App Camp for Girls wants to address the gender imbalance among software developers by giving girls the chance to learn how to build apps, to be inspired by women instructors, and to get exposure to software development as a career. Our goal is to grow our non-profit organization into a national force, with programs in multiple cities, helping thousands of girls.
Much respect to Jean MacDonald.
Why just girls?
The issue for me is race and not gender. The Valley is still dominated by white males.
Look at the speaker lineup for most developer conferences. We’ll all wait patiently.
Why can’t they just do something awesome for girls? Seems like someone always has to chime in to nay-say. Women are underrepresented and these awesome folks are trying to do something about it. Be excited about it, not a downer.
So what?
How about you formulate an intelligent response to the original question instead of passive agressively “wait patiently”.
Why isn’t it half boys and half girls?
It is waste of time unless
these girls are already good in math
and problem solving skills.
otherwise this just a time pass summer
camp activity.
If these girls are left handed nerds and geeks (introverts) then
I am for it.
Valley is a full of Libertarian who believe in No Government and name there kids after Ann Rand
don’t want to help you.
That’s exactly wrong.
What we need is more real diversity, not just token symbols of diversity in the form of the exact same type of people, just with boobs.
Fine, I’ll spell it out. Events like App Camp are necessary because our culture openly discourages girls from pursuing technical subjects. Not the best way for almost any profession to serve a two-gender population.
If you don’t agree this is a problem, then we should also probably discuss solipsism.
Because there’s no shortage of boys in this field.
No, that’s not a problem.
Firemen are all men and nobody cares.
It is a symptom of the real problem and treating a symptom is stupid.
So let’s manufacture a shortage of boys then! That’s going to work great.
You’re being uninintentionally stupid and can’t see it because you think you’re being oh so very righteous.
Why do you think an app camp with only girls will help more than a babysitting camp with only boys?
Because I don’t use strawman arguments to prop up silly beliefs and spiral-taught logic.
“Our culture”, bwana?
Mine doesn’t.
(I don’t think that the fact of there being two genders in the population is relevant to the gender of app designers.
Are there Specific Women’s App Needs that you need a uterus to fulfil? Is there magic Woman-UX that men can’t create? How is it that women manage to use software at all?
I’m pretty sure my genitalia have never helped me either design or write code.
I don’t think I agree this is a problem, and solipsism is not the cause; the cause is that it’s simply asserted that genitalia/gender are Relevant To Software Design. Asserted, not demonstrated.)
No, it really isn’t. It might ave a few more than California in general, but the Valley has a lot more Progressives than anything else.
Can’t think of a single “libertarian” computer/software/tech company of any size at all.
Every one of the big players I know anything about the politics of, is apolitical or Progressive/Left.
(Also, libertarians often want to help you.
They don’t want the State for force everyone to “help” who the State wants, after the State takes a nice cut off the top and hands out sinecures to its flunkies.
Also also, you’re confusing libertarians with Objectivists. They’re not the same, and mostly don’t really like each-other a lot.)
But on the other hand, a donation-supported “camp for girls” is exactly a libertarian solution to a perceived problem.
I don’t think it’ll do any good, and/because I think the underlying assumptions are almost entirely wrong, but since it’s all voluntary I wish them the best of luck with it.
Let a thousand flowers bloom, as the Chairman said.
You live in a completely different culture then. The real world does discourage women from pursuing technical endeavours. It’s well documented.
You sound defensive. Are you threatened by more women entering the field?
Thanks for the imagery. Sorry for assuming you’re American, bro.
So you’re saying that there are no potential gender-based differences in the points of view that might influence how dev work is done, or how well it addresses user issues?
Or are you saying that girls aren’t actively discouraged from pursing careers in math, science, or tech-related fields?
After you recover from the dictionary falling on your head there maybe you should again try to make a logically sound argument.
Yeah, that’s it.
You got me Mr. Freud.
I’m afraid that those exact girls are going to threaten my job 20 years from now.
Congratulations on seeing the actual problems!
Now try to imagine and really understand exactly how this camp is going to solve them.
It’s not. It’s just a feel good measure born out of the stupid and misguided notion that something must be done.
For both men and women to be welcome and fit in any workplace they must be comfortable with collaborating with men and women. Equally comfortable, ideally.
Segregation will lead to failure.
Encouragement is not enough.
All this does is encourage more girls to try something they will still fail at or give up on for the same reasons they do today.
So where do you begin with that? How do you address the dominant culture of, say, a sausage-fest workplace that is run by a group perception that there are no qualified women out there, or that they’re somehow unnecessary?
Seems to me having more qualified young women in the marketplace might be a start, no?
Not forcibly, like this camp tries to.
Have the camp half girls and half boys and focus on collaboration with for example pair programming.
If the culture is such that women are undervalued there is no amount of competence that is going to change that.
People don’t change their minds when somobody atop a high horse tries to forcibly rub their noses into something they don’t really care much about to even see as a problem.
“Forcibly” is an interesting word to use here. Whose noses are being rubbed in anything? Your notional little boy’s?
Your “solution” is pretty much the status quo, which probably works fine for you.
This project’s trying to address an ancient cultural problem by training a few of its neglected victims to stand a little taller. Your personal resentment notwithstanding.
Of course encouragement isn’t enough. But it helps. Luckily the camp teaches them some skills and lets them try it out to see if they are good at it and like it.
Seems to me that would do a lot for anyone considering a career in programming.
Encouragement does more for those doing the encouraging because it makes them feel good that they did something, but really very little to actually solve the problem.
No, the noses belong to all the men these girls will have to effectively work with to get a CS degree and then to work as developers.
The status quo is that natural tendencies are exploited and encouraged.
That last paragraph really shows your stupidity. Your assumption of victimisation prevents you from thinking rationally about the problem.
Firemen aren’t all men. You, however, are a fucking idiot.
If your best objection is “it’s sexist”, you have no real argument. Who cares. Jean’s doing a nice thing that takes NOTHING away from ANYONE, and yet someone’s being an insecure douche about it.
Seriously? This hurts you? How?
Yawn.
Do you do anything else but swear and feel superior?
I don’t know and I don’t care if it’s sexist or not.
But it definitely is stupid.
It’s a stupid and ineffective feel good measure that wastes time and energy that could be used to actually help improve things.
It’s “stupid” if one more girl who might not have considered programming decides she wants to pursue it as a career? That’s one more woman in an industry dominated by men, some who actually refer to themselves as “brogrammers”.
It is repulsive to see such vitriol spewed over something so thoughtful and empowering just because boys aren’t allowed. Guys have so many options when it comes to learning code, like iD camps (which are coed, by the way), but people like you look at AC4G and only see “I’m not allowed” and demean it. If you want to go to camp, take your pic. This one isn’t about you.
And please, tell me, what are you doing to further the cause of women in tech? You sit in the back of the class throwing spit balls, but I’ve yet to see you step up and show us why you’re qualified to comment at all.
AC4G may not set the world on fire, but the kind of change you think just magically happens takes time and a lot of steps. App Camp for Girls is a step forward. You’re two steps back.
I treat my women coworkers with respect and value them.
That’s what I do, knucklehead.
How will this camp help make the rest of my coworkers do the same?
It’s not too hard when shitheads like you post garbage like this.
Of course it’s not hard, that’s why you do it.
Adding something of value is hard, so that’s why you don’t.
Based on what? That they didn’t listen to you? That it’s not something you’d have done? All you have done, in its entirety is shown one thing:
you don’t agree with this idea.
Okay, fine. But what you have not done is show that it’s:
stupid
Just a “feel good” measure
that it wastes time
or any of the other ways you’ve slagged it. Hell, your initial comments were about how sexist it was, and you “supported” that with stupid statements about firemen that ignore the fact that when you look at the entire career field, there are in fact women going into burning buildings and sometimes dying from it, and a remarkable deep pile of sexism.
I guess in one sense, it does make you the SME on sexism, you appear to be well-versed in it, but now, now you suddenly “don’t know” if it’s sexist, nor do you care? At the start of this, you were quite sure it was sexist, and now that doesn’t matter?
Well-supported points, you don’t appear to have any. Perhaps you should work on that more.
It will do nothing for any adult, nor is it about teaching “respect”. It’s not directed at adults, and it’s about teaching tween girls about programming in a way that works better for them as a group. Kind of like Danica McKellar’s books on math for girls in that same group. (I imagine you were driven to tears by their very existence. I hope those weren’t a shock to you. Do you need a moment to recover?)
See, were I dealing with someone not a fool, I’d assume you’d actually read about the camp, but as we all know, assuming someone knows anything about what they criticize on the internet is a loser. So, allow me to present actual facts. (These may scare you, but remain strong. All you have to lose is your ignorance):
So, the initial camp isn’t directed at adults. Quelle Surprise. It is directed at an age group where a lot of initial decisions about what you want to do as an adult are made.
The people it’s designed to help are the people who will be entering college and the workforce in 4-6 years, and help them decide if they want to be a programmer or not. Specifically girls. (O NOES! TEH FEMINYSTS ARE GONNA GET YOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!)
Since your rapier wit, scintillating commentar, and devastating charm shan’t be present at the camp, I’ve high hopes they’ll see programming in a positive light. They’ll learn about the idiots they’ll have to work with later on.
But what this is all about has nothing to do with the target audience or the content, but rather, you. There were no such camps when you were a kid, so screw everyone else. You didn’t get a cookie, so no one should get a cookie.
Son, stupid and self-centered is no way to go through life.
It won’t, if that’s the answer you’re trying to goad out of everyone.
The problem is in assuming that this camp is intended as a one dose panacea for gender issues in tech. No where in the camp’s description is this ever suggested or stated as a mission or goal.
The statement does describe the founder’s perceived lack of female participation in app development, and her belief, or hypothesis perhaps, is that one cause of this imbalance is the lack of exposure females developers get within the community, and the lack of exposure development receives among young women and girls as an activity they might be interested in.
Even a brief reading of the Camp’s mission is enough to figure out that it’s goals are:
It isn’t a crusade. It’s a summer camp.
We can all take logical leaps to debate whether it will solve inequality issues and its effectiveness thereto, but it’s absolutely besides the point.
You are projecting your white male guilt trip that somebody gave you on me.
I never said it was sexist. I don’t care how some stranger on the Internet labels anything.
This is a stupid idea and it will fail.
And I can see that exactly because
as opposed to all of you saints, I don’t have guilt or other emotional investments in this thing.
You should take your own advice, son.
Forcing culture change fails miserably and hurts everyone: the ones that try to change and the ones that resist it.
It was very rude of Moeskido to ask you to contemplate the matter from another viewpoint. He will know better than to ask you to think on your own next time…
Way to take the high ground. I’m sure everyone appreciates your gender based insults as being in no way, shape or form a reflection of the very misogyny that the App Camp for Girls is trying to address.
Your assumption of victimisation prevents you from thinking rationally about the problem.
Your assumption of pure egalitarianism leads you to insult people trying to open you eyes to the real world.
Mouthing the tenets of an egalitarian meritocracy doesn’t magically mean we are actually living in one…
Oh of course, because it’s a given that girls will fail at programming.
At any point did you claim you understood and could identify gender issues? You will likely want to rescind that claim.
Oh, boo hoo. The forums are full of twits like yourself. You issue fatuous proclamations and strident assertions that expose your ignorance and are then offended when someone calls you on your shallow bullshit.
You have no claim to the high road while posting from the ditch.
But it definitely is stupid.
Stop projecting.
I treat my women coworkers with respect and value them.
You forgot to add “as long as they know their place.”
Bullshit. The only changes that matter are always forced. And the ones who are always getting their feelings hurt are the ones that resists change.
Your inability to grasp the meaning of common words isn’t a logic fault. The fault lies with you.
You must be a real charming, persuasive and effective leader with that attitude.
Stop parroting.
Yeah, you really showed me there.
Oh, finally, an intelligent argument.
We’re not living in one, so how do we build it?
This camp says we can build egalitarian meritocracies by luring people into places they won’t be welcome in. And that will magically make everyone tolerant even though the newcomers and the indigenous have had no practice working together and understanding each other.
No, idiot. Girls do not fail at programming.
Men and women fail to work together in programming.
Now why is that? How exactly does that happen? And how will this camp prevent it from happening to those girls?
I have only insulted the idea because it is stupid and will not work.
I’m not going to pay lip service to a stupid idea just because it sounds politically correct to do so.
It may “address” the problem but it will do next to nothing to fix it.
Oh, get over yourself.
It’s not a fucking crusade.
I’m sure he can speak for himself so mind your own business.
Really?
That’s pretty pathetic.
I don’t think you actually know what either “stupid” or “self-centered” mean.
LOL. Oh, and now the racist angle. “White Guilt”. how utterly charming.
Yes, because camps like this fail. Why all those music camps that fa…wait, no, they don’t.
The only thing it will fail to do is give you that ego stroke you so desperately need. Again, it’s a shame no one ever did this when you were a little kid, but that’s still no reason to cry about other people getting something you didn’t get.
How about you stop talking about me and start talking about the actual topic.
That will help you stop projecting your emotional issues on me and help you make and an intelligent argument.
I base the quality of my reply on the quality of the person I reply to.
Since you’re a self-centered whiny idiot who’s crying because some kids are going to get something you didn’t, I see no reason to spend actual time on your ass.
Yeah, that’s exactly the same because music is just as male dominated and female unfriendly as programming.
What planet are you from?
THis isn’t forcing anything on anyone. I’m sorry, exactly where is jean hiding the gun she’s holding at people’s heads?
You don’t know anything about me.
Don’t play stupid. You may end up like that.
No, no, you made a specific claim, that this camp is “forcing” cultural change. Exactly how is this doing that? Where’s the gun?
I know this may be hard for an American to visualise but people are forced every day with no hint of a gun.
It’s such a failing proposition that Microsoft alone is holding seven in the US 2013 and three in other countries: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/diversity/programs/digigirlz/hightechcamp.aspx
Summertech is creating a girls-only program: http://www.summertech.net/girls/
The university of washington has several: http://camps.cs.washington.edu
UT Dallas has one:http://www.utdallas.edu/summercamps/academic.html
NC State University:
http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/theengineeringplace/summerprograms/middle-school/raleigh.php
That’s just from the first page of a google search. Man, look at all those stupid people doomed to fail. If only you were not some random anonymous nit-wit on the internet.
Okay, how is jean metaphorically forcing anyone to contribute or attend. Again, you made a specific claim, SURELY you have serious proof behind it.
Based on what I’ve seen here, you’re a self-centered, self-unaware nit whose entire objection to this centers around you not benefitting from it. YOu’re like a little kid crying because they didn’t get any ice cream.
Not to attend, you nitwit, but to appreciate those girls inside the programming profession.
Isn’t that the actual problem?
This is beyond hilarious.
The portrait you just painted of yourself is strikingly accurate.
“Son.”
Snort. That’s hilarious. Want to throw in a “boy” while you are at it?
Well stop doing it, then.
You know how comment forums work, right? Or like “chicks”, is that something else you trouble figuring out?
It is if I say it is…
I have only insulted the idea because it is stupid and will not work.
Not really. You are too stupid to see how it could work. That does not make the idea stupid. Your reaction to this idea, however, is all the justification anyone needs to expand on such programs and make them commonplace.
Parading?
That’s what my quarterly reports say. I’d run the numbers on the value of the projects I run every year but that would be self aggrandising. I don’t want to take the spotlight off you and your issues, little buttercup.
I can and do, deaf4. His Shadow hasn’t said anything about this issue I disagree with.
I tried to draw you out to define your bafflingly angry point of view, and you continued to insult me.
You’re a misanthropic guy who resents anything that excludes you or people you identify with. Perhaps you might consider how much that resembles being a person of an excluded group who’s trying to break down a barrier of any kind.
Again, how is this forcing anyone to do anything? You keep saying this camp is going to force…something. Yet you never articulate what or how. Funny that.
I’m flattered.
Now go away.
Paragliding.
It’s trying to force women into places where they are not welcome.
This camp assumes there are not enough women trying to be programmers when the problem is that many interested women are discouraged and rejected.
This camp doesn’t do anything to make the environment better for them or to better prepare them to fit in better in the environment.
So how would it work?
For such a bulletproof idea, it’s strange to se it defended with such a huge quantity of insults and almost no explanations.
And that’s why you lose.
It’s amazing how being on the Internet can get me so much qualified analysis about myself.
It’s a real treat.
I know how people work.
Appeal to authority.
Show me results, not attempts.
Go away, kid.
Mind your own business.
So women are “not welcome” in programming? Really. Proof? Anything to show that the industry does not actually want women to be a part of it.
Note: none of this is “forcing”. At all. It’s given tween girls an opportunity to learn about something they may be interested in. It recognizes that there is a small number of women in the programming field, and so rather than trying to:
1) Pass laws or regulations to “force” equalization
2) Picking a company as a target and bagging on them over gender distribution.
They’re creating an opportunity for girls who are interested to learn. It takes nothing away from anyone else. They aren’t taking money away from any other program, this is all funded by private donations.
There is literally no “forcing” going on.
But, I think your statement about how women are unwelcome in the programming field gives us insight into your real problem with the camp.
Oh, if only you knew what appeal to authority was, you’d have not used it. For that to be an appeal to authority, I’d have had to say that your opinion was wrong solely because someone else with {CREDENTIALS} said so.
If I said you were wrong because Steve Ballmer said you were, and after all, he’s head of Microsoft, so he would know, that is an appeal to authority.
Instead, I took your statement that this camp will fail, and did some searching around to see how many other similar camps there are. If the idea was truly a loser, I would have expected to see almost none. Instead, in the first page of results alone, I saw hit after hit for similar efforts that are thriving, multi-year programs. There were others I didn’t link to that have been going on since 2005/2006. Hardly failures.
That’s not an appeal to authority, that’s actual data rebutting your assertion that efforts like these will fail. Now, if you have better data showing the opposite, by all means, provide the links so we might all examine it.
Surely you have actual data behind your statements.
Is it on a public forum on a public site? It’s my business if I want it to be.
…but not women.
So how could what work? The App Camp? Are you dense?
Girls are given an opportunity to participate in an activity they wouldn’t ordinarily perform in a controlled environment free from standard distractions. Hopefully it will allow them to expand their personal horizons. The End.
Did you think this was designed to cure hunger? Conquer disease? End war?
You keep thinking you are some grand old man of the Internet. That shit’s hilarious.
The proof is the significant number of women who try and give up to pursue a different career.
I have explained why it’s stupid.
If you hadn’t been so busy trying to come up with clever retorts, creative insults and amateur psychoanalysis, you could have easily understood.
You are too stupid for this conversation.
Go away.
So make it then. Start using your brain and you’ll be most welcome.
You are exactly right. It won’t help solve anything but the anxiety of people who feel guilty about not doing anything.
It’s an opportunity and it will be mostly wasted because it’s a knee jerk reaction and not part of a thoughtful solution.
It’s just like a stupid S-feature bolted on an Android phone: flashy but ultimately useless.
This may come as a huge surprise, but women are very human.
They often are difficult to understand for men because of differences in emotional and rational perception but they are definitely people.
But it is you have whined repeatedly about being insulted.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
I have no problem completely ignoring your insults. What I’m calling out is your attempts to replace logical argument with insults.
So just say something rational and well thought through.
Your ANSI Lumen rating must be off the charts, because you are an incredible projector.
That is a strinkingly tedious joke.
Yawn.
Don’t pretend you can hide just how alluring you find me…
I have zero interest in you.
You doth protest too much…
So just say something rational and well thought through.
Like the way you replied wit hand waving and deflection to John Welch as he repeatedly asked you to explain your comments? Other posters have done a handy job of exposing your critique as the mere misogyny that the App Camp is designed to address. I’m here to fill the love interest role.
So let’s manufacture a shortage of boys then! That’s going to work great.
You know what really didn’t work great? Your passage thru the birth canal.
Pick a theme and stick with it: Is the App Camp a bad idea because it will not work, or is it a bad idea because it will mean less boys go into programming? Those are fairly incompatible results.
You’re a fountain of stupidity.
You put in bold but you still didn’t do it.
You weren’t there so you wouldn’t know.
I’m not interested in what you want me to do.
you have yet to explain squat beyond “I DON’T LIKE IT”. Care to provide something beyond that?
and you have data as to why that happens?
I already explained why.
I did explain.
If you’re done kicking and screaming, read again and you’ll see it.
only for girl?
I’m not interested in what you want me to do.
I’ve sent a list of dates and times, actions and pricing. You let me know.
Not only do you have issues with women instituting change, you have a problem with reading comprehension.
Good luck with the interview.
So why are you still here then?