Comments on: Girl Developer http://hash-pipe.com/2008/08/girl-developer/ The collective musings of a few real-world programmers. Sat, 14 Aug 2010 03:47:23 -0400 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.2 hourly 1 By: Gloria W http://hash-pipe.com/2008/08/girl-developer/comment-page-1/#comment-103 Gloria W Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:53:21 +0000 http://hash-pipe.com/?p=8#comment-103 DevChix is not exclusive, in the sens that anyone is free to comment. Women post here often because they cannot be heard elsewhere in the din of the predominantly male Open Source environments. The "wow" reaction you had when you found devChix proves how unaccustomed our society as a whole is regarding females in F/OSS. The day it is no longer such a shock will be the day that devChix, and places like it, will no longer be necessary. DevChix is not exclusive, in the sens that anyone is free to comment. Women post here often because they cannot be heard elsewhere in the din of the predominantly male Open Source environments.

The “wow” reaction you had when you found devChix proves how unaccustomed our society as a whole is regarding females in F/OSS. The day it is no longer such a shock will be the day that devChix, and places like it, will no longer be necessary.

]]> By: Sarah http://hash-pipe.com/2008/08/girl-developer/comment-page-1/#comment-95 Sarah Wed, 17 Dec 2008 16:19:03 +0000 http://hash-pipe.com/?p=8#comment-95 I agree that it is important in the workplace that we stand out as excellent engineers and encourage merit-based treatment; however, wherever there is a minority, the minority will be noticed and treated differently. I find it nice to be part of the majority once in a while. I didn't realize how much of an impact it would make for me until I attended my first Grace Hopper conference where I heard dozens of speakers give highly technical talks and I realized I had never before heard even a single woman give a talk at a technical conference. It made me think more about public speaking and writing. In 1995, I was named one of the top 25 women of the Web for my work on Shockwave. I was surprised at first. I thought I couldn't possibly be one of the top 25. Then I thought about the guys who founded Netscape, and the guys who wrote Fetch, and the guys who wrote the RFCs, and for every software project that I knew of at the time creating web software, it was exclusively a group of guys. Now, I think those guys are awesome. I know many of them and I don't think (most of) the individuals did anything intentional to exclude women, but nonetheless women are excluded from most of the software that is written today. We exclude ourselves and some of the men (an ever decreasing minority, I believe, but present nonetheless) create hostile environments. We do need to not act shocked when we find awesome techie women, yet it is still statistically significant to have a group of women ready to dive into installing a linux-based open source PVR in their homes. However, until women make up closer to 50% of the technical folks we have to figure out how to spread the word, and I believe that these so-called high tech sororities are part of the solution. Sarah I agree that it is important in the workplace that we stand out as excellent engineers and encourage merit-based treatment; however, wherever there is a minority, the minority will be noticed and treated differently.

I find it nice to be part of the majority once in a while. I didn’t realize how much of an impact it would make for me until I attended my first Grace Hopper conference where I heard dozens of speakers give highly technical talks and I realized I had never before heard even a single woman give a talk at a technical conference. It made me think more about public speaking and writing.

In 1995, I was named one of the top 25 women of the Web for my work on Shockwave. I was surprised at first. I thought I couldn’t possibly be one of the top 25. Then I thought about the guys who founded Netscape, and the guys who wrote Fetch, and the guys who wrote the RFCs, and for every software project that I knew of at the time creating web software, it was exclusively a group of guys. Now, I think those guys are awesome. I know many of them and I don’t think (most of) the individuals did anything intentional to exclude women, but nonetheless women are excluded from most of the software that is written today. We exclude ourselves and some of the men (an ever decreasing minority, I believe, but present nonetheless) create hostile environments.

We do need to not act shocked when we find awesome techie women, yet it is still statistically significant to have a group of women ready to dive into installing a linux-based open source PVR in their homes. However, until women make up closer to 50% of the technical folks we have to figure out how to spread the word, and I believe that these so-called high tech sororities are part of the solution.

Sarah

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