Are most programmers male?

[Eni M.]

Hi,

I was following with interest this thread, and before it's abandoned I
wanted just to add two lines. I am a female PhD student in Computer
Science and Python is my preferred programming language. I first heard
about it some 2 years ago, while trying to learn Java from Bruce
Eckel's Thinking in Java. He was praising Python somewhere in the
introduction and the name caught my eye, and after some time (in which
I tried but could not make myself like Java enough to continue any
longer with it) I decided to see what Python was about. Of course I
felt in love with Python, and started to write right away everything I
needed for my research with it.
Now I think I suffer the Blub Paradox described by Paul Graham,
because I can only "think in Python", and if I try to program let say
in Java, I just get angry.

Returning to the original question "are most programmers male?", I can
say that deducing from the posters' names whether they are male or
not, is not always possible. I doubt whether it could be done even for
my name, since it is not writen in the English way: Anny.

And besides it, I almost never write to c.p.l, although I spent at
least half an hour each day reading through it, and I really know
who's martellibot, timbot, amk, or Laura Craighton, and what they mean
to the Python community.

So, perhaps the number of female lurkers, or female contributors with
apparently non-female first names, or anonymous accounts in this list
(or other programming languages lists) is larger than you might think.

Eni M.