The computer boys take over
by Nathan Ensmenger · first published 2010
77% recommend23% neutral
Why HN recommends it
History of how programming became a profession and how its culture, skills and gender makeup took shape from the 1950s onward; recommended for readers curious about the roots of computing culture.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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…dropping out: they are under-performing because they don't have to work as hard to succeed as girls. Why are there mostly white men in the IT industry? I recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Computer-Boys-Take-Over/dp/0262050... It answers your question and it has nothing to do with who the best programmers are. If you can't explain something, maybe you should do more research.
on “You keep using that word "meritocracy"” ↗Recommended reading on this topic: Ensmenger's "The Computer Boys Take Over", or the more scholarly "Gender Codes" edited by Thomas Misa. The latter in particular gives lots of detail, not just in describing the situation (the imbalance isn't the same everywhere, in every company…
on “Martin Fowler: The Fallacies and Reprocussions of Diversity Imbalance” ↗Although not short, Nathan Ensmenger's "The Computer Boys Take Over" is a fantastic history of the complicated and diverse roots of software. In the intro he states, like the comment above, that the history of software tend toward linear histories of hardware development.…
on “A Brief History of Software Engineering (2008) [pdf]” ↗The book "Computer Boys Take Over" by Nathan Ensmenger (https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/computer-boys-take-over) is a useful reference here. It goes through the early history of computing discipline and discusses how computing turned into…
on “Ask HN: Why isn't there a professional body for Computer Science?” ↗See Nathan Ensmenger's "The Computer Boys Take Over" and Marie Hicks' "Programmed Inequality". https://youtu.be/4vCDHJ4-D80 https://youtu.be/WTLJ7saIV3o
on “What Happens to Us Does Not Happen to Most of You” ↗To the extent what you describe about depth and breadth is true, it’s true of all knowledge and all subjects. I highly recommend Nathan Ensmenger’s The Computer Boys Take Over for a look at the history of the so-called “skill gap” (which is mostly bullshit) since the 1960s. It has a little to do with the nature of the subject matter, but it has a lot more to do with historical…
on “An explanation to the global talent shortage” ↗Just finished The Computer Boys Take Over, by Nathan Ensmenger: fascinating read about the deep roots of computing culture. Many of the debates we have today were already raging in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, including: * professionalism vs individual…
on “Ask HN: What are some great posts or articles about history of computing?” ↗…Agar's "The Government Machine," dealing with the evolution of technology and expertise within the UK government; Medina's "Cybernetic Revolutionaries," about Beer's Cybersyn project; and Ensmenger's "The Computer Boys Take Over," about the cultural development of the "programmer," are all great reads. Also, you can look beyond pure technology for interesting adjacencies: for example, Schatz's "The Genius of the System" describes…
on “Ask HN: Good Books on the History of Technology?” ↗As others have noted, lots of people question why there are so few male preschool teachers. Additionally, the fact is that there once were more women in tech than there are now. The book The Computer Boys Take Over and others have shown that early programmers were women and over time the concept of a programmer changed to our more modern conception.
on “My positive experience as a woman in tech” ↗…organizations. They needed to have unusually free access to the most expensive equipment (and the building in general) and weren't supervised in person by the usual hierarchy of bosses.[1] [1] From The Computer Boys Take Over, a very good basic history of the professsion: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9247209-the-computer-boy...
on “Open Questions” ↗The usual story (as told in Nathan Ensmenger's "The Computer Boys Take Over") has the change earlier than that. He says in the late 1940s to early 1950s lots of women were hired for "coding" positions, which at the time was seen as a a fairly unskilled, clerical work. In the…
on “Most Female and Male Occupations Since 1950” ↗…trade, you make the trades-people interchangeable." This pushback has been going on since the very earliest days of the attempts to professionalise software development. Here's Nathan Ensmenger in "The Computer Boys Take Over": "In response to this perceived challenge to their authority, managers developed a number of interrelated responses intended to restore them to their proper role in the organizational hierarchy. The…
on “Just a Techie? – Techies, Devs, Boffins and Geeks” ↗Actually, that is exactly the claim. For example, the book "The Computer Boys Take Over" quoted all over in TFA claims that the drive to "professionalize" programming and make it more "engineering like" was specifically to drive women out, after men found out the profession was gaining status…
on “Born for it – How the image of software developers came about” ↗That's from the book "The Computer Boys Take Over" - you can find a summary here: http://stanford.io/x6Pk35
on “On being a girl in computer science - a confession” ↗