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Comment by marquis | Hacker News Reader

>Young women don't magically become technologists at 22

I did exactly that. I have a degree in the arts, but always loved physics and pursued that secondarily. I failed physics because I had taken arts instead of mathematics but found that that didn't stop me learning C and building all the arts programs I ever wanted. Quite some years ago now and I was an outlier but it's not too uncommon.

Good schools are now getting girls into robotics and coding before puberty. That's when you get exited. I loved messing with radios and old VHS players when I was a kid, and probably MOST importantly my father was a technologist: exposure at a young age is everything.

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Ahh, but it wasn't magic...as you go on to say, the seeds were planted when you were young. "messing with radios and old VHS players" is a precursor to becoming a good technologist. It's not about what you played with, it's about early experiences of problem solving, of making and/or fixing and/or tinkering in any context.

>but it wasn't magic

No. I'm also not an world-class tennis player even though I played tennis since I was able to hold a racket and had good teachers. I just happen to be good at problem solving, making and fixing and tinkering. Most of friends who were at school who liked to build things also went on to have technical careers, just not with computer programming. So, I think that we are only starting to see a new generation coming up for whom computers aren't something they met when they were older, so there will start to be a lot more natural female programmers among them. In my generation it was rare for a father to take interest in a girl's technical inclinations, and I think I'm really lucky for that early experience. My point is that I just think this is a phase and a generation not far away won't face this gender discrepancy.

I'd just like to throw it out there that perhaps your problem solving ability developed in lockstep with your tinkering.

It wasn't magic. You deliberately sought to gain experience in computer programming. The author is saying that you can't tell a 22-year-old woman with established interests that she should go into computer programming because "there aren't enough women in tech". The woman has to decide to go that way on her own, as you did.

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