Girls Who Code is set to expand its female-oriented tech education program to Detroit, Miami and San Jose thanks to $435,000 in funding from Knight Foundation. Good stuff.
Maybe a bit tagent, but a comment to the article claims that stackoverflow.com is a men favored place, and thus there is a need to have a female exclusive place where female coders can ask questions and get answers.<p>Could someone explain this to me? I know that stackoverflow actually has less female participants than software industry in general, but any causes is eluding me. Are there just a number of hidden stories out there about all the sexist comments being made (have not seen any story, or any such comment while using the site), or are question made by females being singled out and left unanswered? We hear constantly about the evils done in IRC rooms , and we hear about conferences/work places where females don't get respected when they got similar amount of experience as to their men co-workers. Do either of those exist on stackoverflow, and if not, why is stackoverflow not gender equal in participants?
I tell all of my friends who program and sometimes talk about "oh, maybe I should do side project Y and.or learn technology X" and who happen to have young daughters - "Dude, you want an interesting challenge - I suggest teach your daughter how to code - use Squeak, Alice3D."<p>Usually - they are like "The IT industry is doomed.. or I don't want my daughter to be a coder.. or she doesn't want to learn how to code.. or (worse) my wife would never want that(!<i>egads</i>!)".<p>And I retort (as nicely as possible): "Even if they don't become coders, they will learn how to problem solve, how to better think, how to analyze. Make a game together! Don't even start with code, start with pieces of paper"<p>The goal is not for them to be coders but to bond with them and teach them a useful skill that isn't necessarily about a livelihood (like fathers teaching sons fishing)"
I'm worried that there could be a focus on compairing if stuff is less than three.<p>Just kidding, I think it's a great thing that females are getting a new role model in the tech field because talent should decide if you will become a programmer and not ancient role models.