for your data showing that your belief is correct.
What belief? The one you invented in your other reply? Why would I show that something you hallucinated that I said is true?
You expressed a belief in this very thread that woman are being dissuaded from tech. I asked you to back up your claims with data. Like you always do, you've provided no citation to back up your claim that women are dissuaded from a career in tech.
So, in other words, you can't just claim that because something is falisfiable I should believe you. You still have to actually demonstrate it's the case.
We're still waiting for your data showing that your belief is correct.
Women in the 80's had fewer freedoms and choices than women do now. As time went on and women got more choices in more fields they opted for those fields.
So, what you're saying is that there are more options so interest in CS has waned.
No, I did not say interest has waned - you are providing that as an explanation.
Also, that's not regression to the mean. Regression to the mean is something quite specific and that really isn't it.
It is, if women's mean interest is something other than tech, and they had numbers larger than their mean interest in the 80's, then now we are experiencing a regression back to their mean interest.
As time went on and women got more choices in more fields they opted for those fields.
So... in other words, interest in CS from women has waned as other
Once again, I never said that their interest went down. You did.
possibly more interesting options have become available.
the hobson's choice you keep spewing onto the forum.
Ah, so today is national make-shit-up day, just like every day! I'll bite, then. Where did I give the hobson's choice? Do you even know what Hobson's choice is?
Your choices were
a) Women are dissuaded from tech
b) Women are not interested because they are dissuaded from tech.
Possibly you could go look up both regression to the mean and hobsons choice on wikipedia. While you're at it, bring back your evidence that your hobsons choice is the only plausible explanation; you've been asked for this tens of times but have yet failed to deliver.
This is falsifiable
That's one of those things that's necessary but not sufficient. Merely coming up with a falsifiable theory is not enough to be convincing:
My point is that at least this explanation is falsifiable!. Your proposed explanation of why fewer women are in tech is not even falsifiable, and as such is a poorer explanation. The worst part of it all is that this is not even an explanation I support, but it is supported by the data much better than anything you've said. I said there were more explanations - you disagreed, I provided a single other explanation, fully supported by facts that even you agree with (lots of threads where you point out that women in Iran/other female-oppressive societies dominate in tech). My intention was not to provide an explanation but to show you that the single explanation you believe in is not the only one, and may in fact be the least likely one.
would certainly deserve a front page story on here.
But basically, you've spewed bile and insults and told me how I must be an idiot because interest can't be waning and then proceeded to give several explanations of why interest is waning.
You're the one who has thrown insults in this thread. You're very unhappy that your faith got it wrong - I can see that. People tend to get aggressive (like you do) when your evidence-less and faith-based ideology is unable to cope with even the simplest data that contradicts it.
For example, if your "explanations" of why there are fewer women in tech is even remotely true, then there would be even fewer women in tech in female-oppressive societies. A single counterexample would be evidence that your explanation cannot be true - I provided two counterexamples, hence your explanation cannot be true.
Sorry that you're wrong.
PS. When I have the time I shall make a chart of female-opppressive societies and females in tech, for countries that have published data. I don't think you'll change your mind even after that (your faith is too strong), but at least you'll have warning for the next time you spew this nonsense on a public forum.
That's not what I said. Change in numbers is not evidence of past/present interest (or lack thereof).
Yeah it is.
In no field of science is this true. This is the creationist argument of "If I don't know what caused it, it must be god/patriarchy/invisible-pink-unicorns/orbital-teapot..."
Well, it's evidence of two possible things. Either they're being stopped or interest has waned. Are there any other plausible explanations?
Yes, there are, and some of those possible arguments have more evidence than either of the two options you've presented above. As usual, you are making the claim so you have to provide the evidence.
FWIW, here's just one explanation more plausible than either of the two you've presented: we are seeing a regression to the mean. Women in the 80's had fewer freedoms and choices than women do now. As time went on and women got more choices in more fields they opted for those fields. As a theory, this is a lot more falsifiable than the two you propose (especially the one you keep proposing repeatedly with no evidence).
As far as evidence, you've been repeatedly shown that in countries where women have fewer choices (Iran, India, etc) they dominate the tech professions. In countries where women have more choices, they tend towards other professions. This is not the first time I pointed you to this nugget of information.
For bonus points, plot the correlation coefficient of women-in-tech vs women-rights. That supports the feedom explanation much better than the hobson's choice you keep spewing onto the forum. Women with freedom don't choose tech. Women without freedom do. This is falsifiable, so if you believe the data contradicts it go ahead and plot the graph - do a fitment test and let us all know.
All you have is evidence of changing skewness. That is not in any way evidence of past interest and/or present interest.
WTF? So change in interest is not evidence of changing interest?
That's not what I said. Change in numbers is not evidence of past/present interest (or lack thereof).
You are still making the claim that because more women were in tech in the 80's than there are now, it must mean that women now are somehow being dissuaded from careers in tech. You are making the claim, so you provide the evidence. A change in numbers does not in any way imply the reason for the change.
(It's usually at this point that yourself, AnoMoJo and others go quiet - there is no evidence that women are dissuaded from tech careers and we all know it. You can stay quiet again. Us non-faith-based observers are patient, after all. It's not an ideology for us, just another unbacked hypothesis. It's a pity you don't see the damage that your faith does to women who actually are fighting to be considered equal to men)
Women in other countries are somewhat more well represented in technology and more likely to go into STEM fields - so what are those other countries doing differently?
Those women have less freedom. When they have the freedom, both cultural and economic, to choose their own futures, they may stop choosing STEM fields.
And most women simply have no interest in CS jobs, just as they have no interest in hauling garbage or working on an oil rig or fishing boat.
Except that isn't the case. 30 years ago there was much stronger interest in CS from women, though not any of the other jobs you listed.
What makes you think that women have interest in CS jobs and are being dissuaded from it by society/culture/norms/etc? You've spouted this faith-based argument before, only to go suspiciously silent when asked for evidence. All you have is evidence of changing skewness. That is not in any way evidence of past interest and/or present interest.
So put up or shut up, or, better yet, go join the creationists in the corner, over there next to the flat earth society.
Slashdot Mirror
Ought every language's standard library to include set addition and Cartesian product, vector addition and multiplication, matrix addition and multiplication, polynomial addition and multiplication, Minkowski addition, Galois field element multiplication, nimber addition and multiplication, and every other meaning of addition and multiplication known to mathematicians?
No, but there's no reason to not include the more common datatypes and operations on those datatypes instead of providing the facility for the programmer to implement them. A few datatypes with operations covers maybe 95% or more of mathematical constructions.
Analogously, there are many many string operations - yet most languages have a builtin string datatype. Turns out this was a good idea. Do the languages cover all operations on strings? No, they don't, but they provide enough operations that overloading is not even needed for most operations.
Wouldn't it be stupid if language designers said "Well, we don't provide string copy operations nor string datatypes, but you can use the operator overload to write your own string datatype!" This is what they are doing with operator overloading: mostly they get used for matrices or similar. Anyone doing work in those fields you listed above would be better served by matlab.
It is just the typical activist syndrome. They get what they want then have to up what they're asking for until people say no or they get resistance.
Perhaps, but I have a different opinion: the social studies graduates as a group are mostly useless to society. To make themselves feel useful they pick a cause and then pursue it using the fractured statistics that they learned while partying through their degree. Ironically, the problem of too few women in CS would have been solved long ago if only those women in majored in gender studies had majored in CS instead.
When you ask them why they didn't major in CS themselves they say that they weren't interested ... ironically missing the fact that they are blaming the lack of female CS workers on lack of interest. Further irony that they seem to miss is the fact that they are implicitly stating that CS is more important than gender studies, not realising that the average non-activist gets the message and wonders "if CS is so great, why isn't she doing it?" or "She places more importance on CS than gender studies, so perhaps I should rather listen to what the CS people say"
They are part of the problem and the sooner that the world gives their major the same respect that underwater basket-weaving gets, the better. All indications are that this is currently in progress, notwithstanding the likes of those few sexist assholes who keep telling women that they worth more to society if they take CS than if they follow their own interests.
by what they can do for that group.
So you agree that men define themselves by their actions....
More accurately: Men want to stand out from a group, women want to fit in. Women can solve the problem of too few women in CS by simply discarding their desire to fit in.
Spend that money on BOTH genders to promote CS.
That is not one of the options. Here are the choices:
1. Spend the money to help girls learn to code. 2. Don't get the money.
Those aren't the choices from the schools point of view. Here are the choices the schools have:
1. Refuse the money.
2. Enforce policies based on sex
It's not hard to see which is the better option for the school
Because there are an infinite number of possible mathematical constructions. You can't bake them all into the language; you need to provide facilities for the programmer to write his own.
There are also an infinite number of arithmetic constructions, but it's still possible to support them all within a range. All languages already do this. I'm saying that they should extend this to those things that operator overloading is most used for. Then there wouldn't be any reason to overload the operators in the first place.
Similarly stupid C/C++ dogma:
They can be. They can also be a boon to your custom logging facility like this:
#define LOG(x,...) logfunc (__FILE__, __LINE__, __func__, x, __VA_ARGS__);
...
size_t size_t_var;
char * char_ptr_var;
...
LOG ("Free-form logging, using %zu and %s free formats\n", size_t_var, char_ptr_var);
Function pointers are unsafe (MISRA).
They are for certain segmented/banked memory platforms (yes, I worked on a weird motorola chip once with banked memory). Casting a void pointer to a function pointer resulted in the correct address but in the wrong bank! In any case, MISRA has a more than few stupid rules - I think this rule came about in the days of banked memory and C89 not defining the results of casting a function pointer to any other pointer and back again. Hell, this one might even predate that all the way to K&R C.
Multiple inheritance is bad.
No opinion on this one.
Heap allocation is unsafe.
Once again it depends. I've spent a large part of my life writing code for tiny little processors with limited memory. The general rule, especially for the military stuff, is that you are not allowed to run out of memory while executing. So either your binary image fits on your device after compilation or it doesn't. It must not fit, and then run out of memory days later during execution. The only way to ensure this in a formal manner is to have no malloc or equivalent calls.
What horrible error-prone hard to follow code. Fair enough, it looks okay for this trivial example with only three pieces of logic in it, but real-life code has more than three pieces of logic in them. Look at this code from this library over here, line 85, function xp_new_xcfg() (unfortunately /. won't let me post the actual function code - "please use fewer junk characters").
Using your multiple-block example this short 12 line function becomes a 30-odd line monstrosity that is harder to read, much more error-prone to write and extremely difficult to debug due to redundant lines, yet this is still a trivial, rather short function! Can you imagine the mess that would occur if you tried to convert a more substantial function with error-handling goto's into your multiple-block version?
We were all taught the multiple-block approach to avoiding goto's when learning programming in university/school so it's not like none of us goto-using ancients ever tried it before. The problem with that approach occurs when a codebase is touched by many coders. They may not be as adept at making sure, when they modify that multiple-block version, to (for example) free the previous five pointers in the 6th failure handler "if" statement. Then we get a memory leak.
The goto version greatly reduces the probability that someone, when adding a new line of code with error-checking into the function, will forget how many foobars were allocated prior to that line and free too few in their error-handler "if" block. All they have to do is ensure that they jump to the handler that free's all.
"yeah, operator overloading's really nice when you're building an API for mathematical constructs" (like complex numbers, quaternions, and matrices). So it's there in C#, Python, D, Rust, Scala, but (from the little I've seen) people seldom abuse it these days.
Why is it there, then? If operator overloading is only useful for mathematical constructions, why not simply bake those things into the language and be done with it rather than provide operator overloading which can, amongst other things, also be used to build those libraries?
After all, those are libraries. They can easily be provided as part of the language with no impact to the actual language or the language usage... if that is all that overloaded operators are used for! Unfortunately the truth is that overloaded operators are a bad idea but language designers have a checklist of items that their new language needs to have to get in with the damn hipsters. Operator overloading is one of those things.
The real kicker that's going to bake your noodle in 3 years time: After millions of dollars and at the expense of thousands of young boys, the demographics don't change (or perhaps they change but not in a direction you thought it would). What do you do then?
Let's face it - you've marketed this "thing" to girls at great cost in money and at great cost to society on the evidence-less assertion that all the girls need are more appealing marketing to find CS desirable. What the hell are you going to do come 2018 and the girls still aren't interested? More aggressive marketing? More exclusionary policies? More money? All three?
Or will you just give up? For a long while now I've been pointing out that those societies which are more oppressive towards women (Iran, India, etc) have more women in CS. That's right - in countries where women have no choice they are found in CS. In other countries, such as most western countries, where women are told from birth that they can do whatever they like they go ahead and do something other than CS.
That data point alone illustrates that the situation is more complex than you think, and simply spending money, excluding boys and general misandry might noe be enough to get girls to go into CS. All over the world, girls with no choice or say in the matter go into CS, and girls with choice and say in the matter choose something else.
The problem is the proliferation of social science as a major. They don't do science: a lot those links aren't science.
Anecdotes are not data, but here's one from a colleague of mine who was involved with a computer science masterclass series for school-age children:
Well here's one that is NOT from a friend. My current wife[1] has a three-year computer engineering diploma from before I met her. She works as a book-keeper, which required her to complete a three-month course. She makes about a third of what a computer programmer makes. She was taught to program in Java, she can assemble PC's, solder circuitry, etc. Yet she works for far less money as a book-keeper. Even though she completed all her programming courses she has no will to actually use any of it to make money[2].
What do you make of that? Do you think that she is abnormal? An outlier? Out of her class who finished with her at college, none of the women work in IT, so I highly doubt that she is an outlier.
[1]Yeah, I tend to go through a lot of them... [2]Maybe because for her, right now, working is optional - I bring home the bacon. But who knows... she might change if I'm not around to do so.
Girls don't want to get into technology.....A real scientist revises his theory when the data proves him wrong.
A real scientist presents data. Where's yours? Maybe they do want to, but are being discouraged. You don't know because you're coming to conclusions before collecting data. Stop it.
Well, the claim that women are being discouraged is being made, so I'd rather like to see data that supports that claim. Lots of people would. The problem is that the social science majors who are making the claim don't understand even undergrad level stats. Maybe if they had studied STEM majors instead of humanities there'd be more females in STEM.
Is the real question
At this point in time, probably. People trust youtube reviews made by gamers rather than the never-go-below-7 reviews made by traditional game reviewers. The problem is that the game reviewers are never critical (hence, not game *critics*).
There's also those devs who missed out of their bonus, because the meta critic score was 1% too low.
You'd have to be insane to take a job where your pay was dependent upon a metacritic score.
He's referring to the disaster that was Depression Quest. Only professional critics gave it a high score. However the user score on metacritic set a new record for "poor", and the guy in charge of changing that was fired.
Well yes, it is about Java, the first language to mix coding with literature.
It wasn't the first. LaTeX :-)
You expressed a belief in this very thread that woman are being dissuaded from tech.
eeeynope. Actually, I checked. Turns out today ISN'T national make-shit-up day. Would you like to try again with a claim that is actually correct?
You seriously need to learn to read. I do appreciate the irony of me typing that in a form of written communication.
Like you always do, you've provided no citation
I think it's a bit harsh to expect me to come up with a citation to support a claim that you hallucinated me making.
From reading the two hallucinated posts over here and over here, I come up with your position as follows:
1) The assertion "most women are not interested in tech careers" is false, and
2) The change in numbers of women in the field is evidence of their past/present interest in that field.
3) That the only two plausible explanations are that women are being stopped or that interest has waned.
For #2 above, it is obvious to almost all scientists that evidence of change is only evidence of change - it does not serve as evidence of reasons for change.
For #3 I gave one out of possible hundreds of explanations. The one I gave was even falsifiable (unlike one of the two you proposed). But on to your logic as summed up in the three points above taken from your two hallucinated posts in this thread to which I handily linked... so the fact that your position can be summed up in those three points is not under contention - you or any other reader still reading at this point can easily click the links and see for themselves.
Existence of P is only evidence of existence of P. The existence of P does not in any way imply the existence of a Q that causes P. You can replace P and Q with anything you like, it will still be true; "Evidence of 'higher than normal fuel consumption in your car' is only evidence of 'higher than normal fuel consumption in your car'. It does not imply 'that the engine is broken'. It does not imply 'that the steering needs to be replaced'". This is a line of reasoning everyone with an IQ above, say, 90, can understand. Now let's only perform text-substitution (and nothing else).
In much the same way, and using only text substitution mind, --- "Evidence of 'changing demographics in tech' is only evidence of 'changing demographics in tech'. It does not imply 'that women are being stopped from entering tech'. It does not imply 'that women's interests have changed'.
There is a reason that, in formal logic and most mathematics, all the emotive connotations are removed from the problem by using P and Q as text substitutes. When the emotion is there people see the emotion and not the logic. Replace with P, Q, K or whatever and suddenly the argument is much easier to see.
Oh, and, er ... if you really want to argue that the existence of "P" proves the existence of a "Q" which causes P, you might want to google for "begging the question" (quotes included). Probably something in Latin - post hoc ergo propter hoc, IIRC from my undergrad logic classes.
We're still waiting for your data showing that your belief is correct.
What belief? The one you invented in your other reply? Why would I show that something you hallucinated that I said is true?
You expressed a belief in this very thread that woman are being dissuaded from tech. I asked you to back up your claims with data. Like you always do, you've provided no citation to back up your claim that women are dissuaded from a career in tech.
So, in other words, you can't just claim that because something is falisfiable I should believe you. You still have to actually demonstrate it's the case.
We're still waiting for your data showing that your belief is correct.
Women in the 80's had fewer freedoms and choices than women do now. As time went on and women got more choices in more fields they opted for those fields.
So, what you're saying is that there are more options so interest in CS has waned.
No, I did not say interest has waned - you are providing that as an explanation.
Also, that's not regression to the mean. Regression to the mean is something quite specific and that really isn't it.
It is, if women's mean interest is something other than tech, and they had numbers larger than their mean interest in the 80's, then now we are experiencing a regression back to their mean interest.
As time went on and women got more choices in more fields they opted for those fields.
So... in other words, interest in CS from women has waned as other
Once again, I never said that their interest went down. You did.
possibly more interesting options have become available.
the hobson's choice you keep spewing onto the forum.
Ah, so today is national make-shit-up day, just like every day! I'll bite, then. Where did I give the hobson's choice? Do you even know what Hobson's choice is?
Your choices were
a) Women are dissuaded from tech
b) Women are not interested because they are dissuaded from tech.
Possibly you could go look up both regression to the mean and hobsons choice on wikipedia. While you're at it, bring back your evidence that your hobsons choice is the only plausible explanation; you've been asked for this tens of times but have yet failed to deliver.
This is falsifiable
That's one of those things that's necessary but not sufficient. Merely coming up with a falsifiable theory is not enough to be convincing:
My point is that at least this explanation is falsifiable!. Your proposed explanation of why fewer women are in tech is not even falsifiable, and as such is a poorer explanation. The worst part of it all is that this is not even an explanation I support, but it is supported by the data much better than anything you've said. I said there were more explanations - you disagreed, I provided a single other explanation, fully supported by facts that even you agree with (lots of threads where you point out that women in Iran/other female-oppressive societies dominate in tech). My intention was not to provide an explanation but to show you that the single explanation you believe in is not the only one, and may in fact be the least likely one.
would certainly deserve a front page story on here.
But basically, you've spewed bile and insults and told me how I must be an idiot because interest can't be waning and then proceeded to give several explanations of why interest is waning.
You're the one who has thrown insults in this thread. You're very unhappy that your faith got it wrong - I can see that. People tend to get aggressive (like you do) when your evidence-less and faith-based ideology is unable to cope with even the simplest data that contradicts it.
For example, if your "explanations" of why there are fewer women in tech is even remotely true, then there would be even fewer women in tech in female-oppressive societies. A single counterexample would be evidence that your explanation cannot be true - I provided two counterexamples, hence your explanation cannot be true.
Sorry that you're wrong.
PS. When I have the time I shall make a chart of female-opppressive societies and females in tech, for countries that have published data. I don't think you'll change your mind even after that (your faith is too strong), but at least you'll have warning for the next time you spew this nonsense on a public forum.
That's not what I said. Change in numbers is not evidence of past/present interest (or lack thereof).
Yeah it is.
In no field of science is this true. This is the creationist argument of "If I don't know what caused it, it must be god/patriarchy/invisible-pink-unicorns/orbital-teapot..."
Well, it's evidence of two possible things. Either they're being stopped or interest has waned. Are there any other plausible explanations?
Yes, there are, and some of those possible arguments have more evidence than either of the two options you've presented above. As usual, you are making the claim so you have to provide the evidence.
FWIW, here's just one explanation more plausible than either of the two you've presented: we are seeing a regression to the mean. Women in the 80's had fewer freedoms and choices than women do now. As time went on and women got more choices in more fields they opted for those fields. As a theory, this is a lot more falsifiable than the two you propose (especially the one you keep proposing repeatedly with no evidence).
As far as evidence, you've been repeatedly shown that in countries where women have fewer choices (Iran, India, etc) they dominate the tech professions. In countries where women have more choices, they tend towards other professions. This is not the first time I pointed you to this nugget of information.
For bonus points, plot the correlation coefficient of women-in-tech vs women-rights. That supports the feedom explanation much better than the hobson's choice you keep spewing onto the forum. Women with freedom don't choose tech. Women without freedom do. This is falsifiable, so if you believe the data contradicts it go ahead and plot the graph - do a fitment test and let us all know.
All you have is evidence of changing skewness. That is not in any way evidence of past interest and/or present interest.
WTF? So change in interest is not evidence of changing interest?
That's not what I said. Change in numbers is not evidence of past/present interest (or lack thereof).
You are still making the claim that because more women were in tech in the 80's than there are now, it must mean that women now are somehow being dissuaded from careers in tech. You are making the claim, so you provide the evidence. A change in numbers does not in any way imply the reason for the change.
(It's usually at this point that yourself, AnoMoJo and others go quiet - there is no evidence that women are dissuaded from tech careers and we all know it. You can stay quiet again. Us non-faith-based observers are patient, after all. It's not an ideology for us, just another unbacked hypothesis. It's a pity you don't see the damage that your faith does to women who actually are fighting to be considered equal to men)
Pretty odd that the "outsiders" could pick out and favor the girls without knowing anything about them, even which name goes with which paper.
The "outsiders" were marking different tests, on a different grade using different students.
Women in other countries are somewhat more well represented in technology and more likely to go into STEM fields - so what are those other countries doing differently?
Those women have less freedom. When they have the freedom, both cultural and economic, to choose their own futures, they may stop choosing STEM fields.
And most women simply have no interest in CS jobs, just as they have no interest in hauling garbage or working on an oil rig or fishing boat.
Except that isn't the case. 30 years ago there was much stronger interest in CS from women, though not any of the other jobs you listed.
What makes you think that women have interest in CS jobs and are being dissuaded from it by society/culture/norms/etc? You've spouted this faith-based argument before, only to go suspiciously silent when asked for evidence. All you have is evidence of changing skewness. That is not in any way evidence of past interest and/or present interest.
So put up or shut up, or, better yet, go join the creationists in the corner, over there next to the flat earth society.
They are female, after all. Only males can be blamed, as per repeated stories on slashdot.