[Techtalk] Re: Techtalk digest, Vol 1 #369 - 4 msgs

[safari at cat.org.au]

Hiya Jenny,
 I think I understand where you're coming from, but I'm not too sure what you mean by a language being woman-friendly.  I've found the *situation* is more the 
issue. Java, php & perl are currently my languages of choice.  I've attended some really dodgy local LUG meetings where the men talk over the women (who are 
outnumbered 10:1)  and uni tutes can be hell, yet three community collectives I am involved in are really aware of the gender inbalance, and very supportive.  
(ratio 10:3)  Even to the extent that if someone posts "hey guys" to the list, one of the men will post back "and grrls" or "there's women here too" : )  Gotta say, 
though, it's still pretty tough. But this list is awesome and lets me feel even less alienated. kind regards, safari  btw: the *pragmatic programmers* start off 
their Programming Ruby book with "Man is driven to create" : (

> Message: 4
> Date: Sun, 03 Mar 2002 11:52:00 -0800
> From: jennyw <jennyw at dangerousideas.com>
> To: TechTalk <techtalk at linuxchix.org>
> Subject: [Techtalk] Programming languages for women
> 
> On the topic of getting more women involved in open source, are there
> languages that are more woman-friendly than others?  Since the number
> of
> women are in decline in programming, this may need to include current
> non-programmers and beginning programmers. Technical issues aren't the
> only
> consideration, though. Programming languages tend to have cultures
> associated with them. The culture of C++ programmers I experienced
> wasn't
> particular woman-friendly (actually, it was kind of woman-hostile --
> lots of
> boys with big egos and rampant sexism).
> 
> My limited experience with the SmallTalk community was positive, but
> unfortunately it's not a particularly popular language these days, and
> might
> not be a good choice for open source projects. I don't know about
> Python,
> Perl, and PHP.
> 
> There was a recent discussion on comp.lang.ruby about including more
> women,
> and Ruby seems like a pretty clean language that seems to be gaining
> popularity, and there is significant SmallTalk crossover. On the other
> hand,
> there were also comments about there being a particular shortage of
> women in
> the Ruby community, even compared with the computing community at
> large.
> 
> Anyone care to comment?
> 
> Jen