All: this thread started to fill up almost immediately with internet dreck. We don't want that here—it's predictable, which is boring, and leads to flamewars, which are nasty. We ban accounts that do that kind of thing, so please don't do it here.
What to do instead: have curious conversation [1, 2]. Be reflective, not reflexive [3]. If you're unsure whether you're doing those things, wait for it to become clear before you post [4].
Despite my extreme objections to the race/gender preference, I enjoy teaching and accepted the invitation to help out at a program like this (not this one in particular). I didn't get the idea that they were highly effective. Sessions consisted of walking them through an insanely long list of terminal commands and code snippets that were to be copied without any real understanding of what was happening. By the end the girls just looked overwhelmed and discouraged at the amount of garbage needed to create a "modern web app", which is certainly the most stupid place to start with programming. I left feeling as though I'd thoroughly destroyed what interest they may have had in the field, and never accepted another invitation.
I've taught at an all girls event; being one myself, it was really enjoyable and we had a bunch of guys from the local python users group to lend a hand, they loved it too. It was wildly successful, leading to every single one of them to have a better understanding than they did before: that's a good metric. Perhaps the class was badly organized, there are are some good ones out there to copy from.
It feels like these programs were started by people who aren't teachers. Piano teachers don't have students who like Jazz start out by playing some whacked up complicated chord progressions, they start them out with something simple and build up to the hard stuff.
Something like Processing or some other easy and intensely audio/visual programming interface would be much better since it's made with that in mind and produces near instant feedback.
Almost all programs lack the proper positioning to follow a young person through the years.
We don't expect a summer math program to make math work for kids. At best it "stimulates" in the same way a summer-long Raspberry Pi electronics project does, but it builds no foundations. The education market has way too many of these motivational products and not enough investment in foundations.
But any program that focuses on foundations is over a year from application, and that implies that you have enough credibility to go for over a year without stakeholders demanding very concrete results. I suspect that what many people in this forum want are classes which provides a substantial accumulation of foundations over the years.
That's true. I didn't expect something that would be perfect, but this was basically someone's list of steps to make a webapp with bootstrap, pagination, slugs, and a single CRUD resource.
If you're going to start with web dev, better to teach teach plain HTML and CSS, and enough JS to make something small happen, then let them run with it and help them customize it. Something like an in-browser alarm clock would be interesting. Show them how to change the font, colors, sound, background image (maybe even a background slideshow), and some animations.
I was going to say "I'd skip all the traditional web-dev stuff and just make a little Go application that serves a web endpoint with something neat in it"... and then I stopped myself and thought about how much boiler-plate and explanations and step-by-step you'd need just to get kids compiling Hello, World... Teaching kids is hard.
Edit: i appreciate Go because there's not as much boilerplate or setup required as with some languages (unpack the tarball, set $PATH, and I'm off to the races) but even those steps mean we're talking about shells and directory trees.
I suppose it depends on what sparked their curiosity in the first place. Every professional has an origin story, something that made them want to slog through years of practice to get to where they are.
I can think of many ways to spark people's interest in cooking or music, but programming seems a bit harder to me. I never thought about why I love it, let alone why others should.
> I was going to say "I'd skip all the traditional web-dev stuff...
Go is simple but not really beginner friendly. In my opinion teaching novices should start with Ruby (not Python or Javascript that's so often is the case). Show them how to do simple scripts, later build some games together.
Web-dev stuff like React, Webpack, Node etc should be out of the question, it would be a huge turn off for kids; heck it is that even for adults.
I feel like this could hold true for any program that tries to get anyone (young or older) into programming.
A lot of these programs try the 'hard-sell' of "programming is soooooo much fun and important" on participants and if you're not in it for the hard work and the minutiae of what takes to build a "modern web app", you're just never going get that into coding.
That is unfortunate. I wonder if perhaps undirected learning is where the magic is in this sort of thing and the lack is in tool availability. Certainly it's how lots of us learned.
I agree that undirected learning is huge. I don't know how I'd go about reproducing it... you need both availability of resources (software and hardware), and you need plenty of relaxed time spent with those resources to find the particular angle you end up taking into the environment. That doesn't seem compatible with a bootcamp-ish weekend program where you get hand-held through "making a web app" because the point is to Make You A Coder.
If I was trying to figure out how to actually give kids the opportunity to get interested in coding, well, I'd start off trying to go for an open-ended after-school program, where you can drop in and mess around with computer stuff with access to knowledgeable adults if needed. I'd try to get the adults to propose interesting little projects that might capture the imagination of the kids. I'd try to get donated VPS time, not so we can force the kids to make cookie-cutter web apps but so they can put together their own janky terrible stuff, and if they screw up we just kill the VPS and start over. Personally, I think trying to focus on games too much is also a mistake--either you end up with the Logo turtle (educational but incredibly boring) or you have 9 kids just playing Minecraft while the tenth actually learns to script it.
Confession: For a long time I didn't really think movements like these were necessary. "Why does it have to be for group X? Why not just have it open to everyone?" I still see a lot of sentiment like that on the internet. I felt like they were themselves racist.
I've slowly come around. I understand now why things like this program aren't racist, why they exist, and why the people they target can uniquely benefit from outreach. Moreover, I don't think I understand enough the struggles that underrepresented groups go through, and the fact that I'm oblivious to them is part of my own privileged upbringing (white, male, middle class, suburbs, nuclear family, single income, etc).
I think I still have a long ways to go, and one thing I've been thinking about is how I can try to capture the worldview that I used to have while I was in the "this isn't a problem, stop posting about it/i'm tired of reading about it" camp and thus use it to explain to people who are still stuck in it. The only reason I think I came to understand is because a dear friend of mine gradually explained it to me in a way that I understood.
Anyway, while I was writing this, lots of low-quality comments have come and been deleted, so I feel like it's worth hitting post. I can't eloquently and convincingly articulate why things like this are needed yet, especially to an already-convinced-otherwise audience, but maybe someone else can.
These groups are relaxed learning environments in which outsiders can play, experiment, and express themselves.
I think we can all think of a hobby or topic we'd feel more comfortable joining if there was such an environment to introduce us to it.
For example, I'd love to play soccer, but I'd embarrass myself at the local field, especially with the language barrier. A "soccer for out of shape immigrants" group would certainly get me to play more. Likewise, I'd take a "welding for bead-curious urbanites who never get their hands dirty" class.
We can all appreciate the value of such environments. We just have to accept that the barrier of entry is different for everyone. For some, it might be gender or colour.
I don't know if this is true everywhere, but my objection is mainly that there are no similar but unrestricted programs at all here. It's one thing to make a program tailored to girls when there's already one tailored to boys, or one that's not but happens to appeal mainly to boys. It's another thing entirely when the only options are girls-only.
You have next to nothing in common with a poor, rural white male with a single mother, so why shut them out based on your own privilege? Since poverty is already seen as a proxy for race, why not just start programs in poor areas without explicit focus on race? It has the same general effect without shutting the door on other underprivileged people.
I can sympathize with feeling of needing this. But I can't help thinking, what if my daughter wanted to go to this with say a black friend, she wouldn't be allowed. It sort of feels like it will ultimately create division rather than heal it.
I'd prefer kids were taught that they can try anything they dam well please. They just need to try.
Btw this is all hypothetical, my daughter is two and we live in the UK.
>But I can't help thinking, what if my daughter wanted to go to this with say a black friend, she wouldn't be allowed.
I don't think that's the case. Quoting from a description of one event hosted by Black Girls Code:
>Who can participate in the hackathon?
>The Hackathon is open to girls of all experience levels. All are welcome and encouraged to register, whether a participant has previous coding exposure or is new to coding and app development!
If your daughter wants to go with her friend, I don't think the staff at the event would mind. Heck, they might love it to know a little girl in their target demographic had a coding buddy.
>I'd prefer kids were taught that they can try anything they dam well please. They just need to try.
They should also be taught that, but they're only human like the rest of us. Discouragement is often irrational, but that doesn't make it irrelevant.
Isn't this line of thinking sort of excusing the thing that the very program is supposed to address though?
More concretely, the need for this program is described as a welcoming environment for black girls to get into STEM, because black girls are discouraged being that they are "outsiders".
Why would a white girl not feel like an "outsider" as a program specifically for black girls?
As a minority in the country I was born in, I know what it means to feel like an outsider my whole life. It's fine for a kid to learn what it feels like to be an outsider for once in her life, it builds empathy.
In this case, a better solution could be to organize the activity at a place where black people live, but allow anyone to join.
Okay, this addresses the race, not sure what to do about gender. Maybe choose a stereotypically girly topic and make posters in pink color, but again allow anyone to join, I guess. Send a signal, don't close the door.
This is a good solution and also a pretty common one, since public school districts not under a court order aren't allowed to explicitly consider race.
I grew up attending a "Saturday academy" sort of STEM program where I was the only white kid in a cohort of perhaps 50. It was open to anyone, but because they reached out to Black families and were in a Black neighborhood, they were able to target without having strict, exclusive rules.
Just targeting places with lots of Black people is definitely a huge improvement over what we currently do.
For me, it's this half-full half-empty cup. Depending on what angle I look from:
It is good to help underprivileged people...
It is bad to assume that race and gender are the only sources of privilege, thus throwing under the bus e.g. all the poor disabled people guilty of the sin of being born white and male...
I guess it's better to help some underprivileged people (and throw the others under the bus) than to help no one... but when you put it this way, it reduces the happy feeling.
I'd like to see more programs like this focusing on class disparity.
College finance system already works this way to an extent. I think making more educational programs adjust cost based on means would have the effect of helping the least-privileged people in our society without the moral hazards of racial segregation.
I feel the same, but with an added caveat. Just because some movements/concepts are 'A Good Thing™' doesn't mean that they are not amenable to abuse by 'Not So Good Things™'.
E.g., whenever a company lobbies for stuff, it's never "for the profits of our stakeholders"; it's always "for the sake of the children".
Therefore while I applaud positive movements, I'm also always weary to note the timing and subtext in which they are presented, and very often it feels like there is a disingenuous agenda behind them, that sours the apple for me.
Yeah, because They ask me about my gender and race every time I open any github repository or read tech doc... Happily providing any type of education only to specific gender is illegal in my country as per constitution (Poland).
That's great! Sadly, our constitution did not outlaw the extremely common practice of enslaving Black people until the 13th amendment, which was only ratified in 1865.
In the hundreds of years prior to that most everyone else in the country was allowed to acquire land, wealth and an education while the enslaved folks were legally blocked from doing the same. It took nearly another ~100 years for their right to vote to be marginally protected and to finally end legal segregation, that was less than one generation ago so you can imagine that the inequity here won't match that of every other country.
Your snarky, condescending post most definitely goes against HN rules. You did not attempt engage the parent, you did not address the content of their post whatsoever, instead, in a sarcastic tone, resorted to preaching a total aside.
You have it exactly backwards, the post I replied to started with a sarcastic sentence but mine contained none and wasn’t meant to have any snark or condescension.
My assumption is that they are not aware of the tragic, race-based history here (they said they live in Poland, I doubt the curriculum there has years and years of US history) so I gave them a brief overview of the history behind the current inequity that this group aims to help correct (including specifically talking about some related differences between their statement about the Polish constitution and how the US constitution started and changed over the centuries)
Rather than whittling down subgroup after subgroup, why not try to help out the underexposed in general?
The differences between what the sexes are interested in is distinct enough that figuring out how to get girls interested and prevent them from being discouraged needs to be considered.
However, I don't belief the racial differences are enough to justify efforts to encourage black people specifically - there's use in shared culture from an outreach perspective, but here I think that the most ground can be gained from efforts to engage with marginalised children in general; regardless of race.
I just don't think that focusing on intersections of the disadvantaged yields useful results.
For example, efforts to help blind kids learn to code could be very useful - but a specific effort to help only blind black females with gimpy legs would be a waste of time and resources (and good luck finding teachers at all, let alone any that meet your increasingly exclusionary criteria).
I simply don't think that this can work the way that it's intended to - do what you can to break down barriers to entry, but as far as I'm concerned once those barriers are broken there's not much value in segregation.
I can't imagine that once those barriers have been broken and a well supported kid gets into code that the impact of race and sex will be significant when compared to motivation and aptitude.
I also think that if your trying to break down barriers you're not going to do a very good job with class rooms defined by anti-diversity.
Anyway, what's with the month old throwaway account?
I think this is not an interesting link drop. And I'll go one step further - I went out of my way to try to volunteer here. I emailed them, I added some of them on linkedin, I tried (pre-covid) various different methods of reaching out, and all were ignored. For all intents and purposes, this seems to have been abandoned.
i volunteered for a weekend activity with this organization just by using the links on the site. i am not a POC and indicated that i'd be willing to offer technical or just logistical help. i ended up being a classroom assistant for a robotics camp. overall good experience.
I really hate these faux-grassroots programs. I've never seen these people host any events near me, and I live in a fairly large inner city area. If individual nerds can consistently have meetups every month there isn't any excuse especially with how much money they seem to be getting. The past events page is also...depressingly barren.
But they're getting that sweet sweet investor $$$ from Nike and AT&T!
I'm not sure your hate for this group is based on facts.
From a Google search I learned that their EventBrite lists 615 past events in 70 cities in 18 states (plus DC). Since the beginning of 2020 there were 120 events, 88 were last year and 32 this year so far, most of which being online. I don't know if they've had any others that didn't make the EventBrite list and no clue what city you live in, obviously they haven't reached every "fairly large inner city" in person.
With no knowledge of how they spend their money (other than the scholarships they mention) I assume it goes to staffing the part of the org that plans and puts on these events, and said scholarships for the paid events.
Looks like 279 of them were free (including all 2021 events), 30 in-person events had paid and free tickets available. It seems 53 events were summer camp options for between $70 and $699 (most common being $299) from 2016 to 2020. Of the rest, 6 were $20 or less and the remaining 270 events were $35.
I'm aware of $1M grants from Nike & AT&T, CrunchBase lists another $409k from an individual and GM, plus individuals have donated small amounts.
From my personal experience putting on individual live shows, tours, learning events and full blown conventions I doubt that even double this total would be enough to cover all of the live events they did pre-pandemic even with a skeleton crew staff of 3-4 and plenty of volunteers.
The real issue is constantly swept under the rug. The only real barrier to POC in STEM in 2021 is POC culture. It's hard to host events for inner city denizens when the vast majority are simply uninterested in such pursuits, or worse, shun each other for having such interests. Lack of representation will not be solved so long as we continue to ignore this inconvenient truth. And it's similar for lack of female representation.
Edit: in anticipation of controversy, it is not my attempt to troll or start any flamewars with this comment. It's a perspective that is sorely lacking in discussions addressing diversity in tech, and dangerously so, because if we refuse to question the role of the choices of those who are underrepresented, then the only alternative is to blame people and systems who are not responsible for the issues, which makes the interventions ineffective at best, counterproductive and destabilizing at worst.
I'm a little sad this comment was dead and I couldn't respond earlier...
ANYWAY:
>the vast majority are simply uninterested in such pursuits
I really think this is an "image" problem. I'd say the majority of people are uninterested in technology, so the numbers are already low. But it also has a huge connotation of the people who DO like it being white/asian nerds, or affluent people who can afford to go to college for computer science. People want to fit in, no one wants to be alone. And if you're just some black kid, you're going to feel really out of place. Even if no one is being racist to you, you're still going to FEEL alone (even if you're not). And that's not fun.
This isn't just a tech problem. Think about welders or metalworkers. I think about bearded, husky white guys. But I'm sure there's plenty of girls who think swords kick ass but don't want to feel like an outsider. It's understandable for people to feel this way.
It's like the complete opposite of the Utopian Hacker idea where just your contributions matter, nothing else. About how good or enthusiastic you are, not about WHO you are. I don't think any single group or initiative can get rid of stereotypes with careers or subcultures. I'm not even sure if it CAN be done.
These are takes by people who didn't grow up in proximity to Black communities. It's just not true.
I attended a STEM program when I was in elementary school and I was the only white person in a cohort of like 50 black kids. More often than not, the programs just aren't set up in Black communities, they aren't advertised, there is no outreach to parents.
One reason I like efforts like this is because they say to an underrepresented group "this is for also for you", when otherwise the implicit message often is that it's not.
That's not the only reason, but (based on frequent comments on this topic) it's a reason that should be articulated, because it isn't necessarily obvious to someone who wasn't told -- so many times, in so many ways -- "this isn't for you".
The answer to "why does this need to involve race?" and many similar questions can be found on the about page [0]. It does a very good job of succinctly describing why we need campaigns and organizations like this to break down the racial, gender, and cultural barriers that prevent so many people from feeling comfortable or accepted in STEM careers or academic settings.
> But I also recall, as I pursued my studies, feeling culturally isolated: few of my classmates looked like me.
This statement feels a bit yucky to me. Like the whole premise of this movement is that diversity is valuable, but then there's this feeling of discontent about a lot of people not looking like you. It kind of reeks of hypocrisy, if I'm being honest. Even if black women were represented in programming in a way that reflects America's demographics, "few of my classmates looked like me" would still be true.
> Much has changed since my college days, but there’s still a dearth of African-American women in science, technology, engineering and math professions
In agreement so far...
> an absence that cannot be explained by, say, a lack of interest in these fields.
This is where it falls apart for me. This is an assertion without evidence. I haven't yet heard a convincing argument (or really any argument) that people of different cultural, racial, gender backgrounds will gravitate towards similar professions, on average.
To me, the better question (and harder to address) is "_why_ do you feel so utterly disconnected from white and Asian men on a person-to-person level that you would be pushed out of a dream job?" We're all human beings, and there is plenty of common ground to be found in that. The long-term goal should not be to have your Netflixes, Amazons, and Googles of the world full of black, Asian, latino, and white men and women all sitting at their own lunch tables. Unfortunately, it feels a lot like that's where it's going to me.
> Much has changed since my college days, but there’s still a dearth of African-American women in science, technology, engineering and math professions, an absence that cannot be explained by, say, a lack of interest in these fields.
XD yeah, because racism is always the answer. Also there is no enough black people hiking because forests in US are racist as fuck.
This is great to see. The tech industry suffers for lack of diverse voices. Its sad to see nothing but banned comments in this section so far; if that doesn't indicate the need for proactive programs like this I don't know what does.
I overall think programs like this are more of a good thing than a bad thing.
I however could see them having negative psychological effects on participants that do more to widen gaps than close them. For instance it gives an impression that black girls need to do programming in a protected separated environment because the environment at large is not safe for them or accepting of them.
I think this might even be true in some cases but regardless I don't think it's beneficial to anyone to promote the idea, and I think it is certainly sending the signal that that is the way things are to these young girls which I think can be self perpetuating.
> it gives an impression that black girls need to do programming in a protected separated environment because the environment at large is not safe for them or accepting of them
That's a pretty accurate impression. And it's not groups like BGC perpetuating that idea, it's the culture at large. We're nowhere near the utopian ideal where black groups are overly cautious about American society.
It's certainly not actively encouraging them to go exist out in the broader ecosystem. Again, I'm not arguing that a black girl of color wouldnt face challenges in that system that others wouldn't. But self segregate at your own risk.
They are a 503B as well. I donated quite a bit to them last year.
I didn’t come from much but I did have access to computers via relatives and my school district. That’s something not everyone has. The interest I developed at a young age led me to a very lucrative career. It does not threaten my white male ego to think that other people from more disadvantaged backgrounds deserve a chance to at least learn a little about the field.
In my HR hat, I would be reluctant to hire anybody that had recent training that was explicitly given exclusively to one race or excluding other federally protected classes like religion, gender, or handicap.
I don't get why this gets downvoted, it's a fair comment.
A group for emigrants in a foreign country would be reasonable, but just segregating by gender and race like this where there is no language or cultural barrier is unnecessary and could be harmful.
Probably because it misses the point entirely and in an almost comical way uses “HR” as an excuse to exclude from the hiring process someone for a reason other than merit or ability?
Maybe OP would also exclude folks from religious institutions as well, people who learned to code at BYU or a Catholic college, or one of the like 30,000 Christian high schools, but I would probably downvote that sentiment too.
HN is for curious, thoughtful conversation, not flamewar. I've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
What to do instead: have curious conversation [1, 2]. Be reflective, not reflexive [3]. If you're unsure whether you're doing those things, wait for it to become clear before you post [4].
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
[4] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...