| Title: | Topics of Interest to Women |
| Notice: | V3 is closed. TURRIS::WOMANNOTES-V5 is open. |
| Moderator: | REGENT::BROOMHEAD |
| Created: | Thu Jan 30 1986 |
| Last Modified: | Fri Jun 30 1995 |
| Last Successful Update: | Fri Jun 06 1997 |
| Number of topics: | 1078 |
| Total number of notes: | 52352 |
From the keynote address given by Dr. Harris Sussman to the STC Interchange
Conference on March 20, 1990:
...And it's not too much of a leap to say that the whole mode of
thinking that gets reflected in the code that programmers write comes
out of a social experience that is different for men than it is for
women.
The whole notion of what a game is turns out to be a male
preoccupation. Men are interested in games and, therefore, get very
involved in simulations and other kinds of games. Women are much more
interested in play, which is different from games. How do you know
it's different? Well, a game has a winner and a loser. And you know
who that is by keeping score. And you do that by keeping time. That's
something men do. Women don't do it. Not only do men keep score.
They say that they score with somen. Scoring is very much of their
minds.
| T.R | Title | User | Personal Name | Date | Lines |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 135.1 | CADSE::GLIDEWELL | Wow! It's The Abyss! | Thu May 17 1990 19:44 | 11 | |
> ...And it's not too much of a leap to say that the whole mode of > thinking ... Yes, it is too much of a leap. Way too much. Because people who claim they can identify a writer's sex from the writer's prose continually fail in actual tests. Such tests have been done quite often. I think the person who wrote this is dizzy with words and concepts. This passage is a bunch of words and notions; it has nothing to do with the people I actually know. | |||||
| 135.2 | 4GL::ANASTASIA | Where is my mind? | Tue May 22 1990 18:50 | 14 | |
re: -.1 I agree that they are notions. I attended this STC presentation and while Dr. Sussman did say some interesting things, he didn't offer any research to back up his ideas. It seemed that his intention was to get us to recognize that there are different learning styles and technical writers need to get out of the rut of addressing one or two types of audiences. He tried to achieve this by using "shocking" statements. Most were unsubstaniated. It was an effective presentation, but I don't think that it was necessarily the truth. -Patti | |||||