Well, I used to believe that more women didn’t go into CS because they just weren’t interested. As I worked to get my bachelors degree in CS, my friends in college (all male; i’ve never been very good at creating and keeping friendships with other women) used to tell me what a rarity I was to actually love talking about hardware and shit on my ‘off’ time… to cream over talk of faster hdd’s and cpu’s, daydream of having massive amounts of ram, or stay up all night working on a program and forget to eat.. but you know what? If it wasn’t for that computer class I took in high school (which i almost didn’t sign up for) I wouldn’t have known how much I would love it…. and that , YES, a girl *could* do this. LOL!
I liked it so much i got overzealous one night as i was logged into the VAX school system and did a little something that made many many people angry… yep, i had my computer account revoked. (fucken admin jackass!) but got it back the next day, thank fully. it felt like someone had put a plastic bag over my head!
but anyway i’ve got mixed feelings about anybody ‘recruiting’ people (male or female) into CS. If they start encouraging kids in middle school, i’m all for it, maybe make an intro to computing course required just for the sake of exposing girls to it and get the true geek(ette)s to come forth… but not generally no. I’ve known too many women (and surprisingly many men too) in college and afterwards who are in it only because it’s a “career” choice, not because they really love it. no joy, just a paycheck. IMO, if you don’t love it, you will hate it or worse, suck at it.
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