JavaScript is for Girls

The traits of a “good programmer” differed by country, but they were universally male-gendered, enforced by hiring managers and other programmers who sought to replicate their own characteristics—not consciously, for the most part, but simply because the jobs were important.

Hicks, the computing historian, can’t stand it when people tout coding camps as a solution to technology’s gender problem. “I think these initiatives are well-meaning, but they totally misunderstand the problem. The pipeline is not the problem; the meritocracy is the problem. The idea that we’ll just stuff people into the pipeline assumes a meritocracy that does not exist.”