Some statistics on women in IT

What are your future plans? Why are you still a developer?

If I had a nickel for every time someone has asked me that question I'd have enough change for a year? Inspired by my friend's post here , I thought I'd write about how I ended up doing what I do now. Then I thought about it some more and decided to write about something else. Is it important to know where you are going in life? If you aren't moving forward in your career does it mean that you are doing something wrong? What does "moving up the ladder" even mean? I am going to attempt to answer these questions for myself. Its almost 5 years since I began my professional career. It has been great so far, lots of ups some downs as well. However, once in a while when I get the title question it still throws me off. It is usually my parents or well meaning relatives, sometimes friends that ask this. I have nothing much to say to them except "I enjoy what I am doing right now, haven't really thought about the future". But the truth is - I have thou...

Craigslist, wrong calls and me

I have the worst luck when it comes to getting wrong calls on my phone. Why do I say that? It started a few weeks ago with a phone call - "I'm calling to ask about the Nissan altima you have on sale". I replied saying wrong number yada yada etc. After the third call like this, I finally asked them where they found the ad and it turned out to be Craigslist. One google search later I found the ad listing my number, probably a typo. Contacted them via Cragislist and asked them to correct it. End of story, right? Two days later, I got ANOTHER call, here is how it went. Caller: Maam, Im calling about the toyota four runner for sale Me: You mean the Altima, that was a mistake in the ad. I am not the seller and it has been corrected in the ad online. Caller: Is your number 602-*******? That's what's on there.. Me:ARGGH Another google search, and I find a DIFFERENT Craigslist ad in another city, listing my number. What are the chances of this happening to the same perso...

Don't teach programming by asking students to program - What?

Saw this article in one of the ACM blogs that cited a recent study in an educational psychology journal on how teaching introductory Cs students to program by having them write code actually has a detrimental effect. More details here . I absolutely disagree with the author that this study has implications in CS! First of all it cites a study done with teaching algebra so it is a different domain. I think that the problem is that there is too little programming going on rather than too much. I also wonder of anyone has considered that an introductory programming class probably has a mix of two very different types of students - one just exploring CS as one of many career options, the other the kind that took their dad's computer apart in the garage and started programming at age 8. The latter kind still have to take the introductory class because of degree requirements but now it gives you a class sample that's skewed and hard to make any conclusions about. If everyone that to...

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