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tessr

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So, I used to go to Penn and now I go to one of the schools on that list. As far as I can tell, Penn CS students are better prepared to start companies, and probably as well prepared to be developers, as the students at my current school. They are not as well prepared to, say, go get a PhD in CS unless they go above and beyond the ordinary coursework.

But when the tech blogs talk about the "Stanford of the East" they're not really talking about grad school preparedness anyways. Stanford is set apart from the other schools on your list by its entrepreneurial spirit anyways.

The point is not at all that PennApps is more popular than Justin Bieber. The point is that, for a certain demographic, hackathons are getting crazy popular.

There are a lot of things that are scaled here. For one thing, this is about perception and expectation--who would think that a hackathon would sell out in less than an hour? Everyone expects Justin Bieber to do that, but a hackathon?!

Hah, well, I was surprised to get even FOUR upvotes. Good to know, I guess...?

Anyways, I had meant to bring up HN as more of an example of a bubble--both because it has an exclusive attitude (which is exemplified in part by a non-zero barrier to entry) as well as a self-selecting user base.

The next time I write my boilerplate bio, I'm totally going to use that line.

Just kidding. (Can people on HN read sarcasm? I never know.)

I don't think being an asshole is inherent to either men or women. Similarly, both men and women are capable of being kind.

You might want to try it some time--it's not so bad!

This is a really inspiring attitude. I know what you're talking about--I often feel this way myself.

The difference is that while this is inspiring, having people put you down or call you stupid isn't.

Hmm, maybe. I guess I meant more that bad behavior is more acceptable in tech because people are "socially awkward"--when, really, it doesn't matter WHY people are exclusive because the effects don't change.

This post isn't really meant to be about getting more women into tech. It's about getting more of EVERYONE into tech.

And that jobs page is almost hilariously stereotypical.

Exactly. Thanks. Besides, I include that mostly to show that I think like an 18 year old. I'm talking mostly about behavior I've seen from other 18 year olds. That's where I am in the world right now.

Haha! Well, at Penn one of our intro courses is in OCaml, which is a fantastic leveling language. I felt like I was programming for the firs time... which, actually, was awesome! I know a lot of my classmates felt like they could skip the course, but I really enjoyed it and I really enjoyed learning to think in a new way.

This is a really interesting point, and I'm sure that it's a factor for a lot of people. I hadn't thought of it at all!