On Monday, 9 May 2016 at 19:09:35 UTC, Joe Duarte wrote:
One D-specific question I do have: Have any women ever posted here?
Yes, I can think of.... three off the top of my head, and there's probably more that I just don't remember. Of course, I can name twenty male regular posters here without even thinking about it, so a skew is evident. I don't want to name any names though.
The vast majority people who are introduced to programming do not pursue it (likely true of many fields, but programming may see a smaller grab than most – this point requires a lot more context).
I'd be surprised if that point survives scrutiny, though I guess you need to define "introduced" and "pursue" to say more.
I'd also be surprised if you find an empirical gender gap after controlling for programming language syntax, too. Even if we grant that PL syntax is suboptimal, why would that result in a gender bias? But, hey, you never really know until you actually collect the data...
