KINGARTHUR'S PROFILE

author=iddalai

author=kentona
Can someone explain to me what is stopping females from trying programming?

Ever thought about getting into something cool and then looked at the people doing it, realised they were assholes and ended up not getting into it?

Well, that's it.

The problem with your answer is that you (and a whole bunch of other people) are completely misunderstanding what I'm saying. I'm not talking about the occupation of programming, I'm talking about the very act of programming itself and I can see nothing that would prohibit women from persuing the latter.

So again, are you just misunderstanding me (or am I misunderstanding your original query?) or is there something that seriously prohibits women from opening Notepad and writing some code? I really would like to be enlightened because this misunderstanding is starting to become repetitive and getting in the way of the discussion at hand.

author=iddalai
Did I ever said that? I didn't. What I said is that men can never write as well about women, and vice-versa.

Plus, notice the sentence you used: "men just suck at writing about girls". As an example you could also have used "women just suck at writing about boys" or "people just suck at writing about the opposite gender", but you didn't, because this issue is deep within our roots and you even used "girls" instead of women. This could mean you think women are all girls, I say you were only outraged because it was implied that "men" sucked at writing about them. I wonder if you would be so outraged if I had said it the other way around.

Wait, I did, if you read my post I say: "vice-versa".

I admit "girls" was a bad choice of words, my apologies. Allow me to rephrase: "Men just suck at writing about women." I'm not sure why I used "girls" there in hindsight really, I've been using "women" everywhere else so it must have been a slip of the typing fingers.

Now that aside, what are you trying to argue here? That I'm refusing saying to say "women just suck at writing about men"? Regardless, I'm not showing favoritism to one gender or the other and you're not going to get anything out of me from trying to pull a "gotcha!" on that angle.

author=iddalai
The audience and the creators are correlated. The audience will buy what's for sale and the creators will create what sells.

Also, independently of being able to differentiate real-world from fiction, every human being if influentiated by several factors while growing up and living in society, these factors change people, like I mentioned: education, school, films, books, etc.

We are all changed by our surroundings, if you have bad surroundings then it will change you for worse. What I mentioned earlier is an example of that, you don't even notice it.

My argument is that simply calling games sexist and then subsequently removing them doesn't solve the actual problem of people being sexist. The creators and industry behind them aren't entirely out of fault, true, but simply piling all the blame on them won't fix anything either.

Really, the only true answer as far as I can see is to educate people and make it clear when something is fine to be played for laughs and when it's definitely not.

author=iddalai
I agree that poor writing is also an issue when creating characters of any gender. But I never said "that someone of one gender can't write well about the other gender", what I said was "that someone of one gender can't write AS well about the other gender" slight difference, but it's there.

I admit I missed the "as" there, sorry 'bout that. However, my original point still stands because I feel you place too much emphasis on the gender of the writer rather than their actual skill. Good writing takes genuine skill and effort, us game devs should know this better than anyone short of other writers, and ultimately gender will play a minimal factor in how the writing comes out. Yes, I agree with you that men can't completely understand women and vice-versa, but good writing is indeed possible and credit is due where credit is due.

author=iddalai
There's a flaw there, you forgot step 5

- Finding someone to give you work and money.

That someone may only choose to hire you based on your gender and not on actual merit. I've seen it happen in my workplace. Women may learn how to program by themselves, but that doesn't mean someone will hire them.

Alright, did I just misinterpret the original query or something? Because everyone, including you, who has responded to my little comment on this has been going off on tangents about professional women in the workplace.

The original argument was, and I quote, "Many times women aren't even given a chance to try out programming, so they won't even know it they like it." I put forth the counterargument that programming itself is very easy to pick up and get started on. Notepad, reference material, some creativity, and boom you're programming! What's so hard to understand about this? Is there really a practical reason that women can't open Notepad, grab some reference material, get creative, and go off writing code?

It should also be made clear that being a programmer does not require you to be making money off of what you're programming. I've never took on any commercial jobs to date with regards to programming and I still consider myself a programmer (an amateur programmer, mind you). If you were talking about professional programmers specifically then you will have a point, but you were talking about programmers in general and I'm going to call out the fallacy you put forth on that one.

Also,

After dealing with male programmers (be it in school or anywhere else) that behave improperly with them they may never want to even try programming.

This has nothing to do with women not being given "a chance to try out programming".

I won't reply to the rest of your post because you mis-quoted me while you were writing it. I'll let Harm and LockeZ, who wrote the two quoted posts respectively, get back to you on those.

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author=Acra
Note who he quotes it as from. Really, he's not calling me a liar? He's calling me far worse than that, actually.

Apparently I misread who was being quoted. My apologies! That aside however, I still stand by my original statement that nobody's called you a liar, nor "far worse" as you put it. We might have differing opinions from you but we have most definitely not been offensive or insulting to you in this discussion (as far as I can tell) and I believe it is within our right to expect you to treat us in kind.

EDIT: Noticed the rest of your post was also directed to me. I was short on time so I guess I'd missed it (plus there was that quote from Harm). I'll address it below:

Enjoy being attacked?

author=harmonic
people love being offended, so they seek it out. It gives you righteous indignation, which feels good. It also gives you sympathy and support system. There's like no downside to it.

Alright, that one I can't find a justifiable reason for. Granted I'm sure Harm doesn't mean any ill will towards women judging from his subsequent posts, I understand how that statement might have been a bit out of line there. I'll let Harm take the details though as he was the writer and not me.

The other two are a bit more broad. I've taken a fair bit of offense to your own 'programming is sooo easy to learn' quips for starters, and Sailerius and harmonic have said some extremely broad and hurtful things.

First off, I said that programming was easy to get started in, I never said nor intended to say that learning to program was easy. How hard learning to program is will ultimately depend on the person; I personally find programming ultimately a question of logic, but some may find that hard or even entirely different and they aren't at any fault for finding it so and I never pressed assumptions on the matter. I merely stated that the act of programming was as simple as opening Notepad and writing code and that there was nothing I could see that would bar women from that act short of their own unwillingness.

Also, it would help to specifiy what it was that you found offensive from our posts. We can address why we said what we said, apologize if apologies are called for, and debate this current topic like mature, sensible adults instead of flinging mud.

I'm personally for gender equality in the most literal of terms, as my previous posts would imply, and I'd like to continue discussing this topic in a mature, sensible, constructive manner if it is possible to do so.

author=slashphoenix
The problem isn't that women are not capable of programming; they are. The problem is that despite their ability, they are not accepted, treated fairly, or presented the same opportunities. They are often not treated as equals, even if they earn that through personal skill and merit. Thusly, they don't have the same chance that men do.

The original argument was that women "aren't even given a chance to try out programming". "Trying out" programming is as simple as what I stated above, so that's what I wanted to point out; there's nothing barring women from trying programming as far as I can tell.

As for the specifics of female programmers on the field, I won't comment there as I lack suffient data to create a constructive comment on it.

All I will say is that trying to directly increase female count is about as bad as barring women from the industry.

Let everyone of every background and both genders have equal opportunity, if there are places for women in the industry then the bricks will fall into place naturally.

Note: I'm not trying to be discriminatory or anything, so please don't take this post like that. (｡= ω =｡)

Not to spam, but am I the only who didn't get what "Forum Title" was and where "Bottom left, under text entry box." described? (*´Д｀)