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A comment on The Story of Mel (unsung genius from when programmers were men) . Parent comment

Re:The Story of Mel (unsung genius from when programmers wer... by ionfish on Tuesday April 13, 2010 @11:28AM (#1262269)
It's not merely sexist, it's misleading. When the LGP-30 was in use in the late '50s (the RPC 4000 was introduced in 1960), the proportion of women in the field was higher than it is today. When "programmers were men", more of them were women.

References (secondary sources only, sorry):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing

http://knol.google.com/k/the-decline-of-women-in-computer-sc...

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Re:The Story of Mel (unsung genius from when programmers wer... by lsb on Tuesday April 13, 2010 @11:51AM (#1262351)
Yup, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper was a pretty important figure in computer science in the mid-20th century.
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Re:The Story of Mel (unsung genius from when programmers wer... by lutorm on Tuesday April 13, 2010 @12:08PM (#1262411)
I was going to make exactly this point. Computer science is the only field I know of that has actually increased its male dominance over time.
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