Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!think.com!mintaka!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!dkuug!iesd!iesd.auc.dk!tmh From: tmh@iesd.auc.dk (Torben Hagensen) Newsgroups: comp.object Subject: Re: Reflections Message-ID: Date: 14 May 91 12:54:50 GMT References: <1991May10.201843.7186@lynx.CS.ORST.EDU> <3926@motcsd.csd.mot.com> Sender: news@iesd.auc.dk Organization: Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Aalborg Lines: 40 In-reply-to: lance@motcsd.csd.mot.com's message of 14 May 91 01:32:31 GMT >>>>> On 14 May 91 01:32:31 GMT, lance@motcsd.csd.mot.com (lance.norskog) said: Lance> I've found that women seem prefer the Smalltalk paradigm over the Lance> procedural paradigm, when faced with learning programming. They've Lance> generally been exposed to the procedural style first, and didn't enjoy Lance> working with it. Once they got into Smalltalk, they enjoyed programming Lance> for the first time. This has in my opinion nothing to do with the programming paradigm. The Smalltalk environment is simply nicer to use than f.x. an editor and a C++ compiler. Lance> My theory is that while men are generally fascinated by machinery Lance> and the fiddling thereof, women are generally fascinated by personal Lance> interaction and find machinery boring. The procedural paradigm Lance> is mechanist in the extreme, whereas a Smalltalk program run Lance> can be viewed as a conversation between fully designed members of Lance> a society. When programming is viewed in psychological terms, Lance> women generally become much more interested. Some men (and women) have more patience with intolerable environments than others, because they are fascinated by the machinery. Again, this has nothing to do with procedural or functional vs. object oriented paradigms. The difference is that men are brought up to be fascinated by maschinery. ------------------ My point is that there is no difference in men and womens tendency to describe the world as objects and operations. It could be interesting to examine whether women uses more nouns in their natural language than men, since that would be the ultimate consequence of your theory. ------------------ Lance> Lance Norskog -Torben (alias tmh@iesd.auc.dk)