women in computer science
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My Career, Her Job
→: My Career, Her JobUPDATE: I expressed myself very badly in this post. As a result, I hurt and offended some good people, and some of them were quick to let me know. I’m sorry. I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by the response, but as soon as I saw the comments I knew I’d made a mistake. I appreciate…
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Come the Revolution
→: Come the RevolutionI was talking to a – male – programmer the other day, and he was telling me how much his high school CS teacher sucked. This is not an uncommon story. I know some good high school teachers. I’ve heard about a lot of bad ones. This particular bad one taught Visual Basic, and gave…
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Keep Telling Me to “Say No” Until I Learn
→: Keep Telling Me to “Say No” Until I LearnOn the way to Toronto my friend is telling me I need to give up bagels, and I say, there’s enough change in my life right now without introducing more. But that I think it will be better next month. She says, “you always think that; you said that in August, too”. She’s right. This…
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Wear What You Want
→: Wear What You WantToday, I wore a mini-skirt (gray) over leggings (black) with ballet flats (gray) and a plain tshirt and cardi (both black). I wore my hair down, and (naturally) curly. I know, I don’t normally share the details of my wardrobe, but bear with me – I have a point. It was an ideal outfit for…
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Geek Girl Con: Secrets of Superheros
→: Geek Girl Con: Secrets of SuperherosI confess, I’ve never seen Star Wars, or Star Trek. The only video games I play are the Lego ones. And so I’ve been seeing people in these amazing costumes, and going to talks where there are these gaming cultural references that I don’t get, and thinking… woah, I’m not geeky enough. It’s a little…
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Pride and Prejudice and a Timely Reminder
→: Pride and Prejudice and a Timely Reminder“Someone once said to you that you didn’t have a romantic bone in your body, and I’ve come to think they were right…” My friend and mentor says. I forget where the conversation went from there, but I feel that she would have been shocked to find me curled up with Pride and Prejudice (free on…
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Friends Don’t Let Friends… Become PMs
→: Friends Don’t Let Friends… Become PMsRecently, I heard about a school that has a mandatory “technology” class that students have to take in order to take CS classes in later years. It features: wood-working, circuit building, and Excel. This is horrifying. I want to go there with picket signs and stage a protest. Dress up as robots and chant things.…
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Whistling Vivaldi
→: Whistling VivaldiSince I heard about research showing that girls who self-identified as female before taking a math test tended to under-perform (compared to when they self-identified after taking the test) I’ve been wondering where else that effect is. Specifically, if you are always surrounded by guys, does that continually remind you? Does it affect your performance there?…
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Misconceptions of What Software Engineers Do
→: Misconceptions of What Software Engineers DoMy first proper day on my new project, and our PM says to me – “Cate, you seem to like to travel. How about you spend time in New York?” – I’m tasked with helping another team out, and being the bridge between that team and my team here. Initially I was a bit… thrown.…