Ask HN: Why most of us programmers are men?

8 points by alonsovm44 30 days ago | 10 comments

Originally, it was women who did the programming, like Grace Hopper. When the 8-Bit home computers came out, they marketed them to boys to play video games and learn to program video games. Some girls used the home computers as well, but not the majority of them. Programming was marketed to men as a career choice, so we went to college or read books on how to program, and we got jobs as programmers.

Not all programmers are men; I want to make that clear to all genders who can be programmers.

NoPicklez 30 days ago |

I don't know if it is most necessarily, but.

Historically without any facts I'd say that men have long been steered towards STEM related roles, whereas females have not. Purely as a long standing historical change in roles for Women vs roles for Men, there have been traditional roles for females vs males, however this is shifting.

There are so many reasons for this that I'm probably not best to talk to it. The important thing is that these things are changing to provide more choice.

defrost 30 days ago | |

Historically, in fact, men were leading computing projects and "in charge" of giant room sized computers while the girly details of programming and getting stuff done on a daily basis by the hour went to women.

eg: Steve Shirley

  In the 1950s, she worked at the Post Office Research Station at Dollis Hill, building computers from scratch and writing code in machine language. She took evening classes for six years to obtain an honours degree in mathematics. In 1959, she moved to CDL Ltd, designers of the ICT 1301 computer.

  After her marriage to physicist Derek Shirley in 1959, Shirley founded the software company Freelance Programmers with a capital of £6. Having experienced sexism in her workplace, "being fondled, being pushed against the wall", she wanted to create job opportunities for women with dependents, and predominantly employed women, with only three male programmers in the first 300 staff, until the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 made that practice illegal.

~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Shirley

Then computers became cheap enough for families to buy them for their sons (and less often their daughters).

autumnstwilight 30 days ago |

There's probably a lot of little nudges one can get in their life that make them more likely to pick up programming, but I think a big one for present generations is exposure to video games and video games being a thing that most of your friends do and compete on. When I was a teenager, boys were building PCs to play FPS games better, and now the younger guys entering the company cut their teeth modding Minecraft. Every exposure to "figuring something tricky out on the computer" is a potential gateway, and I think the social and cultural environment for guys exposes them to these little chances a lot more.

snowbirdsong 30 days ago |

I’m a girl, this is a True story. It all started in the 7th grade when I declined the invitation to be in advanced maths and sciences classes because I thought math was for boys and it would be too hard and most of my friends would be in a different class. America 90s who would think

wmf 30 days ago |

Oh boy, there's a whole report on this topic: https://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~koehl/Teaching/ECS188/PDF_files/...

aabdi 30 days ago |

assortative preference matching, boys like toys, girls like people (in neoteny).

long term expectation: Engineering, finance is majority male. Doctors, lawyers are majority female.

Increased gender equality skews this harder.

good? bad? idk. least both genders have high ROI career paths.

damnitbuilds 30 days ago |

Because men and women are different and enjoy doing different things.

jonahbenton 30 days ago |

Social factors, not a skill issue.

pestatije 30 days ago |

not most

In the 1950s, she worked at the Post Office Research Station at Dollis Hill, building computers from scratch and writing code in machine language. She took evening classes for six years to obtain an honours degree in mathematics. In 1959, she moved to CDL Ltd, designers of the ICT 1301 computer. After her marriage to physicist Derek Shirley in 1959, Shirley founded the software company Freelance Programmers with a capital of £6. Having experienced sexism in her workplace, "being fondled, being pushed against the wall", she wanted to create job opportunities for women with dependents, and predominantly employed women, with only three male programmers in the first 300 staff, until the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 made that practice illegal.