Female Programmers ... ?

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Come on, if there were any anywhere, wouldn't it be here?

Sometimes I feel like the only one.

I get sick of trying to pretend there's more of us, just to avoid the judgement that we aren't capable or it isn't natural.

Surely someone out there knows the misery of an elusive bug in a not-supposed-to-be-endless loop and the joy of doing a

# ps aux | grep my_homemade_daemon

and seeing that it's really stopped when you asked it to?

It's not that females aren't capable, as they definitely are. I've worked with several female programmers in various companies. The problem is that it is not a usual female interest. There has been some research into the topic, and apparently, estrogen make women want to work with people rather than with technical subjects. It's said that estrogen is responsible for (or at least heighten) empathic abilities within people, and this is pointed out to be the reason. That means it's definitely not purely influenced by culture, although culture may strengthen the stereotype.

I started out as a programmer (degree in computer science and software development) but ended up in a network admin\system admin\ manager role.

It pays better and isn't so boring. I also get to hide in my own office instead of being in a cubicle.

I have taken some classes- I did well but they made my head hurt because i concentrated so hard! I would have enjoyed them more if not for that. I took them because i was in a web design program and they were part of that

In my current hiatus, I have started teaching myself software programming with the aid of a few techie mates irl.

They have been great in helping me. I have started using Visual Studio 2008 and have the manual for Visual Basic. Still very much a beginner, but created my first form and learning the technical lingo.

I am a bit of a logic head, so I am really enjoying it even when I get frustrated.

Mics.

I taught myself from a book I bought online years ago. When i write pure code, I'm at peace.

I took computer programming in high school and I was the best in the class. I got through all the material very quickly and reached a point where my teacher told me he couldn't teach me any more because he didn't know any more. So he gave me a book to teach myself. I played around with it a little bit more, but got unmotivated when I found the game "n" and spent the rest of the semester playing games.

I really enjoyed programming though. I wish it had gotten to "special interest" status so I could have gone on teaching myself. But it was just too easy and so I got bored with it. I sometimes think maybe that's what I should go to school for if I go back.

Just finished a four year degree in Management Information Systems. I was one of only a handful of girls in that major but also graduated with the highest GPA in my major for May 2010 graduates. I think computers appeal to me for a few reasons, first of all unlike people they can be understood and figured out relatively easily. Second, I like to think our AS brains work a bit more like computers than NT brains do and thus we can understand better how a computer thinks because it's like the way we think. Third, the IT world is known for having eccentric but brilliant people in it and it it much easier for us to blend in in an IT department than a Sales or Marketing department.

Yeah for Women working in Technology!

That is a beautiful thing to say and it is very much how I feel.

Most of the code I write in real life is quick n' dirty because it has to be done for a deadline so who cares if you cut and paste something in that you googled and don't understand? (Actually I care very much, but until I pay my own wages it isn't my decision to make).

Recently I wrote a set of scripts for a customer and I didn't know what I was doing so it was all stuck together with pins and sticky tape. My boss didn't care because he just wanted it out of the door (in fact he'd told the customer it was nearly ready, before I'd even started work on it or was even aware that the project existed! ) But it bothered me so much that I went home and spent almost the whole bank holiday weekend writing another very similar set of scripts and going over every line and every alternative possibility and understanding exactly why I was using this function and not that, etc.

I felt slightly silly because the project was done and sold and there I was going over it with a fine toothed comb and adding all this error trapping and environment checking that was (I thought) never going to be implemented.

Anyway I got a call from the customer this week saing "You know that daemon you wrote for us? It's crashing every day and needs a restart, can you fix it?" So all that work was not in vain.

It always pays to "do the right thing" (go ask Larry Wall)

And the state of mind when you are inabiting a purely logical part of the universe is really something else. I'd like to call it meditative but meditation makes you a better person but getting lost in signal handlers that weekend made me irritable and unpleasant to anyone who tried to talk to me.

I always think the first thing I will do if I am ever single again is move into a solitary space and get stuck into learning C. Perhaps there are so few female programmers because we are taught we have to be kind, attentive and available?

Agree! I have a computer science degree and know my way around a Linux server...and could go on about the joys of coding and being 'in the zone'. Unfortunately I *need* to be in that zone with no interruptions or I can't even think properly. I am slow compared to most programmers and I can't even type very fast. I'm very visual and have more talent for artwork, I just don't enjoy it as much as coding. If I were single and had lots of free time I would do more of both, though.

I work for a university department where IT has no authority and the only kind of assignment I ever get is the "found out about it too late to do a good job, throw something quick n' dirty together" type. After a few environments like this, it's really killed my enthusiasm and I don't spend a second more on those hack jobs than I have to. I know that if I want to enjoy it again, it'll have to be open source on my own time when I can do it right, for a purpose that I have personally deemed worthwhile. Currently I only get to do boring bits of PHP, and a lot of administrivia. I've been stuck in Web development pretty much my entire career. I'd love to do something different, though. But I'm happy for now, my job is pretty easy, I work from home most days, and have plenty of free time to enjoy the rest of life!

Me too ... I am embarrassed at how slowly I work, but it is largely due to being interrupted. When I work at home I get a lot more done, so long as there's no-one else there!



I am also a visual person. Recently I've been experimenting with using flow charts to help write my code. First I draw out the flow chart of how I think the program will go (I use a simple program called dia, available from the debian repositories, to do so) and then I start writing the code to follow the chart. When I change my mind about something, I change it on the chart before I change the code. Although it seems time-consuming, this practice organises my thoughts so well that I think it is ultimately a net gain in terms of overall time. Also it means you can come back to it and refresh your memory by looking at the flow chart if you need to in future.



I wish I could say the same! I am too perfectionist. Not by choice; it's rather that I only know how to do things in a really slow, deliberate way. I simply can't rush things; they go wrong, I get anxious and blocked, I lose the ability to think coherently and I am defeated by the tiniest errors that I am too anxious to see.

25+ years of bit-bashing, down-and-dirty hands-on programming, building complex modelling software, mostly for insurance risk management.

People change and corporate management becomes psychopathic and tiring, but logic, mathematics and complex systems are refreshingly and comfortingly natural to my way of thinking and being.

You are not alone.

I majored in Information Systems because I wanted a job where I didn't have to work with people.

It turns out I don't enjoy being a programmer at all. I have low self-esteem about my programming skills because others are so much faster at it and it comes easily to them. It does not come easy to me. Often I feel like I need to ask a question or work with someone on something and I HATE asking for help.

I feel that maybe I would be a better programmer if I had some passion for it, which I have absolutely none of whatsoever.

I am really thinking now that I would like to pursue a Master's of Library Science... sure, maybe I'd have to deal with people a little, but in smaller chunks (maybe?) it seems like a more consistent job to me. Not having to solve new problems every day would be great. I would be happy doing the same thing over and over if I was confident about doing it.

Really enjoying all the replies.

I want to get into that sort of "REAL" programming - bit-bashing as you call it - but I am nervous and afraid that I might come up against limits in my intellect that perhaps I'd rather not know were there. I have a PhD in what I like to refer to as "formal logic" but if I was more honest I would refer to it as "armchair semantics".

I've written code of one sort or another professionally for 2 years - I know this is not long, but I have persued it with extreme Aspergic interest, so it seems like a lifetime to me! - and I'm still circling around C like a tentative hunter stalking a large animal unsure if she will end up as predator or prey!

I even wrote a daemon that listens on a TCP socket, parses data and sends it over a serial port - in - you will laugh now - PHP!! It took the best part of 4 months, on and off, to get the f***er to work properly.

It's silly really, how I've ended up using high-level languages, when I am a detail monster and control freak. Using them does not stop me getting anxious, it just makes it worse, because I don't understand what's going on underneath so I can't trust my own code.

As you can see from my location, I have a bit of a fetish about assembly! Sadly that is still all it amounts to though!

I'm a female programmer. It's a knack I have always had. I can read through pages and pages of code quickly and just see any errors or syntax issues. Women are just as capable as men in this field however I do notice that men get more opportunities than women in the field. An example from my own life is that my neighbors never asked me to do anything for them but when my brother moved out here recently, they gave him all kinds of jobs. I was a bit offended by that and felt that they were more confident in his abilities because he is a man. The truth is that he is a novice in the field and is not a natural at it. Kind of off topic, but that just came to mind.

I'm an expert-level programmer - I know assembly language and C++ very well, and know the internals of Windows. I have a reverse engineering background, so I'm not afraid of "craziness" like disassembling programs and binary patching. My coworkers have a hard time understanding what I'm doing since they don't have such a background. I comment my code a lot, but they still can't understand it.

However, I'm not a woman...yet. I've been taking estrogen for two years now. I feel really strongly that I'm a woman inside, and am trying to get my outside to match how I feel.