[Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL

[Laura Creighton]

Why females shy away from math and science is no big mystery.  It is
deemed 'not useful' by them.  See many posts by Anna Ravenscoft on the
subject here in edu.sig archives.  These days she is 'Anna Ravenscroft
Martelli' having married Alex Martelli.  (Hi Anna.  cc'd to you so as
to not talk behind your back, and in case you want to comment.)

I'm a mutant.  I think that mathematical beauty is _the most important
cool thing_.  All things I love share in it, including wine-making and
gourmet food preparing.  The same burning fire I get in me when I get
a perfect bite of the best food perfectly matched with best suited
wine -- I get when I get a new mathematical insight.  And they feed
each other.  I write new mathematical ideas down on restuarant papers
because I get them because the food has stimulated me in interesting
ways.  Mentioning sex sounds crude, but my poor lover has had to put
up with countless versions of the 'Eureka' principle -- I need to leap
out of bed, not bath, naked screaming that 'I have found it' -- and to
write it down before it is gone again.

But most women are not like this.  They want concrete usefulness.
Here at Chalmers in Sweden the women students outnumber the men in all
the Chemistry departments.  Chemistry is presented as concretely
useful.  When I offered a night-course of three weeks at the Chalmers
computer society (all chalmers students are automatically members) on
compiler design, pypy, and how to hack ...  only got 4 takers, and all
male.  A different 4 week course -- 'how to build a bot to take care
of seeing if your favourite websites are announcing the things you
want to know about -- NO PREVIOUS PROGRAMMING SKILLS NECESSARY' got me
57 takers, 35 of which were women.

Women are not programming because they do not see it as Art, Joy,
and a worthwhile selfish pleasure.   But also because they do not
see it as useful.  I have no idea why this is a mystery to the
educators.  They must not speak to many women.

In Sweden we have laws preventing the sort of advertising that
I think MSFT is doing in the USA -- targetting children is
illegal.   But given that you are stuck with it, I would be
very interested in seeing if it has an effect in student sex
ratios.

Laura