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Not as sexist as the title would lead you to think but not really targeted at or relevant to developers.

I disagree. It's very relevant. How is it not?

I agree with the article. We should not push kids into profession they don't like, especially into IT where there is a cut throat competition.

Brilliant :)
All though the title would scare most people OFF...!

I don't agree that the IT field is "ultra-competitive". It's not. The fact that IT professionals push so hard is truly due to the passion they feel for coding. Otherwise, good article, and courageous, too. There will certainly be a good number of knee-jerk reactions decrying the sexism of it, but in all honesty only the title is openly provocative.

Good article! It's of course very obvious there are so few women in IT. Go to your average IT book store. How many girls are hanging around there reading through the IT books? Go to your average computer hardware store, how many girls are asking for separate parts (like a CPU)? Or just take a look at the comments and postings here.

It's not that female programmers don't exist though, they're just rare. At work I happen to be working with 2 very talented female programmers. *real* programmers. You know, the types that can read hex, installed Linux on their desktop, and know how a CPU works on the inside. So, they really do exist ;)

The author wrote:
"that focusing on being trendy and fashionable is hollow and irrelevant, and that a career in IT is interesting and challenging. The kids who dismiss that argument aren't cut out for IT and shouldn’t be persuaded to devote their careers to it"

I agree with that. The argument is true for both boys and girls. In the Netherlands there have been some desperate attempts to get those with 'less passion', especially girls, on board of the IT train. To start with, for the regular CS program a student must have taken math and physics in high school. The problems already start there, since not a lot of girls choose these two subjects. So, they lowered the difficulty of these subjects claiming something that came down to saying "now girls have a chance to to take these subjects". Of course the official statement was more political correct, but that is what it boiled down to.

After that they created a couple of new university programs with names that sound like the regular CS program (which is called Informatica here). These are programs like "Informatiekunde", "sociale informatica", etc. (see http://www.few.vu.nl/aanstaande_studenten/bachelors/Informatiekunde/page_ik_intro.html ). These are supposed to be 'women friendly' CS courses. Women friendly in this case means you learn some programming indeed, but on a very moderate level. You don't really get any foundation in computer architecture, networking, compiler technology, grids, etc. We had an intern and a whole bunch of candidates for a job position on Java programming with this education. Again and again it turns out these people should be able to program in theory, but in practice they just can't. For a job position on Java programming, just being able to program something is a pretty basic prerequisite.

I'de really like to know the reasons why all the users who voted against it did. The problem is that while what the article argues is neither misogynistic or stereotypes women, it is politically incorrect to imply what the title implies. Is there any other reason for the down votes than PC thought?

(p.s. my wife is a licensed civil engineer, and the article seems to echo some of her opinions on the subject of women and math type professions)

@henk, if the employees at said computer hardware stores weren't jerks when I explicitly tell them what I want (if you couldn't tell, I am female), I would go to them more often rather than buying from newegg.

But noooo. The last time I went to Fry's the guy was nice to the other guys in line asking for whatever kind of RAM they were looking for no questions asked, and when it was my turn he was all like "are you sure that's what you want? really sure? what kind of computer is it...". And my response is usually "Why would I ask you for that if I wasn't sure? And it's an upgrade for the desktop I built with [motherboard specs] that already has 2gb of [whatever memory I was asking for]". And they still don't back off.

I love newegg - no dumb employees, awesome prices.