Disclosure: I am a male computer science researcher and software developer. I have years of experience as a TA, and I have taught a CS intro course to college students.
> I think it's great that this lady is going into this field, but I feel really weird about this characterization that CS is supposed to be so super scary and women need special hand-holding and encouragement to attempt it.
I don't think that is what the author is trying to convey. Rather the opposite, actually. She's trying to get across the notion that computer science is a topic like any other.
The problem is that many CS students (you included, it sounds like) come into CS intro classes with significant prior experience. To those without that experience, and not realizing that their peers have a significant head-start, they may feel dumb when they don't get concepts their peers instantly get. Many people will hesitate to ask for help in such a circumstance. I think members of a minority group are then even less likely to ask for help, because they already feel different and perhaps wondering if they belong.
Not many people come into microbiology programs with years of experience in the topic. So while CS is a topic like any other, it tends to have students unlike any other.
I do not think it is enough to just talk about how cool it is in programming. I think that the culture in our courses needs to change, and some of that is on the instructional staff.
Combine this with people who have varying thresholds for "understanding the content" and you have a context where it's quite possible that somebody who is actually quite competent doesn't feel that way because their threshold for "I get it" involves asking lots of seemingly obvious but not actually obvious questions.
When you put this kind of person in a climate where they feel like they are representing a group in front of others, then you have a recipe for somebody who has a lot of promise, but the environment suppresses learning. That's bad.
On the matter of whether this person feels like they are representing a group, it's important to distinguish whether this person "should" or "actually does" feel that they are representing a group. Women should not feel that they are, but we know that some do as a direct result of someone else generalizing them to represent women as a group. We know it happens. Maybe not by the people reading this comment, but we know it happens.
So this all combines into a situation where somebody saying "hey, asking questions is a good thing, stop worrying about making yourself look dumb" is necessary and helpful.
> I think it's great that this lady is going into this field, but I feel really weird about this characterization that CS is supposed to be so super scary and women need special hand-holding and encouragement to attempt it.
I don't think that is what the author is trying to convey. Rather the opposite, actually. She's trying to get across the notion that computer science is a topic like any other.
The problem is that many CS students (you included, it sounds like) come into CS intro classes with significant prior experience. To those without that experience, and not realizing that their peers have a significant head-start, they may feel dumb when they don't get concepts their peers instantly get. Many people will hesitate to ask for help in such a circumstance. I think members of a minority group are then even less likely to ask for help, because they already feel different and perhaps wondering if they belong.
Not many people come into microbiology programs with years of experience in the topic. So while CS is a topic like any other, it tends to have students unlike any other.
I do not think it is enough to just talk about how cool it is in programming. I think that the culture in our courses needs to change, and some of that is on the instructional staff.