Posts by JcRabbit

Re: Memo is factually incorrect

DanielBarker -

> I'm sure Swedes do not choose their education and jobs in a social vacuum, any more than anyone else.

How is that even relevant? Women are *freely* making their own choices on a society that actually *encourages* them to choose careers typically associated with men. And still they don't.

Does it really matter if the reason why is biological or cultural?

> in World War 2 [...] digital computing began largely female

The war effort is what opened the gates for women to join the work force, because most men were busy fighting in that war (and dying). So women did the work, men did the dying. Fair enough?

> Neither the biology of men and women, nor even computing, have changed much during this short period.

I'm not sure how you can say that computing hasn't changed much since the 40's. Anyone who has been involved with computers, or knows the history of computers, knows that is absolutely not true - computing was, back then, VERY different than what it is today.

To start with, computers used whole rooms and in those days programs were entered using punched cards up until the mid-70's. Unlike today, there was a VERY clear distinction between analysts, programmers and computer operators. Analysts did the flowcharts, programmers converted them into sets of instructions, and operators punched in the cards via a keyboard. Operators were therefore not much more than 'glorified typists'', in an era were being a secretary (i.e.; typing letters) was considered a woman's job. These women were called the "keypunch girls".

Furthermore, computers weren't very powerful back then - a typical pocket calculator these days has exponentially more computing power than mainframe computers of the era. Programs then were thus necessarily very simple and short, because they wouldn't even fit in the extremely limited mainframe memory otherwise (we're talking 1 KB *total* RAM).

With the development of computers, the jobs of analysts, programmers and operators essentially merged. These days you do your own programs and also type them in via a keyboard. With more powerful computers, programs became ever more complex, requiring extensive use of logic and math skills.

There was a time in the late 70's were many women flocked to computer sciences, and in 1984 the women earning computer science degrees reached it's peak: 37%. In the next two decades, women left computer science in droves, their numbers dropping to 20% by 2006. This shows that women with aptitude for computer sciences are out there, they're just not choosing computer science.

It's not that they are not capable, it's just that they prefer doing other stuff. Pretty much the same way most men are also perfectly capable of doing jobs typically dominated by women but simply prefer to do other things (are we going to blame women for this choice, the same way feminists blame men when the shoe is on the other foot?).

Capabilities aside, the fact is that women and men have different preferences, and this is in no way a bad thing. This simply means that men and women *complement* each other.

Re: Diversity for Diversity's sake?

> It is absolutely ridiculous to say that "women" "prefer social jobs"

Why is it ridiculous if it is true? Read my comment above about Sweden. What is ridiculous is trying to fit men and women into the same box by force, like you and many others are trying to do. I'm all for equal rights, but at the same time you have to admit that women and men ARE different. And for very good reasons.

> 2. I don't agree that Google should have fired him. They should have seen it as an opportunity to learn and to teach on a topic that is clearly very difficult to handle and talk about. Google screwed up by not taking that opportunity.

See, here I agree with you. But when you start an argument by calling people you do not agree with as 'dreadful people'... hmmm. :-P

Re: I almost feel like crying

> I think this is the link you are looking for: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_lioning

Lol. Of course you would think that. But no, I was actually expecting a reasonable debate on the actual issues. At least on a couple of points you think are 'more offensive' or 'more garbage'. Instead you just assume I'm trolling - easier and much less effort on your part, of course.

Re: Memo is factually incorrect

Sweden is one of the countries where the laws most favor women. Women there have NO ISSUE choosing their professions, and are, in fact, encouraged to do so.

Despite this, the numbers do not reflect what feminists would like to see. When women are allowed to FREELY choose what they want to do, MOST of them choose jobs that are typically associated with the female gender. Not because the males drive them to it, but because THAT IS WHAT THEY WANT.

Why is it so hard to admit such a thing? Numbers do not lie:

The five most common occupations among women in Sweden:

Assistant nurses and hospital ward assistants

Home-based personal care and related workers

Child-care workers

Pre-primary education teaching associate professionals

Other office clerks

There is a TREMENDOUS gender imbalance - in favor of women - in the above professions (e.g.; 148, 600 women vs. 11,700 men for Assistant nurses and hospital ward assistants). What are you going to do about this? FORCE men to fill the gaps? No? Of course not. It is what it is. Different genders have different preferences.

Likewise here are the five most common occupations among men in Sweden:

Technical and commercial sales representatives

Heavy truck and lorry drivers

Computer systems designers, analysts and programmers

Stock clerks and storekeepers

Machine-tool operators

There are 54,100 men vs. 1,800 women for Heavy truck and lorry drivers. What are you going to do? Force women to become lorry drivers because you dream of gender equality in every field?! Of course not, that would be insane!

Bottom line is, people like the author of this article are trying to force ideology over reality. Does that remind you of something? Communism, maybe? And we all know how that turns out.

P.S. For Computer Systems, it's 51,800 men vs. 14,100 women - and since we are talking about Sweden, it's because women OBVIOUSLY prefer doing other things. Doh.

Re: I almost feel like crying

> Lucas, the memo is garbage.

Yeah, that is what you keep saying. That and that you were offended by it (facts do not care about your feelings, by the way).

What I would like you to see you doing, however, is explaining WHY the arguments he raised are garbage. Debate them, one by one, if they truly are garbage you will have no problems debunking them.

Saying something is 'garbage' does not automatically make it so.

> And the article was about the dreadful people that felt the need to defend it, and to attack people that were offended by it. Even though it is garbage.

Wait, you had no problems *personally* attacking the author of the memo and those who defended it on a public article, but those who disagree with you are automatically 'dreadful people' to you? And you're the one accusing the author of the memo of black & white thinking?

Re: Has the author read the memo?

> Annonymous because it is clea rthat thsi debate is not about evidence or facts but about supressing debate and mocking those that hold views based on evidence instead of ideology.

EXACTLY!

Now Kieren, since you are obviously reading this: he is not accusing you of click bait, but of writing an *opinion* article in which - unlike the guy who wrote the original memo - your opinion is NOT based on ANY facts whatsoever - in fact it doesn't even TRY debating or counter-arguing the arguments raised in the memo - but on personally attacking the author of the memo because he *dared* to put in writing what many reasonable people think. I accuse you of the same too, and I'm not hiding behind an anonymous account.

What do you have you to say for that? Want to actually debate the issue instead of calling people names?

You might actually start seeing things differently if you apply reasoning instead of emotion to these issues.

Re: Fickle Microsoft

You're not a commercial developer, are you?

Imagine you have a huge - and popular - commercial application written in classic VB, with hundreds of thousands of lines of code. Suddenly MS decides to pull the rug under your feet (and everyone else's, really).

What are you going to do? Re-write the whole application in C++? Your competitors would REALLY, REALLY, like that - as a real world example of what would happen, take a look at Netscape: one day they decided to re-write from scratch what was, at the time, the most popular Internet browser. By the time they finished - two years later or so - they had a huge buggy mess on their hands and the world had already moved on anyway.

So no, the only solution is to keep at it and pray every day that MS does not suddenly think that killing the VB run-time in a future version of Windows (perhaps we should say 'release' now, instead of version) would be a good idea too.

P.S. In retrospect, had I know back then how popular the application would become and that MS is NOT to be trusted under ANY circumstances - not even when talking about what was then the most popular development language EVER - I would have written it in C++ from the get go instead of VB. But, as they say, hindsight is 20/20 vision, no?