REVERT TO CONSOLE

I thought the blog title calls in for an interesting research topic, however someone has already presented a paper on exactly the same name. I’ve been working on writing code and not-writing-code-but-getting-paid-for-getting-code-written kinda job all the while, it’s almost a certainty that today, serious women programmers are as fictional as marvel comic characters. Well, I’m not talking about just programmers but damn good programmers, who do their job because they love it. I remember coming across one such lady sometime back and it was such a pleasure working with her. But that’s pretty much about it. The rest (if they ever existed), were just merely supported their poor husbands or dragging themselves for surplus income in their families.

Hold on. Lets look back. There are actually some great women who contributed some of the best things that happened to Computers. Did you know that: -

• The world’s first 6 programmers, were all women? (the team that wrote the software for the ENIAC).
• The design lead for SmallTalk was a woman – Adele Goldberg
• Yahoo!’s overall classification and organization scheme, the foundation stones of Yahoo’s system is designed and lead by a woman – Srinija Srinivasan.
• One of the world’s first software patents was by a woman, Erna Schneider
• World’s first compiler — Yes. Developed by a woman - Grace Murray Hooper.
• One of the Driving forces behing Java was a woman – Kim Polese

We need more such people. Women like Fran Allens, Amy Fowlers , Kathy Sierras, Holly cummins and the GNOME Foundation. They bring a lot of diversity to the table. Unfortunately, in today’s IT world, at most, we see women as Graphic Designers, QA specialists, Business Analysts or as game programmers (where there is a real need for women), but where are the open-source-women programmers? Industry sources count that less than 2% in Open source are women. When you attend a Tech conference, it’s carcass is spread with geek men fondling their macbook pros and round rimmed glasses, bald VC’s (who happen to be men too) wait to exchange their business cards and Grey haired fat ‘male’ managers checking Outlook mail in their IBM Thinkpads. Women only occupy the reception counters with their pretty faces or double as Hosts for the evening.

Where are the women in IT?

We miss them, we miss them so dearly that our java cups pale without their feminine scent, our keyboards miss the romance of the nature, the 19″ monitors dont invoke a woman’s sensuous, caring touch and the meeting room is so dull without the assertive voice of a confident woman in charge.

We miss the geek-girls.