If you would be so kind as to listen to my experience as someone who went through a computer science program (and completed it with a degree) in the late 00s, I'd appreciate it.
The one thing I learnt, is that computer science and tech is difficult, yet everyone wants to do it. I was fortunate enough to get into a relatively high end private university. However, at the start, computer science courses were absolutely filled to the brim with people. Males, females, different races, etc The majority were there to do things like make games and other basic things. They weren't in it to learn how computers work, to do low level stuff, etc.
My courses were filled all the way up for computer science for 100 level courses. 35 people with a wait list. And do you know what happened after those 100 level courses were over and people just had things like writing sorting algorithms in C and programming in x86 and SPARC assembly that wanted to make games or some sort of app to get rich easy? They all bailed. The end of the program, I had courses that got cancelled because there weren't enough people there.
The university I chose was different from the others, they had a more academic approach still and wanted to teach you how computers worked. It was academia and not a school to teach you how to get a job. And it was a bloodbath of people failing out of computer science. Men, women, Whites, Asians, Blacks, etc.They all bailed so hard when they realized things were not what they wanted. Ironically enough, by the end of the program, there were a significant amount of females left in my small sample size of a program, however, the White ones were nearly gone and all that were left were Chinese students from abroad and some local Asian females. To be completely honest, as a white male, I was in the minority by a huge margin.
As mentioned in this thread, women are more than capable of sciences. They do very well in fields like biology. Tech is just not an easy field and people flee it like crazy. You have to keep up with things, it's always changing. If you learn biology, it takes a long time for things to change due to evolution. If you learn math, well it rarely changes. People don't go back and make addition obsolete. It has zero to do with women's ability in comparison to men or anything and it has to do with people just failing at the programs in general. Does no one remembers the whole "how can we get the next generation more into computer science?" thing that was going on years ago? Well, the solution was to lower the bar and make computer science into "write some Java applications, well it doesn't even work but here's a B"
But that's not the case with computer science and tech in general. And that makes it a far more difficult field to get into, for everyone. Not just women. Not just minorities. But EVERY SINGLE PERSON.
I think people are confusing maliciously denying certain people opportunities with the field being a difficult one that most will fail in, regardless of race, gender, etc. Proof of this is that this group of people generally is complaining that minorities don't have an advantage, yet Asian people are ahead in tech so far that universities like UCLA will shy away from admitting them because they already have too many.
Which brings me to the next point that changing tech fields to be more accomodating to people who aren't up for the task is only going to leave us behind. We have places like Tokyo where the Japanese are literally breeding to make genetically superior babies and they're extremely competitive. We have places like Vietnam pushing computer science education from an extremely early age. The rest of the world is pushing people further and if they can't make it, tough.
The West, specially the USA, feels compelled to lower standards and requirements to make things more accomodating. I took a course at public university just for extra eduction (and ironically enough my professor was another Asian Female), and I got to experience the watered down computer science programs that have been coming. In fact, I
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If you would be so kind as to listen to my experience as someone who went through a computer science program (and completed it with a degree) in the late 00s, I'd appreciate it. The one thing I learnt, is that computer science and tech is difficult, yet everyone wants to do it. I was fortunate enough to get into a relatively high end private university. However, at the start, computer science courses were absolutely filled to the brim with people. Males, females, different races, etc The majority were there to do things like make games and other basic things. They weren't in it to learn how computers work, to do low level stuff, etc. My courses were filled all the way up for computer science for 100 level courses. 35 people with a wait list. And do you know what happened after those 100 level courses were over and people just had things like writing sorting algorithms in C and programming in x86 and SPARC assembly that wanted to make games or some sort of app to get rich easy? They all bailed. The end of the program, I had courses that got cancelled because there weren't enough people there. The university I chose was different from the others, they had a more academic approach still and wanted to teach you how computers worked. It was academia and not a school to teach you how to get a job. And it was a bloodbath of people failing out of computer science. Men, women, Whites, Asians, Blacks, etc.They all bailed so hard when they realized things were not what they wanted. Ironically enough, by the end of the program, there were a significant amount of females left in my small sample size of a program, however, the White ones were nearly gone and all that were left were Chinese students from abroad and some local Asian females. To be completely honest, as a white male, I was in the minority by a huge margin. As mentioned in this thread, women are more than capable of sciences. They do very well in fields like biology. Tech is just not an easy field and people flee it like crazy. You have to keep up with things, it's always changing. If you learn biology, it takes a long time for things to change due to evolution. If you learn math, well it rarely changes. People don't go back and make addition obsolete. It has zero to do with women's ability in comparison to men or anything and it has to do with people just failing at the programs in general. Does no one remembers the whole "how can we get the next generation more into computer science?" thing that was going on years ago? Well, the solution was to lower the bar and make computer science into "write some Java applications, well it doesn't even work but here's a B" But that's not the case with computer science and tech in general. And that makes it a far more difficult field to get into, for everyone. Not just women. Not just minorities. But EVERY SINGLE PERSON. I think people are confusing maliciously denying certain people opportunities with the field being a difficult one that most will fail in, regardless of race, gender, etc. Proof of this is that this group of people generally is complaining that minorities don't have an advantage, yet Asian people are ahead in tech so far that universities like UCLA will shy away from admitting them because they already have too many. Which brings me to the next point that changing tech fields to be more accomodating to people who aren't up for the task is only going to leave us behind. We have places like Tokyo where the Japanese are literally breeding to make genetically superior babies and they're extremely competitive. We have places like Vietnam pushing computer science education from an extremely early age. The rest of the world is pushing people further and if they can't make it, tough. The West, specially the USA, feels compelled to lower standards and requirements to make things more accomodating. I took a course at public university just for extra eduction (and ironically enough my professor was another Asian Female), and I got to experience the watered down computer science programs that have been coming. In fact, I