Art and music are not unusual things to get into. But computer programming is often not presented as an option to anyone, especially women. So plenty of motivated and talented people might not even be introduced to it, or take it seriously.

Anyone with a Facebook account could have typed "learn to program" into Google rather than poking people in the farm while eating candy (or whatever people do on facebook these days).

If a person chose not to take programming seriously, that's on them.

So, women who get into CMU but disproportionately haven't been exposed to programming are in that situation because they were too busy playing Farmville?

I have no idea what they were doing - the point is that a Facebook account indicates the opportunity to use the internet. There has literally never been more information/tools available to potential programmers than there is today - free online coding schools, tutorials, stackoverflow, wikipedia, anything you want. Not to mention free compilers - when I was a kid, Borland C++ cost money.

I mention Facebook somewhat sarcastically because it's a service with no shortage of women. If women can be on Facebook, they can also be on Github if they choose to be.

There was never an easier time to learn programming, for free, while sitting at home, without even putting on pants, than today.

The secret of the patriarchy: http://bit.ly/w0iWlY

So what are people supposed to do, read up on every single topic on the internet? There was never an easier time to learn about alchemy, either.

The link goes to lmgtfy.com/?q=learn+programming