Letter to New York Times re Cornelia Dean's 4-19 article on women, computer science, and mere programming

Editor, New York Times

To whom it may concern:

Cornelia Dean ("Computer science takes steps to bring women into the field", April 19th) takes her sources somewhat for granted when they tell her that to attract women into the field, "programming" needs to be de-emphasized.

The problem is that the exit from "programming" is the triumph, once again, of Road Runner, for it exits to applications more properly taught in disciplines other than computer science, leaving the graduate, like Wiley E. Coyote, with nowhere to go, but down.

While it is true that the very basic learning of the syntax and use of a programming language is not university material (Princeton's computer science department requiring and not delivering, at university level, a class in these basics), "programming" as the learning of the DNA of computer science (what it means to control an instruction follower) is essential.

Otherwise, to continue using cartoonish images, the student is unleashed even on complex applications (which, for any kind of advanced use, support the "Turing equivalent" of programming) like Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer's hapless Apprentice. If she survives but if "programming" is de-emphasized, she is unleashed upon the world without the ability, like Mickey, to manage complexity.

However, mere "programming" continues to occupy in the mind of decision makers something for the underclass to aspire to at best for the same reason writing is subordinated to speech. For this reason, elite students shrink from it lest the experience of triumphantly managing symbolic complexity turn them into community college material.

Ms. Dean's article does women a disservice because it buys into this classist image of "programming" and will track them, as it has in the past, into applications in which they are neither able to manage the complexity of programming, nor able to grasp the application in full.

Regards

Edward G. Nilges