Do Women Write Better Code? 847
JCWDenton writes "The senior vice-president of engineering for computer-database company Ingres-and one of Silicon Valley's highest-ranking female programmers-insists that men and women write code differently. Women are more touchy-feely and considerate of those who will use the code later, she says. They'll intersperse their code ... with helpful comments and directions, explaining why they wrote the lines the way they did and exactly how they did it. The code becomes a type of 'roadmap' for others who might want to alter it or add to it later, says McGrattan, a native of Ireland who has been with Ingres since 1992. Men, on the other hand, have no such pretenses. Often, 'they try to show how clever they are by writing very cryptic code,' she tells the Business Technology Blog. 'They try to obfuscate things in the code,' and don't leave clear directions for people using it later. "
Do women write better code? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:5, Funny)
That kinda scared me a little.....
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:4, Funny)
Hello, I'm Bloodoflethe, and I write code like a girl. *cries*
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:5, Funny)
That kinda scared me a little.....
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think there will be women who write better code than some men, and men who write better code than some women. Obviously most of the coders in the world are male though, that is just how it has turned out so far.
I have only met one woman who I know must have been a half-decent coder. She often got among the top marks in all of our classes at University, and obviously put more effort in than most, as well as being bright, so I expect her code must have been okay. And then again there was another girl in our classes, who once came over and tried to get me to basically do her assignment for her. I politely tried to help her along without actually giving her the answer (as I think any good teacher would/should do when asked for help), but could tell that she didn't actually care and was just trying to get me to do it for her, so I eventually got pretty pissed off and thankfully she just took the hint and moved on to the next unsuspecting sex-deprived geek. I was confused as to why someone like that would even do Computer Science at University level.. and how she managed to get so far. She probably was quite bright too, but just lazy.
Anyway, anecdotal evidence can always be found to argue one way or the other, it doesn't mean much at all. I have met plenty of smart guys and girls, and plenty of dumb ones. This article is just flame bait. I would say that I believe that women in all societies are naturally more empathetic and considerate, for whatever reason, but I personally comment my code or try to make it as obvious as possible what is happening with sensible variable names, etc. Not all guys are macho jerks out to show that they are 'smarter' than the rest. In fact I'd say the truly smarter guys are the ones who are sensible enough to write their code in a way that it can easily be maintained by themselves or others in future. I know I've come back to my code after weeks/months and been like wtf!? I then proceed to delete a line of code that looks like it is completely extraneous, only to find that a completely different section of my program relies on it being there, it's just that everything has been modified so many times (either through my own fault or by management always asking for things in the program to be changed far beyond the original agreed implementation..) that it is in a mess.
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:5, Insightful)
I generally agree, with one comment. Don't leave commented code unless it is well documented WHY you are leaving it. In this example I think I would prefer that a good explanation of the purpose of the section rather than leaving the unoptimized code. The reason is that over time there is a good chance that someone will modify the executing code, but not the commented code. I've worked on a number of projects where code was commented out with a note
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:4, Insightful)
a) Write it the easy-to-understand way.
b) Write some really good unit tests (100% or greater code coverage.
c) Optimize the hell out of it, and make sure the tests still pass.
The unit tests work as a form of documentation, as well as for regression testing. a and b can of course be reversed, if you're into that sort of thing. I usually do a bit of both.
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, wait, I have met a few others. They were no longer coding, they somehow had left the field and had a change of careers (working minimum wage jobs through a contract agency...) Actually, no different than after the big dotcom bubble pop and I met several (male) "network admins" who were (and still are, 7? years later) driving delivery truck. Seems they can't find a job in their field of choice again. I think the companies were looking for any excuse to let them go as these guys were from some very large manufacturing companies that really weren't effected by the dotpop.
Seriously, how many women, percentage wise compared to men, are in the field? How can they come up with some stat that says women are better programmers if you've got (pulling number out of air) 1 woman to every 1000 men in the field? How about a statement like "a percentage of women who become programmers and are successful at it (as in my experience a lot are not, but that's no different than men), tend to be better programmers than men"
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:5, Insightful)
Inept male programmers have an easier time hiding in the crowd. Inept women programmers can't.
Because of this culling effect, the women that are still around are, on average, more capable.
Industries dominated by women have a similar effect. The males end up being better because they need to overcome the inherent prejudice to get the same performance review.
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:5, Insightful)
Second, your supporting data makes no sense. Why are you asking about names of famous flute players and comparing to the stats of high school flute players? Those data points may exist, but you have not demonstrated them anywhere in your post. There is no direct correlation between high school flute players and famous flute players unless you can show data that says otherwise. (Such as, "80% of famous flute players played flute in high school", or similar).
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:5, Interesting)
As for female programmers, I was a CS tutor at my university growing up and I can state from experience that any female that was able to make it through CS 101 was a much better programmer than their male counterparts on average. Unfortunately these females were all on the education path so they didn't go into dev work.
Interesting sidenote; the females that didn't make it did cry a lot more but would forge on, the guys just threw hissy fits when they couldn't get concepts and drop the class. Maybe there is a bit to the female capacity to persevere and the male stubbornness :)
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:5, Informative)
I've always held Grace Hopper [wikipedia.org] in high regard myself. She was involved in the development of the first compiler for COBOL, as well as the language itself. She also pushed for standards in computing, and is at least partially responsible for the term "bug" in software. On top of all that she was a Rear Admiral in the Navy. What more could you want in a woman? She was truly one of the greatest female geeks in history.
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:4, Insightful)
Heheh, unfortunately I have.
A lot of people feel the same way about COBOL, but for a language used in more than 80% of the world's businesses [wikipedia.org] it's done pretty well. Say what you will about it, but it has been very influential, and was groundbreaking in its time.
Re:Do women write better code? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah I know a female programmer - me.
I've known good female programmers and have met a few bad ones (like a database programmer who claimed joins were impossible). I can say the same thing for my male colleagues.
As far as commenting goes, it depends on the programmer.
Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Women (Score:5, Insightful)
I've seen all genders write obfuscated code--but it worked. And every single time it was because we were under the gun for a deadline or there was simply no other way to do it. It's preposterous to even try to sound like you have empirical data supporting this blanket assessment.
I could combat her anecdotal subjective statements (probably describing herself) with my own anecdotes or go on a rant about how many of the great programmers are men (like Donald Knuth and his 'literate programming') but what's the point? Men can be just as meticulous as women can at providing good documentation and women can be just as sloppy.
It's good to have a healthy mix of diversity and I wish that programmers were 50/50 split on gender (trust me, I really really do) but it's not because women are better than men at coding. Prime example of American sexism in one of the few forms it exists today.
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:5, Funny)
-uso.
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:5, Interesting)
How much of that is social? I would think how a girl grows up is very different from how a boy grows up. If a boy joins boy scouts, goes hunting with dad, etc then he'll see a map as something with directions and distances. If a girl doesnt get these experiences, she may never see a map until she learns how to drive and at that point has internalized her surroundings by using landmarks.
I think many of the things we write up to genetic determinism really have social roots.
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:5, Insightful)
When giving directions, most men will say something like, "Turn north on Smith Street." Technically, it's correct, but most people don't know north from south.
A woman usually navigates via landmarks, such as, "turn right at the Shell station." That can also be confusing if it's *too* generic and the driver is going to be passing a lot of Shell stations. OTOH, it's often a lot easier to see and remember a landmark than a often obscured street sign. That doesn't make it more or less concise than a man's directions.
When giving directions, don't give people your special "short cut route" unless you're having to do so they can avoid construction or other major delay. Short cuts are rarely direct and it's best to have as few turns as possible even it means it's longer mileage-wise. If you write down directions to send, it's best to double check with a map as it's easy to leave out parts when it's somewhere you travel all the time. Or better yet, just Goggle a map, print it out and tuck it into the invite.
As to code, sloppy, lazy code is just that and there's no helping someone with bad habits. But if someone is trying to make it cryptic on purpose to be macho or, more likely, a feeble attempt at job security, they're an idiot. THEY may have to go back one day and rework that code and trust me, they won't remember what they were doing. I think a lot of coders don't document like they should, usually because they're under a deadline. Or they think they won't have a problem because they're working in it all the time. And they almost never go back after the project to document. But consider that, situations change, and you might find yourself changing languages, working for a year or so on another project. THEN just try and go back to ASP after being immersed into ASP.net or Perl or something else. You'll wish you'd paid more attention to documenting.
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:4, Insightful)
Turn left (North) on 16th street (Starbucks on the corner)
Go 1.5 miles (about three minutes) to Broadway (Shell Station) and turn left (West)
The problem is that people tend to give directions one way, or another, but not both. Both is always better, even for those that tend to work one way better than another.
I don't mind obfuscated code, if it is well documented as to what it does. It can be more efficient way to get something done.
The some of the best coders make some of the worst documenters, because they think everyone should think like them.
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:5, Funny)
/cry
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:5, Insightful)
Bah! I can think of three female programmers immediately who I've worked with closely enough to comment on their code. Two of them were C++ programmers and I don't remember their code being anything atypical in terms of comments, though one wrote very elegant code. The third works primarily in Java and somehow manages to turn out hideously unreadable code. Conversely, I've seen numerous men who program in a variety of ways, readable and otherwise.
It's now well established that the human brain builds negative stereotypes more easily than positive ones and that people see what they are expecting and apply a double standard. This person sees what she wants to see.
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:5, Insightful)
However you could leverage the fact that men and women think different to gain fault tolerance. If you have two independent programmers do the same work, with the same requirements they will frequently arrive at different solutions. As most know this can be leveraged by comparing the output of both solutions to verify the solution is proper. If one solution was done by a male and the other by a female the probability of difference should go up due to the difference in thought patterns, I would think.
That is a real chance of benefit versus the male hating nonsense she spewed.
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest problem with "brains work differently" is that "differently" is too easily interpreted as "better". People simplify this down to a one dimensional score of IQ. No matter how you rig the scores, one group is going to come out looking "better". Then you get things like how former Harvard President Summers' speech was interpreted. And you get denial for purely political reasons, insistence that everyone is equal because otherwise it would be unfair.
Which is the better chess piece, the knight or the bishop? That's not a good question. It presumes that there's a clear advantage to one or the other when actually it's situational. The knight is regarded as better for closed positions, while the bishop is better for open positions. Nonetheless, chess experts couldn't resist concluding that perhaps the bishop is overall slightly better, and have gone as far as giving computers a blanket preference in that direction. Perhaps the bishop is the better piece for the computer's typical style of massive tactical computation paired with ever more sophisticated but insufficient heuristic rules to compensate for zero understanding of the overall strategic considerations of a chess position. (For instance, computers have been known to continue to grind out move after move in positions where the outcome is already known, positions such as king and knight vs king which is a draw no matter what the players do, because unless specifically programmed to do so, computers do not assess positions from a view of what is possible.) What I wonder is if programming is a situation in which men's or women's style of intelligence seems to work better, or is programming a more varied situation than that?
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, this article is almost completely fallacious... Let's look at the facts quoted:
So, basically, she'd get a higher score if she guessed "man" every time than if she tries to be clever. Clearly, then, she does think some men's code looks like it's been written by a woman, which invalidates to point of the article.
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:4, Insightful)
What's a prime example? The fact that coding is a male dominated workplace? Or that someone can make blanket, derogatory statements against a group of people based on their sex/race/religion and get away with it?
Never mind, actually. I'd agree either way.
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:5, Funny)
Who said women couldn't code?
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:5, Funny)
Deadlines... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, been there, wrote my share of spaghetti code to tack on another feature the quickest and least elegant way.
Now add a management that is not willing to invest in refactoring during slower times, and the code will degrade over the years as one quickhack is added to the next.
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Remember: Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Wo (Score:5, Interesting)
At the same time my boss who was also his boss had an anatomical poster "Penises of the Animal Kingdom" on her wall with to scale anatomical drawings of about 10 different species penises - including homo sapien. HR never asked her to remove it, and she was in a position of authority.
Never really bothered me, but did show me that sexism and sexual harassment rules are applied differently to men than to women.
Sexism's Only Alright If It Favors Women (Score:5, Interesting)
I had an experience like this at Hewlett-Packard in Camas, WA in 1993. I was assigned to tear apart fully-assembled printers so that the parts could be used for prototypes of the next generation. I worked alone in a room filled with printers. No one had access to this room except from me and my (supposedly) male boss.
After a few weeks, I put a close-up picture of Claudia Schiffer on the PC's wallpaper. My boss saw it and flipped out. He ordered me to remove it immediately. I said that I liked it and that no one could be offended because no one had access to the room.
A day later I was fired from Hewlett-Packard for 'creating an environment conducive to sexual harassment'. I couldn't get unemployment benefits.
To this day I hate H-P and I don't believe anything anyone says about it being an advanced or great company. I will never sign off a purchase order for any of their products for any company that I work for. I suspect that most of the so-called great companies in the electronics/computer industry are the same way.
well, hire a bunch of women (Score:5, Funny)
yeah yeah... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:yeah yeah... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:yeah yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)
Also I have nearly 20 years of professional software development. You wound me sir.
Women aren't good programmers (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Women aren't good programmers (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Women aren't good programmers (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, What A Revelation. (Score:5, Funny)
"Men and women think differently."
This is such shocking news. Unbelievable.
Re:Wow, What A Revelation. (Score:5, Insightful)
Simplistic? True? (Score:5, Insightful)
Any such broad classifications such as this should be taken with a *lot* of salt.
That being said, the article reminded me of a large digital systems design project that I had back in college, writing assembly for a 6502 processor in a device we made. My lab partner was a girl (probably only 10% of the class was female) who really, really thought differently than me in a way. It was weird -- some of the things I thought were impossible or not worth doing she would code in 10 hours; and the reverse was true. It was pretty much pure synergy (forgive the cheesy phrase) and we were extremely productive and got along well.
However, to reduce anything like this to gender differences is almost nonsensical. I could have been good lab partners with any number of people that thought differently than me, male or female. Personality is complex, not binary. I know many girls that code beautifully, and many more that can not code at all. This article is kind of interesting cocktail conversation, but nothing more IMHO...
Since the whole article is based on anecdotes... (Score:5, Insightful)
A male colleague, OTOH, likes to write code in style such as
for (unsigned int i=0;ij;i = i + 1)
{
There, I've the counterpoint for the article with my own biased view!
I write code like that guy (Score:5, Insightful)
I also comment obsessively because I want to be able to come back to the code a year later and know, quickly, what I did and why I did it.
Many years ago I was porting someone else's C code from 16 bit to 32 bit and came across "//Why did I do this?" at the top of a couple hundred lines of uncommented code that had multiple embedded while anf for loops, with a pow() and a couple of sizeof()'s in there. I had to print it out and trace it by hand to figure out what he'd done, and why. Took awhile.
Too many comments can be ignored, too few can give you heartburn.
Re:I write code like that guy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Since the whole article is based on anecdotes.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I work on the assumption that the next person to read the code will have at least a vague idea of what the programming language is, and how to speak it, so comments are the subtext to explain what happens, where, and where any obfuscations are. (Deliberately obfuscating is bad; occasionally it's unavoidable, and therefore needs more comment)
Not my experience (Score:5, Interesting)
Case in point. We have a coder who wrote an application for our office. Because of the fact that she refused to use any variable for the Program Files folder (hard coded as "c:\Program Files\") and she insisted that all workstations need a D: partition (to hold a 100kb support file), we had to rebuild 4 servers.
Say what you will about women coders being "touchy feely." I won't fall for it, any more than the NOW propoganda that all women are natural caring mothers, even the coked out alcoholics.
Re:Not my experience (Score:4, Insightful)
no question, they code much differently (Score:4, Funny)
Bad programmers methinks (Score:5, Insightful)
Forget a male/female issue. I think she needs to hire better programmers period. Anyone in a professional code shop that's deliberately trying to write obfuscated code shouldn't be there and she's not doing her job properly if she's not firing them or getting them into remedial classes of some kind.
Re:Bad programmers methinks (Score:4, Funny)
See, that can't possibly be it. Didn't you watch all those 80s after-school specials? Have you not watched all those female empowerment action movies?
*Sigh*
All women, everywhere, regardless of age, height, weight or any other consideration are absolutely fantastic at everything they do. All women are at least above average intelligence, though most are in the genius category. Obviously, since she is a woman, she is doing her job brilliantly!
I mean look at all the uplifting, empowering stories that show how amazing women are. Can a 300 pound linebacker be flattened by a 95 pound girl? Of course! As long as she believes in herself!
But there is danger out there. What if a woman does something and someone says that it is not very good. That would hurt her self-esteem! Since we've already proven that women are indeed capable of doing everything far better than men, this attempt to hurt women's self-esteem must be stopped. There will be a meeting followed by a handout of the new rules about how all men must grovel a sufficient amount everyday to be allowed in the room with women's amazing wonderfulness.
So, obviously, Mr. "She's not doing her job" you are just a supporter of the white male patriarchy, since you hate women and want them all to be barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen.
Don't worry, though. We'll re-educate you. Oh yes we will...
Re:Bad programmers methinks (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Of course (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Of course (Score:5, Insightful)
Cos we all know that testosterone is bad, and women engineers are all better because, well, they're not mad things driven by their hormones, like silly men.
Basically the woman is a fool with an agenda (women into computing) so is constructing a theory to fit the purpose using crass gender stereotypes. There are good coders who document and comment clearly. There are good coders who don't, but should. There are rotten coders who both do and don't document and comment clearly. But any attempt to assign any of the former attributes to gender specifics is pathetic, and more than a little worrying for someone who, I presume, is responsible for employing people under present gender discrimination laws. If I worked for her I would more than a little annoyed at being patronised and my coding style & skills being categorized by gender.
Re:Of course (Score:4, Funny)
// GONNA SHAVE WITH A RAZOR BLADE YEAH
oStore.getValidator().validateInput(lstFormElements);
// GONNA PUNCH YOUR LIGHTS OUT IF YOU KEEP LOOKING AT ME YEAH
oStore.getCCProcessor().processPurchaseTrxn(listFormElements.get('CC'));
// TIRED OF CODING TIME FOR WORKING OUT THEN STRIP CLUB YEAH
oStore.getWorkflow().getNextPage();
Seems pretty standard and I could see a woman coding it the same way.
Poor observation skills (Score:5, Insightful)
The same sort of thing applied here at the University I teach at - a certain ethnic minority had a very bad reputation as producing cheaters in Comp.Sci. So for a few years, I carefully recorded every instance of cheating, and kept track of the ethnic background of the people getting caught. You know what? The only reason more people of that background were getting caught is because they represented 85% of the population in the department - the overall percentage of them that were cheating was actually LOWER than others.
Perhaps this McGrattan person should concentrate more on fixing the problems than on blaming them on some group she doesn't like.
Re:Poor observation skills (Score:4, Insightful)
I completely agree with the parent.
From the FTA:
Hmm, most of the women modify existing code or review existing code rather than write from scratch. Where is the comparison between male and female "heavy lifting" code writers and between make and female quality assurance/adaptor coders. Or was this comparison not as sensational as blaming the sex of the coder rather than the type of coder?
Oh come on, Slashdot! (Score:5, Funny)
Why do you need to explain what code is? This is news for nerds, not news for my mother. Give us some credit please.
Beware of Female Programmers (Score:5, Funny)
These are the things I must but say.
Die a bachelor, if your options are few,
Never ever love a female programmer,
they'll make a program out of you.
Don't laugh it away, mine has been an object lesson,
They find syntax errors, even in a romantic expression.
Alas! They search logic in love, where there is none,
Your heart may skip a beat and they just hit return.
You are in for trouble if you persist,
You'll just be a pointer in her long linked list.
--
Free Playstation 3, XBox 360 and Nintendo Wii [free-toys.co.uk]
Gender differences (Score:5, Interesting)
Not worse, nor better really, just ... different
So yes, I can see women writing 'better' code, but I still think that's more likely to be a matter of training and discipline, as much as anything else. Or perhaps the 'female geek' effect - in a word where you'll be faced with massive prejudice and pressure, the 'female techy' is typically (and yes, I realise this is a broad generalisation) even more hardcore than male counterparts - simply because she's there because she _really_ wants to, and has had to face a lot of uphill struggle to get there. This seems to hold true in petrolhead circles too (see, I can do car analogies too) - the few 'girl racers' I've met, have extremely extreme car mods, and rigs, because they're competing against everyone else _and_ the gender stereotype.
McGrattan's Blog (Score:5, Informative)
Re:McGrattan's Blog (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks for the link. When she refers to gender as "women" and "boys" it really makes it clear where her prejudices are.
As a young man, I have worked hard to mentally apply the words "women" and "ladies" in place of "girls" during recent years because I have found that many females have a reasonable personal preference not to be called "girl" ("chick" is also a bad choice).
In any case, seeing "boys" applied within an "anti-man" argument is a refreshing reminder that women also suffer the negative effects of sexism and bigotry.
Re:McGrattan's Blog (Score:5, Insightful)
How does "nothing I'd ever thought about before" and "fairly androgynous" code add up to "at least 80 per cent of the time [ft.com]"?
If you publish shit based on psychic code-reading ability and made-up, pulled-out-of-your-unthinking-ass subjective factoids, you need to publish it as what it is - fiction.
Documentation (Score:5, Funny)
Or women don't document at all and just expect the men to know what they are thinking.
Actual comments from woman-code: (Score:5, Funny)
If women code anything like they act in real life, then you'd get a lot of helpful comments like this:
/*If you don't why this function isn't returning your expected result, then hell if I'm going to tell you.
Re:Actual comments from woman-code: (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, I couldn't stand to see an unclosed comment... It was driving me nuts.
Re:Actual comments from woman-code: (Score:4, Funny)
"If you don't know, I'm not going to tell you!" - quote from my ex when I asked her what was wrong.
I don't think so. (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty much kills that theory in my book. Men and women often think differently, and even different programmers of the same sex think differently. There are a lot of generalizations one can make about women and men in the world, and argue religiously about whether it is environment or instinct... Somehow I don't think programming style is one of them.
Stereotypes are an ugly thing.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I certainly do not write my code in a "cryptic way" to show off. I find it a little insulting to my entire gender to be pigeonholed in that way.
I was taught that when you write code it should be easily understandable and well commented and that's what I do.
Sheesh.
Greg C.
i don't know if women write better code (Score:5, Insightful)
congrats slashdot for picking a topic everyone feels entitled to comment on and absolutely no one actually says anything useful on
Think differently? (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps it's just that for men, IT's a reasonable and expected field to go into, but for women, it's not as much, so a woman going into IT is much more likely to be well-suited for it and better at it?
It might have very little to do at all with the difference in thought processes between men and women.
Even if true (Score:4, Informative)
Another woman works here now. IF they finish arguing in an hour, it's not because they've come to a conclusion, it's because their throats are sore. They still can't even decide on some simple coding standards that the rest of us have already just been sort of using.
Women together generally makes for a bad experience.
These are just things I've noted, nothing sexist about it.
Re:Even if true (Score:4, Insightful)
I wouldn't know ... (Score:4, Informative)
That's a bad thing.
However, compensating by ascribing generic traits to gender (tidyness, empathy, etc) is not going to help, and IMHO this is exactly what this VP does.
I'm glad I don't work for her. She seems quite sexist.
Programming Options (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Cheap
2. Fast
3. Correct
You can choose any two options when developing something. Guess which two my clients usually make?
Regarding this, I agree - flamebait, article - I've only ever worked with one other female coder. Her code was the sloppiest thing I've ever gone cross-eyed staring at. Usually that doesn't matter to the clients much as long as it works, her code didn't even work half the time. With 0 lines of documentation 2 out of the 3 projects I worked with her on I ended up completely redoing her responsibilities myself.
Do I judge all women coders by her standard? No I'm not that ignorant.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Code Janitor (Score:4, Interesting)
I have not noticed any sexual bias for bad code. Some people have it and some people do not. I see tons of unneeded and often unused variable with poor names. Databases with numeric fields where text should be and vice versa. Platform or vendor specific techniques where generic ones will do just as well.
Oh yeah, I have seen the deliberate obfuscation. (Ranjeev Dolas where are you?) Splicing assembly code into a 4GL Informix program to make it say "Is the third octet = 192?". It is not hard to see when people have deliberately made things hard for others to figure out, probably all for job security.
Me on the other hand, I know that I will probably be the fool that has to come back to this code later and fix it again. So I add comments to the things I can figure out and even to the things I cannot. Put comments and dates around my fixes. After a while the code starts to look like my own.
My poor code comes from my throw-away programs. The kind you write once to solve a problem today. You run the code once and never expect to touch the code again. Except next month, a really similar tool is needed. Now I go back to my old code, if I can find it, and OMG it looks like a freaking third grade did it with construction paper and crayons. This is my biggest downfall.
early programmers were female (Score:5, Informative)
At one of my early summer jobs in a large corporation there was a gender split between "scientists and engineers" and "programmers". The guys did write code on large "coding sheets" of paper. But the females programmed keypunched the coding sheets, submitted the job decks and collected the printouts, and the guys would analyze the printouts. You were lucky to get one or two turn-arounds a day. The new people had did their own programming on teletypes of terminals (inverted 1974) in school, so declined programming assistants. Some theold guys NEVER touched a keyboard in their careers. They were either promoted into management or laid off during the late 20th century corporate restructurings.
So early programming acquired the "taint" of effeminity and being "trade" taught in vocation school. That taint delayed computer science from becoming as degree offereing at places like MIT, Stanford, and Harvard, some untilt he 1980s. I attended all three of those schools and remember the faculty debates about this. Computer scientists hid out in other departments, typically math and electrical engineering. I guess it was when you started seeing coding superstars like Don Bricklin and Bill Gates (yes Bill wrote a legendary BASIC compiler OFF-LINE that worked within a day of finally getting the hardware) that commercial computer science became more acceptable.
Not Male vs. Female, it's Verbal vs. Analytical. (Score:4, Insightful)
1) 80% of software cost goes into maintenance.
2) Developers rarely stick with a position for more than 3-5 years.
It's more cost effective to have code that is easy to maintain, thus her focus on READABILITY. I can't tell you how many man-hours have been lost on our projects because our code is stupid and unreadable. Remember every time you've wanted to throw a brick at the guy before you? Yeah, that's stress that I really don't want yo be paying for on my project. Now:
3) Developers spend more time reading code than writing code.
4) Developers absorb code density faster via code examples than they do via documentation.
So, it's better to write self-documenting code, than to document highly analytical code. That means sensible variable/method names as well as collections/relationships that are relevant, at least where OOP is concerned.
Now, most business software is non-algorithmic, i.e. it isn't really computing so much as it is moving data around. The math isn't all that complex when the hardest thing you have to model is your database and the queries used to run it.
Considering all these things, I often hire programmers with better verbal skills, even at the expense of their analytical skills. Women tend to be more verbal than analytical, thus the authors conclusion. It's also easier to teach optimization and performance than it is to teach English grammar/syntax and how to "port" that to a programming language, and as outlined above, this is the part of the software that is not only the most expensive, but will give you the higher ROI over the life of that software. Enterprisey stuff can linger for tens of years, incurring maintenance costs all the while.
Now if the author had looked beneath the surface of what her gut (correctly) told her into the real cognition of what was going on, she might not have pissed off a bunch of insecure slashdot trolls. She might have even realized what was "better" about what she was seeing and how to train the rest of her staff to perform at that level.
as a female coder, i think this is b.s. (Score:4, Insightful)
do i comment my code? yes, but it's not because i'm "touchy-feely". i hate commenting my code. i hate documenting my work. it's a chore and a bore (and something i often leave until the very end). i do it because it's essential for me to be able to go back to my work in a few months time and understand what the heck it was i was doing/thinking at the time. this was drummed into us at school by our prof, who made code commenting and documentation 15% of the grade. he also required we use informative variable names and write legible code and we'd get dinged heavily if we didn't. i think he was right and so i continue to try to follow his advice every day, and this includes code i write purely for myself, but it goes against my nature.
i'm reminded of one time, early in my career, where i was given a small problem to solve. i solved it, then set about seeing what i could do to make it tighter and more clever, getting very caught up in the process. finally, i was very pleased to have something that used all kinds of nifty, bit-shifting tricks and whatnot and fit all on one line. i was pretty stoked, actually. awesome! it looked cool! the senior programmer mentoring me took a look at it, told me he thought it was way neat, but requested that i redo it all so that it a) was on many lines and 2) made sense to everyone else who'd have to come by later and figure out what i was doing. oh, and could i please be sure to include comments? lesson learned.