I was lucky enough to attend several city schools with serious technology programs/curricula. This included C++ for all 4 years of HS provided you were on the advanced track.
That said, I still had troubles fitting into the tech world and even left it for a time. There's a variety of reasons for this, but one of them was that I never really felt any sense of camaraderie with the other people who were into this stuff. Outside of computers, I often had very little in common with my white, male peers.
They liked metal and rock, I mostly liked JPOP and Electronic music at the time. They were worried about getting girls to like them and annoyed at the athletes who seemed to get all of them. I was usually dating those same athletes. Even my gaming interests seemed to diverge from theirs. I'm a console gamer, but the guys were busy playing Counterstrike.
This meant there were FAR fewer opportunities to collaborate and learn from a group of similarly-interested people. Thankfully, people are a LOT more open to differences now that I'm older, but it still leaves me pretty far behind.
Note: I'm an Afro-Latina woman.
I'm going to tread carefully here. =)
Similarly-interested in a small segment of likes. I think it's fair to say that in most careers, their exists a culture, and if you aren't apart of that culture, you miss out. I see this in all sorts of industries, and the type of people involved generally follow a well established stereotype. Their are exceptions, and stereotyping is bad, but I think it's safe to say we all see this and know it exists. It's not on purpose. Us white male programmers just happen to have a lot of similar interests.
> but it still leaves me pretty far behind?
Do you find this a fault with the industry? With those white guys? With you? Or no ones fault and it is what it is?
My own experience is that people who have the same dedicated drive for programming but aren't interested in the same extra-curricular activities as most programmers usually have a lot to offer. Have you found that to be the case personally? Do you feel other people see that in you?
That said, just because something happens "naturally" doesn't mean it can't have negative consequences. It's important to be aware of the issues that arise when there is a clear in-group so we can find ways to mitigate their effects.
Also, I shouldn't have said people are more accepting of differences now that I'm older. It's more that people are more willing to see the differences and make a bit more effort to bring that "different" person into the fold. That sensitivity is something that comes with age and affects a variety of industries, not just tech.
This happens to white people too. I work in the financial industry.
Typical weekend activity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1CKesTyTpI&feature=relat...
My weekend activity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7CtBWhrVAE&feature=relat...
Sucks for me, but I can't find fault with other people for doing what they like. It's not the job of the rest of the world to change to make it convenient for me to network.
This happened right before my fifth grade teacher sat me in the back of the class and let me play with the 1 classroom computer with the BASIC manual because I was 'gifted' and always finished my work early. These two events provided tools and a framework for learning that many minority students probably didn't have.
Makes me think that getting really good programming games and dev environments on SmartPhones is a great idea.
I dono... I know I grew up with hand-me-down computers until late highschool. through the first half of high school, I used a tandy model 100 TRS-80 laptop. Really, if you wanted the thing to do anything besides just take notes, you'd have to program it yourself.
At another point I had a vic-20. No disk drives; if you wanted to play space invaders, you had to type it in to the basic interpretor.
The fact that modern computers are useful without programming, I think, is something of a disadvantage. The fact that casual programming is discouraged on most smartphone platforms is an extreme disadvantage. I remember doing most of the math homework I did on that model 100; I'd write some basic program to do it for me, then type in the questions. The iphone has several orders of magnitude more power than that trs-80 I lugged around, but just getting the goddamn program on an iphone would probably have presented a bar that was too high for me to bother with at the time. The thing was, writing the program in basic was faster and easier than doing all the math problems by hand. (the method I was taught involved a lot of extremely frustrating "guess and check") If writing the program was more work than doing the problems by hand, I'd probably have done the problems by hand (or more likely, not done them at all.)
So yeah, I guess if by 'good dev environment' you mean 'easy dev environment' I agree. But I really think the focus for smartphones needs to be on lowering the barrier to entry.
ROM BASIC was not a "good" dev environment, but god damn, it was easy. Not only was it easy to learn, it was really, really easy to get booted in to, and easy to see the output of your program. nearly every computer built came with it built in. Often booting in to ROM BASIC was easier than booting the "real" operating system.
There are some things in life for which certain minorities just do not necessarily enjoy. It is not just about women or technology.
Example: I do not enjoy going camping in the wild, and apparently 99% of black people (whether they are African, African Americans, European do not really enjoy this).
And you know what? I just don't see this as a problem. I don't think there's any one right/perfect/proper percentage for any given human activity. Or at least, I don't see how we can objectively conclude what those percentages are.
The better question is the age old, why aren't there more women in tech?
Also eastern culture places more of an emphasis on introspection paired with their particular upbring which typically revolves around a lot of studying, a solitary activity, I think its natural for that segment of the population to find tech to be a desirable career.
Personally if I were a woman, I'd jump into tech. I'm sure being competent and of a different gender would yield significant advantages albeit maybe soft advantages.
In response to Shamiq, this could be why most of the "underrepresented minorities" you see in tech are actually women; arguably, they have less to prove.
Even if its not that risk taking is discouraged, risk averse or more conservative routes are certainly encouraged more.
There is also the pressure of not having multi generational wealth to fall back on.
Not having previously successful family to lean on in times of need or if things don't go right is a strong precursor to risk aversion
