How does someone with such a pedigree not know how to program before university? I grew up poor in an immigrant neighborhood and even in the early '80s (really bad time in NYC), I was coding Basic in sixth grade on a Commodore Vic-20. In high school, I was doing Pascal on PCs and assembly on a Zilog Z-80. Did I mention my family was dirt poor? My parents never even have a chance to go to high school.
Let's face it, writing software is not for everybody. The author is such a person.
This seems way too dismissive. The world is extremely varied; plenty of people aren't predicted by their 'pedigree'. It's great that you got into programming despite poverty, but that doesn't generalize.
And your last paragraph is just a putdown, which is not ok here. Please don't do that in HN comments.
The article doesn't mention the author's programming experience before university.
The author also has a CS degree from Stanford, interned at Facebook and Google, and is currently a software engineer at Pinterest. Even if your earlier assertion about lack of programming experience is true, it's obvious the author isn't incapable of writing software. Did you even read the article before commenting?
"At Stanford, I took two introductory computer science classes. I soon became convinced that I was much too behind my male classmates to ever catch up."
I did not even know it was possible to take TWO introductory courses, but what do I know, I did not go to Stanford. Everyone that knew how to code before university breezed through the intro course. This was still true when I was a TA for undergraduate courses during grad school.
I have worked with plenty of CS graduates that cannot code during my decades in the field.
Well I don't know the guts of Stanford's CS program either, but the term 'introductory computer science class', particularly pluralized, could easily be a course of the form 'Introduction to X' where X is some broad CS speciality, not necessarily a programming one. It could be Introduction to HCI, Artificial Intelligence, Complexity Theory, whatever...
And of course, if she had no programming ability beforehand, the fact she overcame your hypothetical hurdle to be able to put 'Software Engineer of <famous silicon valley company>' on her resume suggests she's not in the class of programming-incapables to be completely written off.
Programming and STEM in general are targeted towards men (though this message is getting better with the various diversity initiatives). Boys have male role models and are socialized into engineering career paths. This messaging is missing for girls and women. Since they are not encouraged or do not see themselves as programmers, they inadvertently miss the opportunity to pursue these paths at a young age.
In your case, you overcame the class barriers of learning programming. This doesn't preclude the existence of other social barriers, such as gender, race, etc.
It's very admirable of you to have been programming from such a young age, but is it entirely unimaginable for someone to start coding in university? You're glibly discounting the experience of many many talented people. Tech is becoming a field with many different types of people with diverse backgrounds and it's necessary to recognize and accept that fact.
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that only people who have been doing things since their childhood can or should become experts in those things.
You may want to compile some list of counterexamples or few will treat you seriously.
I'm skeptic. It takes dedication and time to become an expert. And the older you are, the easier it is to find yourself working for survival all your time or get lost in bullshit and no longer have the clarity of mind to learn.
Let's face it, writing software is not for everybody. The author is such a person.