I, too, describe it as “managing a hierarchy of abstraction”. I come from a mathematical background initially, so the idea of finding patterns in things was already an interest. I think you’re on to something here :)
On Wed, Sep 25, 2019 at 07:57, Siddhartha Kattoju <skatt...@cloudops.com> wrote: > Hello Diversity People, > > I happen to have a chat with Myrle Krantz during one of the ApacheCon Runs > that got me thinking. > > The following is a sort of brain dump that resulted. I'm sharing this with > the hope that your thoughts around this will help clarify diversity > messaging. > > All of the messaging around getting people involved in software and stem > seems to revolve around learning to code when actually it should be about > problem solving in general. People don't generally reason about things in a > constrained abstract framework like code. People generally think in higher > layers of abstraction. The whole learn to code message in some sense is the > equivalent of saying don't worry about all these high level concepts and > constructs you have learned and reason with now, instead learn assembly > because it's the future. This is obviously a bit exaggerated. The way I see > it is that in order to be able to express and reason in code one need a > translation layer between the layers of abstraction. I think this what the > 11 year old who spoke at ApacheCon NA 2019 solved with her board game. > > Being a STEM person I have been trained to think of the world in terms of > solving problems. This probably makes me biased but I think it would have > been cool if the process of solving the problem of making the "code" layer > of abstraction accessible to kids was showcased as opposed to the some what > prescriptive feeling way in which the talk was delivered. I guess this kind > of ties into the diversity thing a bit. I have only one data point to > support my thesis but I will share it anyway. A cloud infra company has > ~20% women and a neighbouring data science company has over 50% women. Both > use computers to solve problems but at different layers of abstraction. I > think this suggests that "code" is not always the best primary problem > solving medium. It is a tool that can be leveraged in a lot of places. I > find that the messaging around diversity does not reflect this. Essentially > diversity messaging doesn't convey diversity of thought. That said I don't > mean to imply any correlation between types of reasoning and different > genders. > > Best Regards, > > *Sid Kattoju* > > Cloud Software Architect | Professional Services > > c 514.466.0951 > > > * <https://goo.gl/NYZ8KK>* > -- Matt Sicker <boa...@gmail.com>
