It's the difficulty of keeping yourself motivated and do what you need to do. Making a commitment, such as joining a class or education, is massively helpful.

> I would argue that maybe those women don't have the intrinsic motivation to do so and trying to force it upon them may be a gross waste of time and resources.

It may come as a shock but most people don't work with their ultimate passion. And often even if you start working with your passion you'll have to deal with the ugly sides and you might lose the passion. Sometimes a job is just a job.

The problem is that people learning programming for the first time, who don't have a passion for it, can find themselves in a class with those who do. I have witnessed, first hand, people who were beginners getting left in the dust by their classmates on a group project and ultimately dropping out of CS/SE entirely.

But the problem isn't that new people join classes. The problem is experienced programmers being in the same class as beginners.

I could often just do the assignments myself and skip the rest of the course. The real problem was when I was forced to partner up with someone new.

I think the problem is deeper than that, though. Computer science is a challenging field and programming is a discipline that benefits from a large amount of experience. Universities try to sell their CS programs as accessible to beginners yet tend to be very quiet about the extremely high dropout rates.

Look at it this way. How well would I do if I enrolled in a fine arts program? I would essentially be a total beginner at drawing and painting. My classmates would include people who have been drawing and painting more-or-less nonstop since they were young children. Is it reasonable for me to expect the same level of career success as these born artists?

There may be a lot of jobs out there for people with basic programming skills, just as there may be jobs doing mundane art and design. But I think it's a bit ridiculous for a total beginner to go into an exceptionally rigorous, programming-heavy, academic CS program and expect to do well. The fact that universities try to sell people on this is disappointing, to say the least.

No?

Stuff like pointers, for loops, threads, interface design, data structures, idempotency, source control, working on a linux command line, etc. all present reasonably challenging roadblocks for a burgeoning developer, and I think many of us benefited from having someone around to help walk us through this the first time.

That's an interesting example. Sure, I was initiated to the Unix command line at the University, but it was just that : an initiation. I got hooked quickly though so I was driven to learn the rest all by myself (or rather, with the help of the linux community online). I'm sure it's more or less the same for most linux nerds. I may have bought one or two books about linux though, but buying a book about a subject you're passionate about is something normal.

You're right that once you want to get into the important technical details, free documentation on the web may be insufficient and you may need to invest in proper textbooks. I still think my point stands, though.

It wasn't until I used Linux professionally that I started to really respect (and enjoy) using the environment. And even then it wasn't until I saw another human using it efficiently. It's one thing to read about how useful it is, it's another thing to struggle with a problem and have someone show you how you could solve your exact problem.

Once I had that connection with another human/mentor, seeing my specific problem solved, that's what hooked me. I don't think I could have gotten there with toy/educational examples online/in books.

For programming, the available documentation is not just ludo-educational, it's also the official references, like the RFCs and specifications. There is literally no better source of knowledge for computer science. I haven't delved into technical specs very often in my life, but I have at times and I bet most good programmers do it often.

I don't understand why women in general need special help or guidance.

I do, but my explanation is not PC.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

A good instructor will also guide you to good learning materials. There's lots of terrible books out there, but I found good books through my classes. Though, it's probably easier to find learning materials today than when I began.

Depends on how much you think anything else sucks. Compared to physical labor you're not breaking your back over things.

Compared to other jobs you get paid relatively ok (EU centric view).

Compared to some jobs the hours aren't that crazy: hey McKinsey folk! How are you doing? :D

Really, it isn't that simple. It depends.

It helps if you like it, but a job is a job and if you can perform it, then why do you need to like it?

Moreover, did you ever read about the overjustification effect [0]? Long story short, if you like something, you might dislike it after you get paid for it.

Also, if you love programming you might be biased in always solving a problem in a technical way. You'd become that guy from the LEGO movie that always screams "SPACESHIP!" [2]

Full disclosure: I like programming and sometimes can force myself into loving it [1]. The consequences of loving programming: no social life, no normal diet, sleep rhythm is off. I'm basically just doing one thing as much as possible: programming.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect

[1] As a mettamage I have some control over my psyche and I can quite often, but not always, force myself to like or even love things that I initially hate ;-)

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TYJyCCO8Dc

Not always true, sometimes you have to help lift boxes (100lb) carrying hardware with your software preinstalled / ready to be shipped because you work in a small office and paying someone off to do the same task 1 day randomly throughout the different quarters of the year is not worth the hassle.

To your second point, not all software jobs are as solitary and asocial as you seem to believe. Pairing, project planning, application product design, are all things that are done with other people. In fact, I am a software engineer and have more than a few days at work where I don't even touch my computer, yet still get a lot of work done.

The archetype of the solitary, 100% self-learned hacker as a representative of all, or even most of tech workers has been outgrown by the industry. Even the use of the term "hand-holding" as I've seen it used is a gatekeeper mentality IMO that needs to stop, or at least be toned back significantly. People that don't pull their weight certainly exist, but everyone learns and contributes in their own way.

Oh that's easy just send a cURL request with header Accept: application/json ..... OK what's cURL, what's a header? So for us that have been in the game it is easier to "learn to code" another language as there are parallels everywhere and you have that baseline knowledge of how things generally work. Just try to explain something that you feel is "relatively straightforward" to a person not exposed to tech... I made the same mistake and thought it was straightforward, it is not as you are making many assumptions about knowledge. I am at the point where I am familiar with a lot of stuff and can Google things I don't know but what if you had no idea what even to search for? That is where instruction helps.

I don't understand why handholding is bad and why it should be used as an argument against women coding. When men do it, it's called mentoring.

I find these kind of "initiatives" quite condescending.

Isn't this true for content covered by the vast majority of all secondary and college courses?

I would love to learn to code. It's the reason I originally joined HN closing in on a decade ago. (Proof: my first post, the day I joined: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=713015)

But I have found that one barrier to me getting anywhere is a lack of ability to ask questions and get meaningful answers. Men often have male friends that they can shoot the breeze with and casually mention some coding thing and get some kind of reply from one or more people.

And my experience is that men don't talk to me that way. I don't have any buddies I can shoot the breeze with who will go "Oh, yeah, that thing is a known issue and you need to do yadda." Men shooting the breeze with me are inevitably hitting on me, even if they are married.

I've been here a long time. People here mostly don't hit me up via private email and things like that to just chat about a thing. When I have explicitly said "You can email me to discuss that further." I never get emails to discuss that further. Instead, I get inquiries into when I next plan to vacation in their part of the world and suggestions that I would enjoy visiting their lovely country (and, hint, hint, they would love to have coffee with me should I happen to casually drop by their country on vacay, because that's clearly how desperately poor women who can't pay their damn bills spend their time, globe trotting to hook up with random internet strangers who apparently thought "Wow, a woman speaking to me. She must be looking for sex!").

I've occasionally had brief stints of being able to have casual conversations in a chat environment with a guy who happened to be an IT guy. I found it enormously, incredibly, mind-blowingly useful and valuable to get those casual comments of "Oh, are you doing X? Cuz, you know, X don't work. Did you think of yadda?" But most of the time, I simply don't have access to that kind of conversation.

Nearly a decade of hanging on HN has failed to magically give me such access. Anytime I comment on how frustrated I am about such things, I am inevitably pissed all over by people acting like I am making shit up -- because, yes, clearly, this is how you welcome women into the bro coders club, by pissing on them at every available opportunity.

I still would like to learn to code. I spend a lot of time online. I think men vastly underestimate how much support they have access to. A small comment here and there by someone knowledgeable can save you hours and hours and hours of time by pointing you in the right direction. As a woman, I mostly can't get access to those types of comments. Men are too busy trying to figure out how to ask for my phone number.

I really don't know how to adequately describe the ginormous Wall of China style deafening silence that faces me and that helps keep me poor, unable to figure out coding and a zillion other things that drive me crazy.

To be clear, I'm not posting this to just whine about my pathetic life. That's inevitably the interpretation most people make of such comments by me. It's frankly just another means to shut me out, dismiss me and invalidate my points.

I'm posting it to try to elucidate the fact that guys have more access to support than they seem to appreciate. I can't join a chat or slack channel and count on getting help because I posted a question. I can count on being dismissed, sexually harassed and treated like an unwelcome intruder.

And that's a giant barrier that men mostly don't seem to face. Men can talk to other men casually and get loads of useful information that is simply not accessible to me. If it were, I think I would already be a coder with several published projects.

Edit:

There are multiple people replying here to

A. Tell me "It's simple! Just don't tell people you are a girl!"

B. Generally be dismissive, as if I don't have a real problem and otherwise act like I don't have a point.

To people here actually interested in solving the problem space here: Please note how shitty it is for all the replies to me to be dismissive, not listen, etc. Please note how such replies are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

I'm not planning to engage such replies. They are not useful and they tend to not even be made in good faith.

The short version of why I don't hide my gender online: I am trying to make business connections. I cannot hide my gender in person.

If I have to hide my gender to try to connect and then I arrange an in person meet-up and they are shocked and appalled to learn I'm actually a woman and I never told them that, this is not going to go good places for my career by any stretch of the imagination. They will feel lied to, betrayed and like I'm not trustworthy. No, they won't want to work with me if I can't so much as admit to the simple fact of my gender.

I also cannot even get paid if I do work online and need to hide my full name so as to hide my gender. You can only hide your gender successfully if you are basically posting anonymously and not trying to make real world, meaningful connections.

Geez. How is that not blindingly obvious on the face of it?

> small comment here and there by someone knowledgeable can save you hours and hours

Sometimes it can. But if you're just a beginner, you don't need the expert advice you're talking about. Hours and hours of what? If you're already programming even at very entry level, you can get very similar advice on stackoverflow.

> If it were, I think I would already be a coder with several published projects.

I don't think you lack expert advice. I think you lack interest.

I remember since pre-teen, I was obsessed about computers, first videogames, then computers in general. I've spent hundreds of hours tinkering with them, trying to make them do what I wanted them to. I wasn't motivated by money, it was fun.

Vast majority of exceptionally good programmers I know can tell similar stories about themselves. There're a few women among them, too.

When you have interest that strong, you spend hundreds of hours of your time, unpaid, doing what you like. Especially when you're a teen with no kids. That's what helps with learning programming. Also reading good books. Expert advice only becomes relevant much later, and by that time, if you pick jobs well, you'll be surrounded with smart people willing to answer your questions.

If you don't have that kind of interest in computers, you won't become exceptionally good. You probably can still learn the trade and make a living off it, but will require substantial time and efforts. I think that's the target audience of that summer school.

I don't care one whit about what gender an engineer or technician is, nor do I even know all the time online -- sometimes I find out years later, sometimes I never find out, but I've never cared.

If you want to learn to code, join one of the free Udacity courses, or MIT or Harvard's free EdX courses, and learn, and write your projects. Nobody's going to stop you. Information is free. And you got a whole stack of useful responses to the post you just linked.

That is just hard to understand. If your gender is an issue, why even make it public in the first place? I mean, ever heard of the saying "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_...

If she has to hide her sex in order to get meaningful answers, that right there is a huge impediment us men in tech never have to experience.

She's not complaining about "being treated as a woman"; she is specifically complaining about this:

> "I can't join a chat or slack channel and count on getting help because I posted a question. I can count on being dismissed, sexually harassed and treated like an unwelcome intruder."

I don't think people should have to hide their identity in order to be able to discuss tech with their peers without harassment or being dismissed.

Posted by a user with a female name & received substantial feedback.

But here are a few observations about that post:

The HN account in question has under 300 karma. There are three posts, all about the book this person is writing. All comments by the account are in replies to those posts. The account has made zero effort to participate generally in discussion here.

She's not trying to network. She's developing a single project and getting public feedback.

Here are a few other observations for you:

Between my original handle and this one, I have more than 40K karma. My previous handle was briefly on the leaderboard. I appear to be the only woman to have ever spent time on the leaderboard.

I've just looked. I think I can confidently determine the full names of twelve of the top fifteen members of the HN leaderboard quite readily, with minimal effort. Many of them use their name or some portion of it as their handle or some portion of it. (First name, last initial; first initial, last name; etc.)

Yet I am routinely told that I should hide my gender online to avoid problems.

Here is a post I made in January that I wrote and self-posted. It got substantial karma and substantial comments and 60K+ page views total (about 55k the first couple of days):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18842009

It got one and exactly one private email from someone potentially professionally meaningful to me. I replied to that email. They did not reply to my reply. So I don't know how useful that is for networking purposes.

It made zero money, though it had a Patreon link and a PayPal link at the time. I spent about two weeks developing that piece.

People on HN use adblockers more aggressively than normal and ads generally are doing pretty poorly these days. All of HN expects quality writing on the front page, all day, every day. They decry pay walls and will post workarounds for pay walls.

Regular journalism sites are struggling and dying. They can't figure out how to pay their bills.

HN generally trends towards well-heeled male programmers, lawyers and other respected professionals. Yet they don't want to support writers. I am routinely told "get a real job" by people here.

There is no method by which the HN audience is willing to pay for content. Not by patronage, not by subscriptions, not by tip jars and certainly not by ads. The expectation that people post good content and make it freely available to the general public kind of worked when you could make money via ads. But ad payments have dropped across the board by 75 percent or more online for most sites that I know of.

I mean, I could just go on and on, but it's pointless because you aren't here to understand the problem space. You are here to post a single link as a "gotcha" that proves in your mind that there is no sexism on HN.

If there is no sexism on HN, why do I appear to be the only openly female member to have ever spent time on the leaderboard of 100 names?

(Please note that a lot more than 100 people have spent time on it. As far as I can tell, that means that not even 1 percent of the members who have spent time there post as openly female. Please note the qualifier there of openly female. I am aware that it is possible that someone has made the leaderboard while hiding the fact that they are female.)

Anyway, this argument is incredibly tiresome and I think I need to try to go do other things. More people piling on to try to somehow dismiss me is not some kind of good faith engagement by any stretch of the imagination.

It would be nice if more people would make an effort to engage me in good faith rather than blame me for my lack of traction.

I'm quite confident that I have gotten whatever traction I do have due to being very reasonable in the face of a mountain of crazy-making BS.

It winds up being a damned if I do, damned if I don't situation.

For the record, in response to my comments here today, someone emailed me privately to offer an hour of their time this weekend to discuss my desire to learn to code. Hopefully that's a sign of better things to come.

I'm noting it to say there are, in fact, options beyond refusing to engage me or blaming me (or other women, people of color, etc). I'm stating it for the benefit of anyone wondering what they can do about such issues.

I'm very well aware that it's difficult to engage someone who is angry and complaining. But not pointing out the barriers to participation also doesn't foment change.

I wish it worked to just show up and participate as if my gender was irrelevant. But the truth is I did that initially and the result was souch push back, I went digging to figure out why. And that's the reason I know I'm "prominent" for a woman here. Because I was making waves and it was coming back to bite me at a time when I was nowhere near having enough karma for the leaderboard.

I would love to have zero reason to bitch about sexism on HN. It was never anything I wanted to talk about. I just wanted to participate in conversation and learn to code and further my projects, just like the guys here do. And that proved impossible.

Why would you assume that a programming course amounts to "hand holding" just because a single gender is involved?

For that matter, why would you assume the women taking this course are unmotivated?

If this exact same program allowed men and women, would you still be casting the same aspersions only on the women, or would you also be implying that trying to "force" the men to program is a waste of time and resources?

Gender is not important here. As a matter of fact, I wanted to edit my post and talk about people in general, but I did not bother. This article was about women.

My point is that I have the feeling that programming is something most people learn more or less for free with the documentation available online and with the help of online programming communities. The lack of intrinsic motivation is how I explain someone (woman or man) may need financial support and a IRL teacher.

Nevertheless, the classes being offered here appear to be online, through Lambda School[0].

[0]https://lambdaschool.com/about/