From: Philip Hallstrom <ruby@...>
Date: 2007-05-05T04:16:17+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby love

>> So...has this payed of for anyone? Have you guys reaped any benefits? :p
>
> You know, this is a little bit more of a sensitive topic than it might
> seem.  It is a great to teach people close to you to program, but I
> don't know that it's for you to reap 'benefits'.
>
> I wonder if there are good ways that we can get more women involved in
> programming.  Me teaching one of my ex-girlfriend's Perl was actually
> a pretty bad experience because I found myself treating her like a
> hacker automatically and it caused a lot of social stress...
>
> Of the females on this list, how did you get into programming?   How
> can we be better at being supportive of getting women involved in
> programming?

I'm not female, but one thing I learned about my wife while teaching her C 
(and anything for that matter) is that our styles are very very different.

I'm breadth first and want to learn a lot about the "why" of things and 
get a decent grasp on everything (ie, when learning loops, i want to read 
about for, while, do all at once before trying any of them).

My wife is just the opposite.  Depth first.  Show me the for loop.  Show 
me some examples.  Let me use those examples to build something on my own. 
Now show me the while loop.

We're like that with everything... doesn't matter what it is, and 
invariable she says "just show me how play a movie" while I'm in the 
middle of pointing out how cool is that the DVD player can show you 
different views, and angles, and mark spots for easy playback, and...

Luckily, we have a system.. who's gonna teach, and in what style :)

Not sure if all women are this way (probably not), but mine is.

-philip