Computer Science’s Image Problem

Jens Alfke on the aforelinked New York Times story on women in computer science:

How is it that people can be so excited by the Internet and digital media, but totally turned off by the prospect of designing the stuff that makes those things work? They seem to confuse computer science with data-entry, or boring MIS drudgery like writing payroll systems. Or do they just totally not care about where things like web search and MP3 codecs and 3D graphics and peer-to-peer protocols come from … are they just some magic that falls out of the sky and no one should give a second thought to?

Right. The solution isn’t to pretend that computer science isn’t about programming. The solution is to find ways to expose how much fun and how interesting programming can be.

★ Tuesday, 17 April 2007