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Comment by axod | Hacker News Reader

I can pretty much garuntee, give this to any girl, and she'll throw away the laptop and pretend she's having babies or dating ken or doing a fashion show.

Fairly pointless.

Up next: Fashion show GI Joe to get boys interested in fashion!

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I agree. It's a fact that men far outnumber women in I.T. for a variety of reasons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women,_girls_and_information_te...). One interesting point from the article:

"From a two year research initiative published in 2000 by AAUW, young girls in focus groups reported that "lack of interest" was not the reason for steering away from a computing career, but rather, their male peers were treating computers as toys"

Is it safe to assume girls + I.T. + toys != good times?

Speaking as a male peer, do you mean to tell me that computers aren't toys? Code is my game, and the line between "tool" and "toy" is extremely narrow based on how much enjoyment I get out of a good hard problem.

Damn buddy, that's harsh. I'll let you know how my 2 year old cousin reacts when I give one to her for Christmas :)

FWIW, I think Lego is a far better bet to get girls interested in maths, logic, building, creating, thinking, problem solving, etc

Lego is fun and a massive learning tool. A barbie with a pink laptop is just dumb.

Totally agree. Lego, or even just a traditional 1000+ piece puzzle.

I'm considering getting the doll for my CE lab in college though.

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