Why is there such a clamor to get girls to code? I never hear anyone say "We need more female lumberjacks|roofers|trash collectors|pilots" despite those being male dominated professions as well.
They actually neutered the Blockly environment here. Try <i>not</i> following the instructions at <a href="https://www.madewithcode.com/project/bracelet" rel="nofollow">https://www.madewithcode.com/project/bracelet</a><p>You can't! It tells you to use a diameter of "18"; if you try to make it "6", the environment will forcefully change it.<p>Is this even programming? You can't do anything here but click the buttons it tells you to. Half the fun of programming is doing oddball things your environment and its designers didn't expect. Some people call this "hacking", but it doesn't look like Google expects girls to want to hack.<p>Yeah, maybe "it's just a tutorial", but since when do tutorials acutally stop you from going off the rails and experimenting?
They seem so blindly focused on that one metric of girls majoring/working in CS. So much that they have no shame about exploiting sexist stereotypes in their message, strategy, branding even all the way down to web design.
I'd love to improve that metric as much as anyone. But it would be so so so much better to do it by working on the fundamentals rather than by manipulating people into CS using the very warfare that keeps them out.
My main problem with this has always been that it's treating the symptom, rather than the root cause. The idea is that if you throw enough money, you can magically cause radical paradigm shifts in how the professional interests of the genders and sexes.<p>This might be so, in the short term. You'll likely have a nice boost in numbers, which I'm sure will look really good. But you should really be striving for long-lasting and meaningful change. You want girls to actually be passionate about programming as a craft, and not just create more disposable cogs who can churn out high-level instructions.<p>I'm sure a lot of employers would salivate at the latter prospect, but it's not something we should be encouraging. Even the incessant use of the word "code" and the mystical cult of personality that is being erected around this abstract concept is cause for concern. I don't think having more women coders is enough, we need more women hackers to get something more meaningful.<p>And when you start looking for that, you'll quickly find that the issue goes deeper than something flashy campaigns and cash can just swiftly solve. It's societal. Once you pin down the causes, you shouldn't just hurry to turn the tides, either. You should analyze the cost and benefit of doing so.
I wanted to compare the amount of investment with the GSoC[1] program. The GSoC home page[2] says it supported over 7,500 students; since each student/mentor pair(?) receives $5500, that makes about $41m, with overhead probably about the same amount as the "Made With Code" program, although GSoC ran 3 times longer with that amount than is planned for this new program.<p>Either Google thinks this topic is somewhat more important, or could benefit more from the money, or the effort can be concentrated into fewer years, or Google has a bit more money now than it had when it started GSoC. Or anything else (I haven't even read what they are planning to do exactly.)<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_summer_of_code" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_summer_of_code</a>
[2] <a href="https://developers.google.com/open-source/soc/?csw=1" rel="nofollow">https://developers.google.com/open-source/soc/?csw=1</a>
My girlfriend, who is an iOS and OS X programmer, described this as "highly offensive."<p>The program-some-jewelry-without-typing did not go over well with her.
Disgusting title! An exhibit to why the program is needed. It is not for getting girls excited, it is for getting idiots like the reporter (Jordan Crook) understand that coding is not a men's thing.
Instead of teaching someone to code the better approach would be to give basic STEM education. What would a coding class do if the basics of Maths and Science are not clear.
I don't understand the focus on making women want to code. Maybe women just like different career choices then men. Does it really make sense to spend $50M on marketing to convince women to code?
This move makes me very reluctant to work at google. Would my future career be limited, because women are favored in promotions and internal recruitment?
I mean this show what google's values are, and which methods they think are acceptable.<p>It would feel much safer and future proof to work for a more meritocratic competitor.