"That doesn't make much sense to me either. Most video games don't teach anything about computer science. They may serve as a vehicle to get children interested in what computers can do, but no CS skills are required to play Halo."
1. First part of the answer is simple: Boys like videogames. They play videogames. Videogames are a great vehicle for getting interested in "Hmm, I wanna make a better awesomer videogame ... wonder how I go about doing that". Curiosity takes care of the rest.
2. It is, apparently, culturally acceptable for a boy to arse around on a computer all day, while the same does not hold true for a girl. This makes it harder for girls to learn subjects that take huge amounts of "being alone and thinking".
"Hmm, I wanna make a better awesomer videogame ... wonder how I go about doing that". Curiosity takes care of the rest.
That's true, but it doesn't seem to me that a large percentage of programmers I know got interested in programming that way. I haven't conducted a formal survey, but that's the impression I have. It's very possible that my impression is wrong or that I'd get different results talking to a high school CS class than programmers in their 20s and 30s.
It is, apparently, culturally acceptable for a boy to arse around on a computer all day, while the same does not hold true for a girl.
I think that's less true now than it used to be in large part due to the increase in social uses of computers. Some of those social uses lend themselves to the sort of customization that would get people interested in coding as above. I'm thinking specifically of things like FBPurity, a browser extension that hides unwanted content on Facebook.
There's certainly an underlying issue with cultural stereotypes where boys are expected to tinker with technical/mechanical things and girls aren't. The distinction might be entirely arbitrary, as girls are expected to tinker with things thought of as feminine. Few people would be surprised by a girl making alterations to her clothing.
> That's true, but it doesn't seem to me that a large percentage of programmers I know got interested in programming that way. I haven't conducted a formal survey, but that's the impression I have. It's very possible that my impression is wrong or that I'd get different results talking to a high school CS class than programmers in their 20s and 30s.
I don't know any programmers who didn't get in to programming that way.
That said, I do work at a game company, so I meet more game programmers that not, but even in my university days, all the serious students had started programming before they entered, and the initial motivation for that was games.
>> It's very possible that my impression is wrong or that I'd get different results talking to a high school CS class than programmers in their 20s and 30s.
> I don't know any programmers who didn't get in to programming that way.
My first attempt at programming was asking our TRS-80, in English, if it would make a laser sound. "Syntax error" was it's reply.
But yeah trading stories about mucking with CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT to get games working is par for the course when I meet tech people in their 20s and 30s.
I think it's a throwback to 20 years ago, where in order to play videogames, you had to fight with your system, whether it be for memory allocation or soundcard install or whatever. I used to work with a guy who wrote his own mouse driver just to save a few k of memory. That kind experience exposes you to the gubbins a bit more than modern games do.
1. First part of the answer is simple: Boys like videogames. They play videogames. Videogames are a great vehicle for getting interested in "Hmm, I wanna make a better awesomer videogame ... wonder how I go about doing that". Curiosity takes care of the rest.
2. It is, apparently, culturally acceptable for a boy to arse around on a computer all day, while the same does not hold true for a girl. This makes it harder for girls to learn subjects that take huge amounts of "being alone and thinking".