Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
Originally Posted by intparent
I find their splitting of the intro CS classes up especially interesting. My D hadn't coded much at all before college, and it was great for her to have an intro course where she wasn't trampled by kids who had been loading Linux on their machines at age 11. And after the first semester, the tracks merge and she has done fine in her CS courses.


My DD had the same experience in her CS major-- the real problem was that there was such incredible hostility from fellow (98% male) students-- and from first year faculty advisors, who were also male and dismissive of anything resembling "well-rounded" interests.

In fact, the two different advising specialists that she saw openly SCOFFED at her interests outside of engineering/CS. She was treated like a space alien in her CS and engineering courses-- a highly desirable one, to be sure, being a Real Live Girl and all-- but it was lonely and marginalizing.

It was such a huge turn-off that my DD just couldn't take anymore of it and bailed on the major. She looked around and realized that if that was who she was going to be spending all of her time with-- no thanks.
This is so disheartening. I was pleased as punch to find out a classmate of DS's was going to on of Intel's 'Girls Who Code" summer program this summer. It really sounds like a great program. There are a number of groups in the Bay Area that are really trying to get women back into coding. I say back into because my first programming class back in college wasn't exactly 50/50 between the sexes but it was WAY better than 2% you describe. Although being one of the few women in a class never turned me off. It seems that programming has become MORE sexist of late.

And I do know many universities are taking this problem of women not being very well represented in computer science a big problem. Part of the issue is women aren't even applying to their programs. Our local university girls in CS has been running Coding workshops for 12-18 year old's for example. I keep thinking this is something I'd like to get involved in.