So where's the push to even out the gender imbalances in those areas?
I doubt if most of us care, or have much of a stake in, nursing or kindergarten. (though some ACs may make me question that) However, most of us do play computer/video games, and we feel at least some interest in that industry. Put in terms of simple self-interest, a healthy, thriving game industry will be better able to produce more fun stuff for us to play with. Therefore, we have some stake in seeing it expand. Also, from the point of view of a female gamer constantly trying to get a non-gaming husband interested in the fun stuff I play, I think a lot of guys would like to find a girlfriend who shares their interest in games, just like they would want one who shares an interest in travel or old movies or whatever. So, anything that would increase the number of female gamers would be increasing the pool of prospective dates.
The objective is to provide everybody *who wants to play games* with something they want, not everybody period.
Actually, the objective is to make everybody want to play games so they'll buy yours. It is to provide everybody, period, with games. Preferably multiple copies.
Setting is just wallpaper that gives the gameplay a recognisable grounding and context.
I think that's a huge part of the problem, actually.
Your typical teenage boy is more readily attracted by glitz than an older buyer. We older types have been burned a few times by the flashy car that was a total lemon, the fancy shoes that hurt our feet, and, yes, the glitzy game that stank on ice. So, the adolescent male market will buy a game if it has good "wallpaper" even if it turns out that the gameplay sucks... and probably buy another game from that exact same company company next month. I, on the other hand, an older female gamer, want a game that's fun. I used to keep an Apple II around to play Lords of Conquest, just because it was so much fun. (a modern relative: Conqueror!) Someone needs to hold up a big sign in front of the whole computer game industry: "It's the gameplay, stupid!"
I want a game as outstanding as Civilization or Doom or StarCraft were when they first took over part of my life, not one more knock-off of last year's hit with prettier graphics and louder music. Yes, the setting is just the wallpaper and the gameplay is what matters (though a male friend who loves story-driven RPGs might disagree with me)... and I think that's exactly where they're missing targets in not just the female market but the post-adolescent market overall. Enough so-so games with flashy production values already, let's see some fun games again!
There are a lot of people I've gamed with in the past decade who think I'm a man, although I've never claimed to be. I'm perfectly happy to let them continue thinking that. It's not a matter of avoiding sexual harassment -- although that exists -- it's simply that if they think I'm a guy, they take me seriously. I'm a gamer, someone like them, not "a girl" which is apparently some other species entirely.
In one MMORPG, I have both male and female characters that are not publicly known as mine. People are, as a general rule, more polite to the female character. (though when they aren't, they're really, really crude) But they also make assumptions about the player's interests and abilities, such as assuming that she dislikes PK and needs to be guided in basic game skills (despite being max level) while the presumed male player is taken at face value. Basically, when people think the player behind the keyboard is male, they seem to wait and see what kind of person "he" is, what he's interested in, what his skills are, etc. But when they think the player behind the keyboard is female, they have a preconcieved template for what "she" is like and they take off from there.
I know of a number of other women who would die before they admitted to fellow players that they were IRL females. Too many of us have had too many years of being treated like a talking dog ("the wonder is that she plays games at all!") or like a lame sissy. The odds are that those 2 out of 250 were not the only female players -- just the only two who had the guts to admit it.
I know its complicated, but games publishers are businesses, and they will not fund a game that has no established market demand.
Are you familiar with the concept of opening new markets? Smart companies, at least in most industries, don't settle for fighting for a share of an existing market; they bust their collective asses to open up new ones.
There was no demand for computer spreadsheets before VisiCalc. There was no demand for FPS games before Wolfenstein 3D. There is no demand for [some new genre] before [the next breakout product]. A truth in business is that if you want to really succeed -- not just struggle along with a 3% market share, but really succeed -- you can be the first, or you can be the best. Nothing else counts.
They dont give a shit that all the gamers are male, they are just numbers on a spreadsheet.
Which is exactly why they should be paying more attention to the 50% of the market they're not reaching. Selling games that appeal to women too will make those numbers get bigger. Even a bean counter should be able to understand doubling the potential market.
No publisher will spend their money on a huge risk such as games that attract female gamers.
Lately, it seems like no publisher will spend their money on anything but a knock-off of last year's big hit, or a license for something that sucked when it was a movie and is destined to suck harder as a game. This explains the nine million crappy FPS games out there, most of which barely live and die between the new release shelf and the discount rack, and the legion of clones of every other genre past and present. However, the fact that the people controlling the money are a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be first against the wall when the revolution comes doesn't make it any less true: you can be first, or you can be best; otherwise, you'll be in the bargain bin.
No, the demand has to be there first I'm afraid.
You must work for a game publisher... one of those guys who won't fund anything that shows any signs of being even remotely new or innovative. (risky! risky! it scares me!) If people like you had been around in the early days, we'd still be playing Space Invaders. Or pinball.
Ages ago, I worked for Radio Shack. Their slogan was "Be a sales maker, not an order taker." Anyone can ring up purchases, kind of like a walking vending machine. That's supplying a product to meet an existing demand. The people who drove Radio Shack's business were the ones who created a demand. The ones who suggested buying rechargable batteries with that new boom box, or gold cables with that VCR. Whatever you might think about the consumer culture and its ramifications, the companies that really profit are sales makers, not order takers. They're the companies that create their own demand.
Before Microsoft released Windows, nobody but the Mac users thought they needed a GUI.
Why lose sight of the 'fun' and instead go for attracting a certain 'sex?'
That's what we female gamers have been wondering for the past few years as games have become less and less fun, and more and more about attracting stereotypical 15-year-old boys. (a lot of whom don't like them either)
When game companies realize that eye candy might tempt me to buy one game from them, but only solid gameplay will get me to buy another one, maybe we'll get fewer sucky (but gorgeous) games.
Why? Because if his reaction is to get the employees to safety first, he's thinking of himself as the only adult and the employees as children, dependant on him to take care of them. I've worked for people like that. It sucked. If he goes for the tapes, there is at least a chance that he acknowledges his subordinates as adults and equals, capable of taking care of themselves, and is thinking of the project first. Of course, he could also be someone who doesn't give a damn about anyone else... but all things considered, I think I'd even prefer that over a "parental" type.
Why should a top-notch engineer, lucky enough to be doing something for a living that he really enjoys, want to become an average manager, trying to find time to do something he enjoys as a hobby?
If I had to put a finger on the biggest problem with business today, it's the fact that management is treated as an aristocracy, rather than what it is: another specialty.
Transferring a good engineer to management makes no more sense than transferring a good salesman to engineering. "Fred, you're our best salesman... you really know how to sell our widgets... so we're promoting you to Widget Engineer to design new widgets. Joe is our top maintenance guy, he can fix anything in this building almost by looking at it, so he'll be getting your old job over in Sales." Ludicrous, isn't it? Salesmen and engineers and plumbers have different skill sets, even different ways of thinking. Likewise, managers have different skill sets and different ways of thinking too.
But because of this concept of management as aristocracy, something which is embedded in our culture from hundreds of years ago in England when the people running the show really were the aristocracy, a transfer from some specialty like engineering or sales to the specialty of management is considered to be a promotion, like being knighted. Managers, being the aristocracy, get more perks, fancier offices, and of course higher pay than any of the people they are managing. Why should a manager have a more comfortable chair than his secretary, for instance?
Management is a specialty. Some people are good at it, some aren't. Just like engineering or sales or fixing the plumbing. When more companies realize this, and start treating management as just another specialty, not an aristocracy, then productivity will not be choked by PHB's the way it is today.
June "will be show-and-tell time," McBride said. "We're not going to show two lines of code. We're going to show hundreds of lines of code" that allegedly violate SCO's intellectual property.
June... 2003...
And they still haven't either put up or shut up.
Of course, with the current administration, which is notably Microsoft-friendly, in office, it's unlikely a case against SCO for [whatever "suing someone to put them out of business when you know don't have a case" is officially called] would would ever get anywhere in the courts, but it's nice to dream about.
According to the IRS, if my business doesn't show a profit in any 3 out of 5 consecutive years, it's officially a hobby for tax purposes. While that test doesn't actually apply to corporations other than type-S, it's still a somewhat amusing thought: If the law were to be applied equally to small businesses as well as large, SCO wouldn't be a business at all.
Let's assume that the original person asking the question is about 21-ish and his mother was 21-ish when he was born. That would put her in my general age bracket.
Computer games such as SimCity. I'd skip FPS and MMORPG.
In one MMORPG that I've been playing for about five years, I not only know many women around my age (some of them "stealthed" on male avatars) but several who are considerably older... in fact, quite possibly old enough to be the grandmother of the person in question. At least one of the ones I know does in fact have grandchildren who also play the game. I just sold my DAoC account because RVR on my server went to hell, that was basically all I played for, and I didn't have time to level up a new char on a better server. And why skip FPS? Ok, some go a little overboard on the complexity (I don't want every gun in the world, I just want the BADDEST gun in the world) but in general they're one of the simplest genres of games for a newbie to pick up. "If it moves, shoot it. If it doesn't move, shoot it anyway to make sure it won't ever move" is a pretty straightforward concept.
Oh, right, women don't like violent games... to which I say "Ram it. Sideways."
Simple online games such as chess, checkers, board games, etc.
If you're directing someone to online games, PopCap would be a much better option. Let's not go into just how much of my time that bloody word tile game has eaten... it's one of the few games I like that lacks a PK feature.
Reading and posting to BB sites on a topic of interest to her.
You're acting like this person is a feebleminded child who needs to be led by the hand around the Web. The question was not what kinds of things would a middle-aged woman (who is apparently, by stereotypical definition, soft, weak, and feebleminded) enjoy. The question was, in fact, "She expressed an interest in learning what I was doing... Is there anything in the middle that is also cheap/free and suitable for adults?"
Learning programming is not the same as "Project Gutenberg distributed proofreaders" and I can't imagine what would be going through the mind of a person who listed that as an answer to that question.
By the way, Lego Mindstorms very well might be a good solution. Its capabilities are FAR from childish, especially when you go beyond the simple connect-the-blocks system (which is a great introduction to the basic concepts of programming) to one of the many other options available. I own a Mindstorms set myself, and that thing is just FUN! Though I still haven't gotten my automated sock picker upper working... having problems with the sock sensor.
It is statistically not likely a mom would genuinely be interested in learning how to program. You can debate whether that is nature or nurture, but you can not deny that it is reality.
It is also statistically not likely the particular sperm which carried half of your genetic material was the winner in the great pop-the-egg contest nine months before you were born. Therefore, you do not exist. If you have mistakenly been instantiated, please rectify this error by calling your destroy method immediately.
For what it's worth, I am "such a person." If I had married the guy who wanted to marry me in college, and if we'd had kids shortly thereafter, they would most likely be brand-new college graduates and old-hand/. readers today. Despite my twin handicaps of post-adolescent age and lack of a Y chromosome, I not only did and do program for pay, but I also program for fun. I enjoy it.
It's been an eye-opening experience to see the level of prejudice among people here. Someone who fits your "mother" stereotype can't possibly be really interested in programming... get her some family geneology software instead... redirect this unhealthy interest of hers into something socially approved for mothers... Sadly, it's also been a very disheartening experience.
Oh, and as for "why programming" -- because that's what her son does that she's interested in finding out more about. Not graphics, arc welding, or hotel management.
It's not really something many people are interested in or need to know how to do.
Neither is reading ancient Egyptian writing, yet I have several books on the shelves behind me which were written to teach that particular skill. There is a big difference between "not many" and "not any."
I mean aside from just having some background in how apps work for her, unless she is planning to start writting some apps on those lazy afternoons this seams a bit silly.
Perhaps she is planning to do exactly that. As a result of an earlier comment, I dug out my dog-eared copy of David Ahl's Basic Computer Games and I'm trying to decide which of those games I want to try coding in Perl. Is the world holding its collective breath waiting for a Web-enabled version of "Wumpus Hunt"? Probably not... but writing it on some lazy afternoon will be a lot of fun.
Just like learning the alphabet would be a waste if you wanted to learn to write.
Non sequitur.
HTML is in no way the "alphabet" to programming "writing" -- as proven by the fact that programming, and numerous programming languages, existed long before the creation of HTML in 1991. There are plenty of people to this day -- a CompSci professor that a friend of mine had the misfortune to encounter being one of them -- who are able to program but not only do not know HTML, but in fact think that learning or using HTML is, in the words of that professor, "unworthy of Computer Science."
Like hell HMTL is the "alphabet" of programming. It has no connection. It's a markup language, a virtual box of colored highlighters. (it's also currently buying my groceries, but that's beside the point)It's a data description format. Coding HTML is no more programming than typing in the formatting codes for a MS-Word.doc file manually would be programming.
Whoever modded the parent insightful needs to get into rehab, and quick.
It's a quick and easy fix for someone who wants to "make their computer do something".
Only in the sense that word processing is.
It also tends to push the person to learn Javascript...
Trying to learn Javascript as your first programming language would turn off a lot of people. We only think it makes sense because we're geeks, and generally OOP geeks at that. For someone who isn't quite sure what a variable is, let alone what an object is, Javascript would be a nightmare.
I'd suggest Perl. Yes, really complicated Perl code can get so hairy that fur grows on your screen, but in the main it's a clear, straightforward language. It's also a very forgiving language. It will try its hardest to do what it thinks you want, unlike, say, C++, which seems to delight in shrieking "You didn't say 'mother, may I'!!!"
Despite those people who claim it turns people away from from programming in the One True Way, BASIC also has some notable advantages. One of those is the availability, via the used book dealers, of this book and its sequels.
Come to think of it, I could have a lot of fun replicating some of those games in Perl.
Perhaps I'm just the sort of person who gets no self-satisfaction from that sort of thing.
We all have our own ways of satisfying ourselves. At least coding doesn't make hair grow on the backs of your hands.
I may code for a living, but I have not yet come across a situation at home that would really truly benefit from a home-grown tool.
Odd... I have, on a number of occasions. Perhaps your holes are as square as the available pegs, or perhaps you just have a bigger hammer to pound with. I can't find a round peg, I whittle -- or code -- one. I get exactly what I want, and I happen to enjoy programming.
The question stands though, what does your mother have to gain by learning how to program when there are already thousands of perfectly good screensavers out there already - especially considering the amount of time it will most likely take her to learn how to create one.
I have quite a beautiful knitted afghan which my mother-in-law knitted for me. She could have just gone to the store and bought me a blanket, if the purpose had been simply a way of staying warm. There are certainly as many perfectly good blankets out there as there are screensavers. Yet she chose to spend countless hours knitting that afghan.
What does anyone have to gain by playing Solitaire, or watching a baseball game, or solving a crossword puzzle? Quite a bit less, I would think, than writing even the simplest of programs.
You may prefer to live in a world where you do nothing which does not give you some immediate and tangible benefit, where there is no room for pleasure, for enjoyment, for the mental equivalent of a good game of racketball. Most of the rest of us, though, would call that place "hell."
What would your mother gain from learning to program? What use might she have for it?
Of what use is a baby?
What would you gain from learning to program? What use might you have for it?
What would I gain from learning to program? What use would I have for it?
That one I can answer: Sometimes programming buys my groceries, and even when my income comes from other sources, programming is an endless source of entertainment for me. Especially when I'm not depending on it to buy the groceries, programming is fun. Why should that person's mom be any different?
If you spend an hour playing Solitaire, at the end of that hour you have nothing. If you spend an hour writing a program that scrolls your name up the screen in a sine wave, at least you have a program that scrolls your name up the screen in a sine wave, and maybe you can use it as a primitive screen saver.
Since when is the world is divided arbitrarily into people who enjoy programming, and those who are only able to enjoy sitting on a couch watching other people tell them stories or play games? Anyone with more working brain cells than the average zucchini can learn programming and enjoy doing it. What might she gain from it? Maybe a new job. At least, something more useful than Solitaire scores. What use would she have for it? Maybe a way to get her computer to do thing she needs that it would otherwise not be doing. At least, programming would be a way to have more fun.
Coding is like sex: Some people do it for love, some people do it to make their friends happy, some people just do it for the money.
Well, of course HTML isn't very complicated... but it also isn't programming. It's more akin to word processing. What would be the point? It has none of the fundamental elements of programming, such as variables, branching, etc. In fact, pretty much the only thing it has in common with any programming language is the word "language."
> So you're saying criminals are sub-human and therefore don't deserve descent human dignities.
Don't put words in my mouth. I said what I said: Society's first priority should be the protection of the innocent, and once that's taken care of, we can move on to the protection of criminals.
> Wouldn't you agree that rape causes emotional trauma?
Which causes the greatest emotional trauma?
A. Being told that what happened to you is your fault because you chose to commit a crime?
B. Being told that what happened to you is your fault because you wore those clothes, walked out to your car alone, went to that party, trusted that guy, etc?
> Which do you think would cause a person more pain physically and emotionally?
Being raped because you chose to be a criminal, or being raped because you chose to exercise the same freedoms -- even something as simple as standing at a bus stop -- that men take for granted? You decide.
When women who have done nothing wrong can live their lives without fear of being raped, then we can turn our attention to safeguarding criminals from other criminals. If we don't have enough resources to protect innocent people, then where are we going to find the resources to protect criminals?
Friend of mine gets 300+ a day at his college account after whatever filtering the college does. He is very cautious about where he uses that address -- but it was listed on the student email directory web page, and the harvesters got it.
I use the same system of unique addresses at one of my domains for every business I deal with. Interestingly enough, over the four or five years I've been doing this, only one of those has attracted spam: iBill. Beware of ibill.com, they will sell your name not just to spammers, but to some of the most explicit (and graphic) porn spammers ever to flood an inbox with spam targeted to people of the wrong sex, wrong orientation, or both.
Slashdot Mirror
So where's the push to even out the gender imbalances in those areas?
I doubt if most of us care, or have much of a stake in, nursing or kindergarten. (though some ACs may make me question that) However, most of us do play computer/video games, and we feel at least some interest in that industry. Put in terms of simple self-interest, a healthy, thriving game industry will be better able to produce more fun stuff for us to play with. Therefore, we have some stake in seeing it expand. Also, from the point of view of a female gamer constantly trying to get a non-gaming husband interested in the fun stuff I play, I think a lot of guys would like to find a girlfriend who shares their interest in games, just like they would want one who shares an interest in travel or old movies or whatever. So, anything that would increase the number of female gamers would be increasing the pool of prospective dates.
P.S.
The objective is to provide everybody *who wants to play games* with something they want, not everybody period.
Actually, the objective is to make everybody want to play games so they'll buy yours. It is to provide everybody, period, with games. Preferably multiple copies.
Setting is just wallpaper that gives the gameplay a recognisable grounding and context.
... and probably buy another game from that exact same company company next month. I, on the other hand, an older female gamer, want a game that's fun. I used to keep an Apple II around to play Lords of Conquest, just because it was so much fun. (a modern relative: Conqueror!) Someone needs to hold up a big sign in front of the whole computer game industry: "It's the gameplay, stupid!"
... and I think that's exactly where they're missing targets in not just the female market but the post-adolescent market overall. Enough so-so games with flashy production values already, let's see some fun games again!
I think that's a huge part of the problem, actually.
Your typical teenage boy is more readily attracted by glitz than an older buyer. We older types have been burned a few times by the flashy car that was a total lemon, the fancy shoes that hurt our feet, and, yes, the glitzy game that stank on ice. So, the adolescent male market will buy a game if it has good "wallpaper" even if it turns out that the gameplay sucks
I want a game as outstanding as Civilization or Doom or StarCraft were when they first took over part of my life, not one more knock-off of last year's hit with prettier graphics and louder music. Yes, the setting is just the wallpaper and the gameplay is what matters (though a male friend who loves story-driven RPGs might disagree with me)
There are a lot of people I've gamed with in the past decade who think I'm a man, although I've never claimed to be. I'm perfectly happy to let them continue thinking that. It's not a matter of avoiding sexual harassment -- although that exists -- it's simply that if they think I'm a guy, they take me seriously. I'm a gamer, someone like them, not "a girl" which is apparently some other species entirely.
In one MMORPG, I have both male and female characters that are not publicly known as mine. People are, as a general rule, more polite to the female character. (though when they aren't, they're really, really crude) But they also make assumptions about the player's interests and abilities, such as assuming that she dislikes PK and needs to be guided in basic game skills (despite being max level) while the presumed male player is taken at face value. Basically, when people think the player behind the keyboard is male, they seem to wait and see what kind of person "he" is, what he's interested in, what his skills are, etc. But when they think the player behind the keyboard is female, they have a preconcieved template for what "she" is like and they take off from there.
I know of a number of other women who would die before they admitted to fellow players that they were IRL females. Too many of us have had too many years of being treated like a talking dog ("the wonder is that she plays games at all!") or like a lame sissy. The odds are that those 2 out of 250 were not the only female players -- just the only two who had the guts to admit it.
I know its complicated, but games publishers are businesses, and they will not fund a game that has no established market demand.
... one of those guys who won't fund anything that shows any signs of being even remotely new or innovative. (risky! risky! it scares me!) If people like you had been around in the early days, we'd still be playing Space Invaders. Or pinball.
Are you familiar with the concept of opening new markets? Smart companies, at least in most industries, don't settle for fighting for a share of an existing market; they bust their collective asses to open up new ones.
There was no demand for computer spreadsheets before VisiCalc. There was no demand for FPS games before Wolfenstein 3D. There is no demand for [some new genre] before [the next breakout product]. A truth in business is that if you want to really succeed -- not just struggle along with a 3% market share, but really succeed -- you can be the first, or you can be the best. Nothing else counts.
They dont give a shit that all the gamers are male, they are just numbers on a spreadsheet.
Which is exactly why they should be paying more attention to the 50% of the market they're not reaching. Selling games that appeal to women too will make those numbers get bigger. Even a bean counter should be able to understand doubling the potential market.
No publisher will spend their money on a huge risk such as games that attract female gamers.
Lately, it seems like no publisher will spend their money on anything but a knock-off of last year's big hit, or a license for something that sucked when it was a movie and is destined to suck harder as a game. This explains the nine million crappy FPS games out there, most of which barely live and die between the new release shelf and the discount rack, and the legion of clones of every other genre past and present. However, the fact that the people controlling the money are a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be first against the wall when the revolution comes doesn't make it any less true: you can be first, or you can be best; otherwise, you'll be in the bargain bin.
No, the demand has to be there first I'm afraid.
You must work for a game publisher
Ages ago, I worked for Radio Shack. Their slogan was "Be a sales maker, not an order taker." Anyone can ring up purchases, kind of like a walking vending machine. That's supplying a product to meet an existing demand. The people who drove Radio Shack's business were the ones who created a demand. The ones who suggested buying rechargable batteries with that new boom box, or gold cables with that VCR. Whatever you might think about the consumer culture and its ramifications, the companies that really profit are sales makers, not order takers. They're the companies that create their own demand.
Before Microsoft released Windows, nobody but the Mac users thought they needed a GUI.
Why lose sight of the 'fun' and instead go for attracting a certain 'sex?'
That's what we female gamers have been wondering for the past few years as games have become less and less fun, and more and more about attracting stereotypical 15-year-old boys. (a lot of whom don't like them either)
When game companies realize that eye candy might tempt me to buy one game from them, but only solid gameplay will get me to buy another one, maybe we'll get fewer sucky (but gorgeous) games.
I'd prefer the one who grabs the backup tapes.
... but all things considered, I think I'd even prefer that over a "parental" type.
Why? Because if his reaction is to get the employees to safety first, he's thinking of himself as the only adult and the employees as children, dependant on him to take care of them. I've worked for people like that. It sucked. If he goes for the tapes, there is at least a chance that he acknowledges his subordinates as adults and equals, capable of taking care of themselves, and is thinking of the project first. Of course, he could also be someone who doesn't give a damn about anyone else
Why should a top-notch engineer, lucky enough to be doing something for a living that he really enjoys, want to become an average manager, trying to find time to do something he enjoys as a hobby?
... you really know how to sell our widgets ... so we're promoting you to Widget Engineer to design new widgets. Joe is our top maintenance guy, he can fix anything in this building almost by looking at it, so he'll be getting your old job over in Sales." Ludicrous, isn't it? Salesmen and engineers and plumbers have different skill sets, even different ways of thinking. Likewise, managers have different skill sets and different ways of thinking too.
If I had to put a finger on the biggest problem with business today, it's the fact that management is treated as an aristocracy, rather than what it is: another specialty.
Transferring a good engineer to management makes no more sense than transferring a good salesman to engineering. "Fred, you're our best salesman
But because of this concept of management as aristocracy, something which is embedded in our culture from hundreds of years ago in England when the people running the show really were the aristocracy, a transfer from some specialty like engineering or sales to the specialty of management is considered to be a promotion, like being knighted. Managers, being the aristocracy, get more perks, fancier offices, and of course higher pay than any of the people they are managing. Why should a manager have a more comfortable chair than his secretary, for instance?
Management is a specialty. Some people are good at it, some aren't. Just like engineering or sales or fixing the plumbing. When more companies realize this, and start treating management as just another specialty, not an aristocracy, then productivity will not be choked by PHB's the way it is today.
Another amusing point from that same article:
... 2003 ...
June "will be show-and-tell time," McBride said. "We're not going to show two lines of code. We're going to show hundreds of lines of code" that allegedly violate SCO's intellectual property.
June
And they still haven't either put up or shut up.
Of course, with the current administration, which is notably Microsoft-friendly, in office, it's unlikely a case against SCO for [whatever "suing someone to put them out of business when you know don't have a case" is officially called] would would ever get anywhere in the courts, but it's nice to dream about.
According to the IRS, if my business doesn't show a profit in any 3 out of 5 consecutive years, it's officially a hobby for tax purposes. While that test doesn't actually apply to corporations other than type-S, it's still a somewhat amusing thought: If the law were to be applied equally to small businesses as well as large, SCO wouldn't be a business at all.
Then again, we knew that.
True, programming isn't fun like Solitaire. It's a lot more fun. I can code for 16 hours straight, but Solitaire bores me after a couple of games.
Can I borrow a bucketload of that post of yours to fertilize my garden with?
Let's assume that the original person asking the question is about 21-ish and his mother was 21-ish when he was born. That would put her in my general age bracket.
... in fact, quite possibly old enough to be the grandmother of the person in question. At least one of the ones I know does in fact have grandchildren who also play the game. I just sold my DAoC account because RVR on my server went to hell, that was basically all I played for, and I didn't have time to level up a new char on a better server. And why skip FPS? Ok, some go a little overboard on the complexity (I don't want every gun in the world, I just want the BADDEST gun in the world) but in general they're one of the simplest genres of games for a newbie to pick up. "If it moves, shoot it. If it doesn't move, shoot it anyway to make sure it won't ever move" is a pretty straightforward concept.
... to which I say "Ram it. Sideways."
... it's one of the few games I like that lacks a PK feature.
... Is there anything in the middle that is also cheap/free and suitable for adults?"
... having problems with the sock sensor.
Computer games such as SimCity. I'd skip FPS and MMORPG.
In one MMORPG that I've been playing for about five years, I not only know many women around my age (some of them "stealthed" on male avatars) but several who are considerably older
Oh, right, women don't like violent games
Simple online games such as chess, checkers, board games, etc.
If you're directing someone to online games, PopCap would be a much better option. Let's not go into just how much of my time that bloody word tile game has eaten
Reading and posting to BB sites on a topic of interest to her.
You're acting like this person is a feebleminded child who needs to be led by the hand around the Web. The question was not what kinds of things would a middle-aged woman (who is apparently, by stereotypical definition, soft, weak, and feebleminded) enjoy. The question was, in fact, "She expressed an interest in learning what I was doing
Learning programming is not the same as "Project Gutenberg distributed proofreaders" and I can't imagine what would be going through the mind of a person who listed that as an answer to that question.
By the way, Lego Mindstorms very well might be a good solution. Its capabilities are FAR from childish, especially when you go beyond the simple connect-the-blocks system (which is a great introduction to the basic concepts of programming) to one of the many other options available. I own a Mindstorms set myself, and that thing is just FUN! Though I still haven't gotten my automated sock picker upper working
It is statistically not likely a mom would genuinely be interested in learning how to program. You can debate whether that is nature or nurture, but you can not deny that it is reality.
It is also statistically not likely the particular sperm which carried half of your genetic material was the winner in the great pop-the-egg contest nine months before you were born. Therefore, you do not exist. If you have mistakenly been instantiated, please rectify this error by calling your destroy method immediately.
"such a person"?
/. readers today. Despite my twin handicaps of post-adolescent age and lack of a Y chromosome, I not only did and do program for pay, but I also program for fun. I enjoy it.
... get her some family geneology software instead ... redirect this unhealthy interest of hers into something socially approved for mothers ... Sadly, it's also been a very disheartening experience.
For what it's worth, I am "such a person." If I had married the guy who wanted to marry me in college, and if we'd had kids shortly thereafter, they would most likely be brand-new college graduates and old-hand
It's been an eye-opening experience to see the level of prejudice among people here. Someone who fits your "mother" stereotype can't possibly be really interested in programming
Oh, and as for "why programming" -- because that's what her son does that she's interested in finding out more about. Not graphics, arc welding, or hotel management.
It's not really something many people are interested in or need to know how to do.
... but writing it on some lazy afternoon will be a lot of fun.
Neither is reading ancient Egyptian writing, yet I have several books on the shelves behind me which were written to teach that particular skill. There is a big difference between "not many" and "not any."
I mean aside from just having some background in how apps work for her, unless she is planning to start writting some apps on those lazy afternoons this seams a bit silly.
Perhaps she is planning to do exactly that. As a result of an earlier comment, I dug out my dog-eared copy of David Ahl's Basic Computer Games and I'm trying to decide which of those games I want to try coding in Perl. Is the world holding its collective breath waiting for a Web-enabled version of "Wumpus Hunt"? Probably not
Just like learning the alphabet would be a waste if you wanted to learn to write.
.doc file manually would be programming.
Non sequitur.
HTML is in no way the "alphabet" to programming "writing" -- as proven by the fact that programming, and numerous programming languages, existed long before the creation of HTML in 1991. There are plenty of people to this day -- a CompSci professor that a friend of mine had the misfortune to encounter being one of them -- who are able to program but not only do not know HTML, but in fact think that learning or using HTML is, in the words of that professor, "unworthy of Computer Science."
Like hell HMTL is the "alphabet" of programming. It has no connection. It's a markup language, a virtual box of colored highlighters. (it's also currently buying my groceries, but that's beside the point)It's a data description format. Coding HTML is no more programming than typing in the formatting codes for a MS-Word
Whoever modded the parent insightful needs to get into rehab, and quick.
It's a quick and easy fix for someone who wants to "make their computer do something".
Only in the sense that word processing is.
It also tends to push the person to learn Javascript...
Trying to learn Javascript as your first programming language would turn off a lot of people. We only think it makes sense because we're geeks, and generally OOP geeks at that. For someone who isn't quite sure what a variable is, let alone what an object is, Javascript would be a nightmare.
I'd suggest Perl. Yes, really complicated Perl code can get so hairy that fur grows on your screen, but in the main it's a clear, straightforward language. It's also a very forgiving language. It will try its hardest to do what it thinks you want, unlike, say, C++, which seems to delight in shrieking "You didn't say 'mother, may I'!!!"
Despite those people who claim it turns people away from from programming in the One True Way, BASIC also has some notable advantages. One of those is the availability, via the used book dealers, of this book and its sequels.
Come to think of it, I could have a lot of fun replicating some of those games in Perl.
Perhaps I'm just the sort of person who gets no self-satisfaction from that sort of thing.
... I have, on a number of occasions. Perhaps your holes are as square as the available pegs, or perhaps you just have a bigger hammer to pound with. I can't find a round peg, I whittle -- or code -- one. I get exactly what I want, and I happen to enjoy programming.
We all have our own ways of satisfying ourselves. At least coding doesn't make hair grow on the backs of your hands.
I may code for a living, but I have not yet come across a situation at home that would really truly benefit from a home-grown tool.
Odd
The question stands though, what does your mother have to gain by learning how to program when there are already thousands of perfectly good screensavers out there already - especially considering the amount of time it will most likely take her to learn how to create one.
I have quite a beautiful knitted afghan which my mother-in-law knitted for me. She could have just gone to the store and bought me a blanket, if the purpose had been simply a way of staying warm. There are certainly as many perfectly good blankets out there as there are screensavers. Yet she chose to spend countless hours knitting that afghan.
What does anyone have to gain by playing Solitaire, or watching a baseball game, or solving a crossword puzzle? Quite a bit less, I would think, than writing even the simplest of programs.
You may prefer to live in a world where you do nothing which does not give you some immediate and tangible benefit, where there is no room for pleasure, for enjoyment, for the mental equivalent of a good game of racketball. Most of the rest of us, though, would call that place "hell."
What would your mother gain from learning to program? What use might she have for it?
Of what use is a baby?
What would you gain from learning to program? What use might you have for it?
What would I gain from learning to program? What use would I have for it?
That one I can answer: Sometimes programming buys my groceries, and even when my income comes from other sources, programming is an endless source of entertainment for me. Especially when I'm not depending on it to buy the groceries, programming is fun. Why should that person's mom be any different?
If you spend an hour playing Solitaire, at the end of that hour you have nothing. If you spend an hour writing a program that scrolls your name up the screen in a sine wave, at least you have a program that scrolls your name up the screen in a sine wave, and maybe you can use it as a primitive screen saver.
Since when is the world is divided arbitrarily into people who enjoy programming, and those who are only able to enjoy sitting on a couch watching other people tell them stories or play games? Anyone with more working brain cells than the average zucchini can learn programming and enjoy doing it. What might she gain from it? Maybe a new job. At least, something more useful than Solitaire scores. What use would she have for it? Maybe a way to get her computer to do thing she needs that it would otherwise not be doing. At least, programming would be a way to have more fun.
Coding is like sex: Some people do it for love, some people do it to make their friends happy, some people just do it for the money.
Well, of course HTML isn't very complicated ... but it also isn't programming. It's more akin to word processing. What would be the point? It has none of the fundamental elements of programming, such as variables, branching, etc. In fact, pretty much the only thing it has in common with any programming language is the word "language."
> So you're saying criminals are sub-human and therefore don't deserve descent human dignities.
Don't put words in my mouth. I said what I said: Society's first priority should be the protection of the innocent, and once that's taken care of, we can move on to the protection of criminals.
> Wouldn't you agree that rape causes emotional trauma?
Which causes the greatest emotional trauma?
A. Being told that what happened to you is your fault because you chose to commit a crime?
B. Being told that what happened to you is your fault because you wore those clothes, walked out to your car alone, went to that party, trusted that guy, etc?
> Which do you think would cause a person more pain physically and emotionally?
Being raped because you chose to be a criminal, or being raped because you chose to exercise the same freedoms -- even something as simple as standing at a bus stop -- that men take for granted? You decide.
When women who have done nothing wrong can live their lives without fear of being raped, then we can turn our attention to safeguarding criminals from other criminals. If we don't have enough resources to protect innocent people, then where are we going to find the resources to protect criminals?
Friend of mine gets 300+ a day at his college account after whatever filtering the college does. He is very cautious about where he uses that address -- but it was listed on the student email directory web page, and the harvesters got it.
I use the same system of unique addresses at one of my domains for every business I deal with. Interestingly enough, over the four or five years I've been doing this, only one of those has attracted spam: iBill. Beware of ibill.com, they will sell your name not just to spammers, but to some of the most explicit (and graphic) porn spammers ever to flood an inbox with spam targeted to people of the wrong sex, wrong orientation, or both.