I wrote a piece for the Java Advent Blog, about how developers aren’t just communing with the computer, they also need to feel listened to by real human beings.

Read it here

After attending a number of conferences and events, and performing numerous interviews, I’m starting to hear the same things again and again. Since Dan North challenged all my assumptions at QCon, I’m reluctant to outright ridicule them, but I will put forward my personal opinion.

Note: these are things I have heard from multiple sources, so with any luck I am not breaking the sanctity of the confessional interview.

Having been back in London for a few days I’ve had some time to digest the madness that was last week.

My lasting impression of JavaOne is almost entirely positive. Granted, it was my first major conference, so maybe I’m just not jaded yet. But let me tell you what I loved about it (yes, I did cover some of these in my last post):

(First, let me say this post contains opinion, stereotyping and sweeping generalisations. But that’s sort of the point. Also I don’t pretend for one moment to speak for all girl programmers, I can only speak for myself)

When I first started this blog, I wanted to just post “proper” technical information. I wanted to prove that there are girls out there doing “real” programming.

I specifically didn’t want to talk about my gender. I wanted to prove by silence that gender is incidental to what I do.

But, it doesn’t really work that way, does it?

Firstly because one of the first things I get asked by guys when I meet them in this industry is “why aren’t there more girl programmers?” (that’s after they ask “do you work in HR?” followed by “are you a real programmer?” - I’m not joking, this happened this week).