CS 404 Position Vlog

Title IX: Equality in Athletics and...Computer Science?

I am a firm believer that women can do anything they want.  I am also a firm believer that the government creates more problems than it solves, as Title IX demonstrates. This well-known law seeks to eliminate discrimination on the basis of sex in athletics and academics.  While this is a noble goal, in practice, the theory doesn’t hold water. Already there have been athletics cases where men wish to participate in an activity but cannot because doing so would mean more money spent on men’s athletics than women’s.  Think of the infamous Cal Berkley men’s gymnastics debacle, when the year after the team won a national title, the program had to be cut to make the school Title IX compliant. In academics, I believe government should wait to act until there is more evidence that the lower enrollment rates for women is a problem that can be fixed by government. Otherwise, problems similar to the athletics biases might arise in academics.  Lower enrollment rates for women in technical programs might be caused by something completely natural like a lack of interest, and government intervention could mean pushing people into a major or career that they don’t like.  

Magnifying our calling as programmers

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints judiciously uses the varied talents of its members to further its work.  This practice is evidenced by many of the smart phone Church apps. These apps aren’t created by paid developers but instead are community developed.  Members of the Church who have programming talents volunteer their time and work together to create apps for the Church, which in turn saves the Church money.  As an LDS programmer, I would like to start contributing to these community developed projects for the Church so that I can grow my talents while helping the work of the Church, just as in the Biblical parable of the talents, which teaches that people should use their talents instead of hiding them away.

Open-source learning

Google groups are amazing; they are also the perfect metaphor for why the open-source software development model is so successful. Most upper division CS classes utilize a Google group so students can collaborate. Students receive answers to their questions much faster than waiting for specific times to ask the teacher or TA because the nature of Google groups allows collaboration and learning 24/7. Letting anyone, even the dumbest person in class, answer your question seems counterintuitive to learning. The beauty of the open-source model, though, is that if a question gets answered wrong, others will inevitably answer it right. The power of anytime, any-person collaboration drives open-source projects, like Linux, and fuels a competitive model for software development.