^ BBC documentary : Calculating Ada - The Countess of Computing 2015
The article brings up the recent memo from the Google employee James Damore and his faux scientific argument on the differences between men and women.
A few excerpts:
- Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things , relative to men (also interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing ).
- These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics.
- This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading. Note that these are just average differences and there’s overlap between men and women, but this is seen solely as a women’s issue. This leads to exclusory programs like Stretch and swaths of men without support.
In order to combat this line of thinking, Faruk Ateş looked back to history and to the origins of computing, and why woman participation in the field has dropped significantly.
- Ada Lovelace - 1843 - published the first program
- Hedy Lamarr - 1942 - Invents frequency hopping
- Jean Bartik - 1945-46 - helped codify the foundations of programming
- Rear Admiral Grace Hopper - 1952 - created one of the first compilers
"Moving into the post-war era and the 1960’s, software engineering was considered “women’s work” because it was thought of as clerical. Hardware was the difficult job, i.e. “for men”. Cosmopolitan famously ran a 1967 issue about “The Computer Girls,” with Admiral Hopper saying women are “naturals” at computer programming"
But when there was an increase in a "prestige of the field", there was another shift.
- Aptitude tests
- Advertising (Absence of images)
"Eager to identify talented individuals to train as computer programmers, employers relied on aptitude tests to make hiring decisions. With their focus on mathematical puzzle-solving, the tests may have favored men, who were more likely to take math classes in school." The Clayman Institute
How images or the absence of can affect how we see ourselves, the expectations and beliefs we have?
What does a modern day example of this look like?
How important it is to see ourselves reflected via gender and race to provide a definition of what is possible in our world, and encourage us to work at the boundaries?
"If you look down the career road and see no one like you, it’s tempting to give up. The world is teaching you a lesson by sheer optics: this path is not for you."
The Surprising Reasons Why Most Girls Don't Code
- Her father was the poet Lord Byron, but was kept from her father from a young age
- Her mother force her to learn mathematics
- Published the first computer program in 1843.
- Almost brought computer to the victorian period.
- Worked with Charles Babbage, mathematician and inventor
Mechanical Calculator
#The Analytical Engine
- The object that Lovelace saw the potential to extend into the areas outside of mathematics
- 45 feet long, able to store 5000 variables, Driven by steam
- Employees a mechanical "conditional arm"
- Video Link
- Mechanical Loom
She was the first to recognize that the machine had applications beyond pure calculation, and created the first algorithm intended to be carried out by such a machine. As a result, she is often regarded as the first to recognize the full potential of a "computing machine" and the first computer programmer.
^ The world is made of numbers so that machine could manipulate anything.
- There was a concern for how government money was being used.
- Politicians were looking for way to kill the project.
- It started to seem unlikely that their ideas would be realized.
- She thought because of her math knowhow that she would be skillful in gambling
- She lost $3200 pounds (Equal to $1m dollars today)
- She never recovered the money and died at the age of 36
- Her last wish was to be buried next to her father
- Alan Turing develops the "Thinking Machine"
- Wrote about Ada's work and as one of the pioneer of computers
- Computer language named ADA. Adopted by Air Traffic Control.
- What steps can we to help define the image of the next generation of programmers?
- Nurture vs. nature? What influences us to become who we are?
- Our thoughts on how images affect us?