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Comment by khawkins | Hacker News Reader

CMU is a top tier school. Why should you deny a hot-shot programmer admission for someone who has a passing fancy? Judging "potential" instead of a candidate's past work and experience reeks of affirmative action.

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They aren't giving them negative weight, they are just looking forward.

I know plenty of guys who went into uni with a bit of java experience (AP CS in highschool or something similar). So yeah, they know your basic control flow and OOP. But when it comes to how they will perform in N years, it means nothing. Any intelligent student without experience could (and did!) surpass the "more experienced" programmers by graduation time.

If someone is the next programming wiz of that year, I'm sure they will be viewed as having plenty of potential and get in.

If someone has a year or two of bad Java, they aren't viewing that as any better than someone with a good quantitative background. That's not affirmative action, it's foresight.

Anecdotes, not data, but I know plenty of people who learned Java, C#, or JS in highschool, some even did internships, yet someone who hadn't coded before 2nd year uni soared past their skill level within a year because he was a generally smart guy with good math and logic skills.

So should the people with a bit of experience be assumed to have more potential? No. Should somehow who's been coding their whole life and it's their number 1 hobby be assumed to have more potential? Yes. Not because of their experience, but because of their passion.

CMU is a top tier school. Why would you expect hot-shot programming experience to be relevant to their computer science program?

You are totally using the candidate's past work and experience to judge them. I'm sure those that get in have outstanding AP tests in math and science, great test scores, etc. A hot-short programmer would have that experience counted as well. The point is that programming is not the only type of experience they looked at. That's the same as it is for most other technical degrees (like my ChE).

And there isn't any preference based on gender, so this is nothing like affirmative action. It is just saying that bright technical people can learn programming, and don't need to come in as an expert.

Also, computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes [1].

[1] http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Computer_science

This. When you do something in the name of political correctness (and a completely economically (and risk free) biased one - i.e. almost nobody cares about the lack of female truck drivers) you still have to measure what are you inflicting damage upon.

- Is rejecting someone more fitted for this career path something good?

- Are you assuming everything is a societal result and there are no biological differences between the female/male psyche that makes them look for different hobbies and careers?

- It is know that women care more about socializing than men, and sitting in front of a screen for countless hours is pretty much the opposite of that; even when you work in a team, meetings are usually not something you look up to.

But we're not going to be able to measure those things until we try it and find out.

Also, many computer projects are done socially and aimed at socializing. Isolation is an old stereotype.

Not all women are extroverts? I'm a woman and could go without seeing people for a very long time. I think this is a huge misunderstanding of what it means to have a preference for the "social." It's about the purpose behind the project, not face time.

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