Requesting intellectually honest discussion | Hacker News Reader

Requesting intellectually honest discussion

3 pointsydenytruth6 comments

Hello,

This topic may offend some, but I would like to an real discussion, because I think it is important:

Why do we deny the possibility that men are simply better coders than women? Why do we, as men -- as coders -- feel the need to bend over backwards to include people who simply are not as good as us?

There are jobs that everyone acknowledges men are better at, such as firefighting. Imagine if we mandated equality in firefighting. Peoples' houses would burn down! Luckily, we're smart enough not to do that.

But coding ability is harder to measure, so no one will admit that men might simply be better at it. However, if men ARE better, imagine the damage of trying to treat everyone equal. Any company behaving that way will be at a competitive disadvantage compared to companies that hire coders based on ability.

Thoughts?

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Well, if we are going to talk about empirical facts here, just how do we figure out who is better at coding than other people? I am a man, but I rather suspect that most women who participate on Hacker News are far better at coding than I am. (I came to the discussions here after reading several Paul Graham essays on education policy issues. I don't consider myself a good coder at all, but I'm responding to this topic because it is, really, a topic related to education policy.)

Until most companies are hiring on the basis of work-sample tests, which research says is a very good idea,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5227923

it may be that a lot of companies are hiring on the simple basis of irrational rules of thumb, which just might include societal prejudice against disfavored groups. That too is an empirical question, and that question is even harder to get an honest answer for, but we would have to consider that question along with the question of how we figure out who is a good coder to have an intellectually honest discussion here.

What do the other participants here think? What other issues do we need to consider to be intellectually honest while discussing this topic?

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool." Richard Feynman.

A few thoughts –

Do you have proof that men "remain" better at coding, IF equality is completely established? Equality has never been established completely, so you can't have that proof.

Can you argue satisfactorily why men are necessarily better at coding than women (e.g coding needs anatomic testicles)?

Can you argue satisfactorily that women cannot possible become good at coding?

Can anything wrong come out from applying for a firefighting position as a woman?

Lastly, have you considered how none raises such issues in connection with Mathematics? Are you aware of the current discourse that programming is essentially about learning to think, hence it is desirable that it is practiced by all genders, regardless of whether later they choose to specialise in it?

tl;dr: What is the practical purpose of this debate?

We "deny" the possibility in the same way we "deny" other hypotheses for which you and anybody else have failed to provide credible evidence.

Sorry, I stopped having discussions about whether or not girls have cooties back in the 2nd grade.

LOL.

What a vapid topic. It's not offensive because of what it asks, but because of how clumsily you circumscribe the issue so that it is impossible not to have a shallow discussion about it.

When you ask, "Why do we deny the possibility that men are simply better coders than women?", you've already begged the question by insinuating that merit-based selection is why women are so scarce in programming (which is really the only metric that you have right now to assume that women must be worse at coding). Well, if that's the case, I guess there's no real debate to be had, is there?

In other words, you're forcing people who disagree with you to take the position of: We should give equal treatment to bad coders...which basically no one, including women coders, is arguing.

To illustrate how nonsensical your question is...How do we categorize Grace Hopper? The invention of a mainstream programming language...nevermind the "first compiler for a computer programming language"...is a pretty good achievement, more than I've done so far. So is Grace Hopper not a woman? Or do I have the potential, because I'm a man, to someday surpass her? Or should we just all admit that COBOL sucks and that Grace Hopper would get schooled in a hackathon full of com sci male undergrads if she were alive today?

Here's my thought:

1) write a list of 10 things you like to do

2) Now pick one from the list that is most viable for you to do right now, where you are.

3) Do it. This discussion is not worth anyone's time, including yours.

Hope you feel better and get some perspective.

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