🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <AAoUi.3388$uk.783@newsfe21.lga>,
John W. Kennedy <jwkenne@attglobal.net> wrote:
> blmblm@myrealbox.com wrote:
> > Maybe a way to say it is that while 40 years ago CS was a new
> > field with no entrenched prejudice against women,
> 
> Well, my real point was that just about everyone in the business back 
> then had stumbled into it by accident. No child born in the 30s, male or 
> female, grew up saying, "I'm gonna be a 'puter programmer when I grow 
> up," 

I rather thought maybe that was what you meant.  Agreed.

[ snip ]

> Between those generations, I'd say, came one other problem. It was in 
> the 80s or so that you first began to see "girly" women turning up as 
> programmers -- the ones who, instead of being "one of the boys" (I do 
> /not/ mean "butch" here, just professional), tended to be just a little 
> flirtatious, just a little inclined to go all Blanche DuBois on you when 
> things got difficult -- the women who spoil things for other women. I 
> suppose that tracks with the newer sort of "Computer Science" programs 
> showing up in colleges, programs that emphasized COBOL over Runge-Kutta 
> and databases over compiler-compilers.

Cue recommendation to re-read "Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal" ?

(I'm not sure I've ever met a "girly" programmer.  But I don't
doubt that they exist, or that they tend to spoil things for the
non-girly women!)

-- 
B. L. Massingill
ObDisclaimer:  I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor.