Posted on 12/18/2005 7:00:11 AM PST by A. Pole
"has more female professors than male"
And hence a very good reason for outsourcing.
Guess I am old. coding = programming. Stuff like knowing a few things that you can do with a spreadsheet, or simple VB scripts in MS Access, or writing simple programs in a languge like Java. Just so they know that they can take information and mine other info from it.
Given the blatant attempts by business and globalists to push unneeded H1B visas and to offshore IT... I can't blame anyone for not choosing Comp Sci... I know if I were getting ready to enter school today, it wouldn't be the carreer I would choose.
If I was a woman, who planned on someday raising a family, it would just be one more reason to pick another profession.
I don't know, I had an physics TA in college who while female was pretty damned geek as you can get.
Anyone remember BBROYGBVGW? Anyone got Violet's phone number?
How old are your kids???
If you want your kids to code, you have to give them something they like/want.
The old Commodore 64 was great for this, it was a great game system at its time, that the owner could also code... I know that's what got me started, C64 basic and then right into assembly and graphics and systems level stuff.
Kids today don't out of the box have this... as computers and operating systems are hopelessly complex.
The area I am introducing my son to, is GAMEBOY programming... Got the emulator, and the DevKit, and will be ordering the Flash Cartrige soon. I plan on working with him on Ideas at first, and then develop a simple game for it... with his help on the concepts, and then work him through some of the coding principles as he wants them.
Right now though, he's just shy of 9... so we'll see how it goes... but never underestimate the value of the "showing off"... How cool is it to a child to play a game on his gameboy that he and his old man made... and show it off to his friends? Let alone, it gives him a chance to first hand see what his old man does for a living... something very hard to see, when your old man pushes bits inside of large corps.
If your kids are old enough, I'd definately look into Gameboy coding.... it reminds me a lot of the old 64... direct hardware interaction, the way it was meant to be.
Of course, a $50 ebay investment in a Commodore 64, and 1541 isn't a bad thing either.. but doesn't have the NEAT factor of a Gameboy game.
I've been in Software, professionally and as a hobby since 1982ish.... Trust me when I say, it has ALWAYS been a male dominated profession... believe me, I wish it wasn't... but it is.
I have 2 girls, 12 and 10. My 12-year-old is a people person, but my 10-year-old has potential to be a classic nerd - loves math, loves video games, etc.
I had thought of looking into palm/gamecube/gameboy programming, just hadn't done it yet. Any links/advice could be cool...
Well being the geek that I am, I am looking at low level C dev kits and things for the Gameboy... VisualHAM seems to be one mentioned lots on the internet... there is self published "unofficial programmers guide" out there too...
Also, a company has created an interpreted language development for Gameboy as well... called Catapult... Even have at least one true commercial release built with it... 'Ultimate Arcade Games' I don't know much about it, other than that, but it might be worth checking out:
http://www.nocturnal-central.com/catapult.php
(You can't produce roms with the free release, but its like $20 or something to get that feature.)
The "unofficial programmers guide" is at
http://www.jharbour.com/gameboy/default.aspx
There is tons of other stuff out there, just google Gameboy Development... in fact I was supprised how much was out there given its a "proprietary" system... but perhaps Nintendo recoginizes homebrew hacking is a GOOD THING....
Got a GameCube for christmas too... so if things go well with our little play time on the Gameboy.. who knows, maybe I'll get motivated enough to do something for that one too.
They run the oftware in the plane-arium...
Look, I'm not claiming to be a victim. Yes, I couldn't hack it, and I fully admit that. I'm just recounting my experiences as a comp sci major. Yes, it was intimidating. Also keep in mind that I was a first semester freshman with one of the hardest professors in the department in a class that was 95% upperclassmen and grad students. I am not looking to explain away my reaction to the class because I think that most people in my situation would have been intimidated as well. And for the record, I did write a few programs outside of class requirements, but programming was not my life, and there were a good number of other things that I wanted to devote time to. You try getting interviewed and see how badly the things you say get taken out of context.
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