Women Are Better at Coding than Men

[LiberalArkie]

by Diana Tourjee

New research shows that code written by female computer programmers is more likely to be approved by their peers than code written by men—but only if their gender is concealed.

After analyzing data from the popular open source software website GitHub, researchers concluded that women on the site "may be more competent overall." According to The Guardian, "the researchers looked at approximately 3m pull requests submitted on GitHub, and found that code written by women was approved at a higher rate (78.6 percent) than code written by men (74.6 percent)." However, they noted, "bias against [female coders] exists nonetheless." According to their findings, code written by women is viewed more favorably when the coder's gender is kept secret.

If feminism has taught us anything, it's that almost all men are sexist. As this GitHub data shows, whether or not bros think that they view women as equals, women's work is not being judged impartially. On the web, a vile male hive mind is running an assault mission against women in tech. Perhaps most notoriously, an online movement known as "GamerGate" recently targeted women in the video game industry; many of those involved with the movement, who claimed to be concerned about "ethics in games journalism," would send death and rape threats to female game developers and critics and reveal their personal information online.

Although GamerGate is an extreme example of the misogyny in tech, it is merely on the far end of a spectrum that extends from unconscious bias to enraged violence against women. Unfortunately, men have been reared by a dumb and damaging form of masculinity that is defined by pseudo-dominance, an (imagined) ideal of superiority that can only be maintained through the subordination of women.

Snip

https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/women-are-better-at-coding-than-men

[Kalidurga]

1. The only shock for me is that the gap is so narrow

I kid I kid. I think men are usually as competent as women in most areas.

[LiberalArkie]

2. When I was working at a phone company, there were 2 young women (20'ish) there

and 6 men around the same age. One night they all went out partying and drug themselves into work the next morning. The girls were handling all the phone calls and testing, logged into 3 computers each and doing all the testing. Just every so often lean over a trash can to hurl, but kept at it. Oh, BTW the guys were either passed out on the floor or in the bathroom. No one ever noticed the guys not taking calls. Me being 40 years older, I always knew who I could count on.

[Kalidurga]

5. That sounds about right.

Women have had to deal with a lot of stuff in their personal lives, kids, taking care of elderly parents, etc. I will use my hero my grandmother as an example. She was in her early forties maybe a tad younger and she had two teenage sons to take care of. Her elderly parents I adored both of them, but they did need a lot of care. My great grandfather was in a wheel chair and while it didn't slow him down in his youth it did when he got in his 80's somewhat. My great grandmother was sick a lot. And she made dinner for everyone every single night she came home from work. And she had a husband on top of that and he was a great guy, but typical of his generation he did outside chores which were plentiful, but he did very little in the house. Oh and her job was very physical she worked at what back then was called an asylum. She worked in the kitchen making meals for hundreds of patients so she had to lug around heavy stuff to put in the oven, huge pots full of water for boiling stuff, etc...

[hfojvt]

3. "almost all men are sexist"

You know I heard somewhere that it was a myth that feminism was anti-men.

I guess we men did get an "almost" this time. So that's progress.

[BillZBubb]

4. What is the sample size in this analysis?

How many women coders and men coders? Are there any "outliers" in the men's coding group that account for an unusual numbers of fails?

The margin of about 4% is hardly enough to claim women are better coders than men without a large sample size. And without a representative sample of the coding population.

I have no doubt women can be excellent coders and due to sexism they probably had to produce at a higher standard than men during their training. This might lead to a sort of ironic selection bias that could give women a quality advantage in the overall coding population. Still, I would doubt that over the population of all coders that either women or men as a group are superior.

[LiberalArkie]

6. As a ex coder, us guys (at least me) tend to think linearly, I think the women really multitask it.

Some of the processes the girls wrote took me a little bit to wrap my head around but it was all just graceful.

[BillZBubb]

8. I know where you are coming from...

but I would suggest you not use "the girls" in the future.

[LiberalArkie]

10. Well I was 40 years older than them and about the only guy not hitting on them. All of them

on their first "real job" and older than their parents. But they were great women to work with. They are now all married with tons of kids and no longer working there. And neither am I.

[JonLeibowitz]

7. Another very important detail.

They didn't show that the 4% was unrelated to the fact that the women chose to display their gender on their profile. Who knows if that is slightly associated with tendencies of more experience or not but I could imagine many reasonable explanations of a gap as small as 4%, which is quite small by statistical standards.

Also the attempts of this author to tie the open source community to GamerGate is deplorable.

My bet is that women and men are equally good coders.

[Plappergeist]

9. It might actually be true, but the "research" is pure bullshit. n/t