NYT: History of Women in Coding

[steelyman]

I subscribe to the New York Times and, every so often, come across articles I find interesting and think some here might enjoy too. Problem is I don’t know how to tell if a link is behind a paywall.

But this article published last month was interesting enough to me to post anyway. I think there are a lot of tech-savvy people here, both male and female, who may find it interesting and may relate.

The article covers the history of women in coding (programming) and how roles have evolved over decades.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/magazine/women-coding-computer-programming.html

[ADDED] Checked after this post went up: it IS subject to the NYT “10 free article” monthly limit. On the plus side, it’s almost the end of March. [emoji4]

 

[MBAustin]

That was a great article - thanks for posting.

I graduated in 1979 with a computer science degree. In one of my early required classes, there were 3 women and about 20 men. The professor on the very first day told us we did not belong there and that was just the beginning of his harassment. He inserted foul and sexual language into our assignments regularly. The three of us decided just to stick it out (and we all got A's in the class) but at the end of the semester I complained to the dean of undergraduate studies. He was gone the following fall. In the "small world" category, a woman who worked for me in the 90's had the same professor at another college and he was still horrible to women - but kept getting new jobs. Ugh.

 

[Sunset]

I worked with a bunch of great women programmers over the years.
Some were better than me

The only thing I found disappointing, was some reflection of society view that that was not "women's work", even though they did great work.
Unfortunately a couple of them quit work to stay home with the kids/get married, which wasn't a choice the men in the group considered. Another society thought pattern.

 

[Nemo2]

'They' tried to discourage DW, from programming, not because she was a woman and older than most of her class, but because she had (at that time) a family (two teenagers), and they said that the workload would be too much; she said basically... "Thanks, but no thanks, I'll do what I'm going to do".

(Not long after we met up....I was in Toronto waiting to take the 5th wheel south) and she was passing through from Ottawa on her way to visit her daughter at school in southern Ontario......she came to visit me in Texas.

We walked and talked and talked and walked......this was just one of the many factors that highlighted her character, and reinforced that I'd be an idiot to pass her up....."And my momma didn't raise no....")

 

[MRG]

Interesting article. I'm M and my career was in coding and everything that goes with it. I graduated night school in 84, my first manager was a F. She was absolutely fantastic to work around. There were quite a few talented females I w*rked with. Many of my early mentors were female and fantastic at coding. I guess it is true in the later days I didn't notice as many women in the industry. Sad.