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THE IMAGE OF A RUSSIAN PROGRAMMER
A programmer is working at his PC. His wife comes up saying: Darling, I’m pregnant. The programmer without taking his fingers off the keys: Abort, Retry, Ignore?
For the mainstream citizen the word “programmer” is strongly associated with an unshaven, red-eyed, stooped chain smoker wearing a stretched sweater and tatty jeans. When he speaks, he uses exclusively computer terms, and by night either plays various games or communicates through chats or ICQ. His response to what is going around him, women included, is far from commonplace. He is an odd, inadequate, solitary individual, cut off from reality.
Once a programmer was invited to a party. When he didn’t turn up at the appointed time, the hosts, thinking he could have got lost, went out to look for him. They walked down to the ground floor to find him stuck in the elevator, swearing. - I don’t understand. I pushed buttons 1 and 0 to get up to the 10th floor, but I can see no ‘Enter’ button!
A keyboard virtuoso and computer mouse hero, he is second to none only when he sits at his adored PC he lavishes all his time, effort and money on. His only food is beer, canned stuff and chips. And it is always HE, a male person.
A programmer is getting married. His friend says to him: - Well, is your fiancée cute? - Looks like a top model! - Meaning she’s 90x60x90? - Of course not! She’s 128x64x128!
It is next to impossible to imagine a stooped, red-eyed woman who has not been to the hairdresser’s for half a year, and it was through the Internet that she learned that the fall had set in. Since hardly any woman fits into the popular image of a programmer, she cannot be a programmer.
A vast layer of computer-related culture contains megabytes of funny stories about programmers - lively illustrations of their appearance, behavior, ways and interests. On the other hand, funny stories about female programmers are few and far between, because a female programmer is a tale. Why tell stories about tales?
Question: What do a female programmer and a guinea pig have in common? Answer: A guinea pig has nothing to do either with Guinea or with pigs.
A girl programmer is like a green horse: a natural phenomenon which is as rare as it is useless.
A random-number generator was an unchallenged winner at a female logic contest.
The issue of relations between girls and computers, girls and programming languages, girls and software has been widely discussed at many Internet conferences. And it is always more or less like the following.
“I think women and computers, programming in particular, are rather incompatible things, I’d say very incompatible. If you do meet a woman who proves the opposite, that’s sooner an exception to the rule, which lends support to the rule”.
“I’m sure most girls lack proper logic”.
“Besides, to become an expert in computers you’ve got to give it plenty of time, which seems quite unnatural for some girls (How on earth can one live without dancing and other entertainments?)”.
“...Well, if you are really cute, how can you be smart computerwise? (Mum’s the word, OK? Don’t want women to learn this secret, or there’ll be lots of screaming!”).
“Yes, sometimes girls may be smarter in programming than boys. Their fortes, however, are mainly diligence and perseverance, and they never go beyond a university syllabus (which only offers the basics of Computer Science, rotten as they are). Yet for the most part they show neither enthusiasm no will to do anything beyond their university assignments”.
In a word, the hen is not a bird, the woman is not a programmer, as they say. In case a female individual does make it, it is either accidentally or due to her supernatural diligence. In any case, no girl is capable of unique, creative thinking. The opposite idea never occurs to her colleagues, group mates, or even teachers. Now say when it is easier to improve and develop yourself: when your parents, teachers and associates believe in you, or when they mock at you, test you for professional aptitude, question your competence, or envy you for your success? Can we talk here about any equal starting conditions whatsoever? We can keep on saying that those with a desire for success will make their way, that they do not care what others think about them, that real professionalism depends on no sex. It really doesn’t. On the male sex.
Sasha Nevskaya
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