My CS 404 Thoughts

After the online readings we did for class today our guest speaker wasn't quite what I was expecting, but she raised some good points and clarified my thoughts a little. I was intrigued by Carla's recognition of the fact that programming often requires "non-standard" hours, and that it is a field dominated by "nerds who just want to solve problems." The De Palma reading about why women avoid Computer Science seems to me to confirm this. I have always wondered why my wife who is smarter than I am asks me to fix her computer, or figure out how to do something and then show her. Carla's mention of the mindset of a programmer and De Palma's discussion of the "tinkering factor" are a clearer answer to this than I ever thought I'd find. While reading De Palma's article and listening to Carla acknowledge that we are here because we are "nerds" it just clicked. I really do like to tinker. If someone asks me to do something with a computer that I don't know how to do, I have no problem telling them that I'll "figure it out." On the other hand, my wife (and most other girls I've known) is not so fond of tinkering. I think that many of the obstacles faced by women in Computer Science are partially due to a lack of numbers, and I'm not sure that will change without a fairly major paradigm shift in our world of "tinkerers" and "nerds" who just want to solve problems.