A friend once told me that "computer people" tend to be male and socially immature.

So by her comment, if you're male, you're not necessarily immature? Woo-hoo!

Anyway, this got me thinking. How many monks are married?

In my case, yes, Monks do get married -- Annette and I tied the knot August 3, 2002 in front of friends and family at my parents house in Waterloo. Her two boys, in Hawaiian shirts, were the ushers.

... why not also include whether we are single and looking?

Feh .. this is supposed to be a Monastery, after all. :)

Ask her what statistics she is using to base her conclusions from.

If I had to make a wide-sweeping statement such as she did, I would say that *male* "computer people" tend to marry women *older* than themselves, as the women who have matured to the point that they consider security and comfort over fickle puppy love choose a man with a well paying job who can work at home. Attributes that just happen to coincide with much of the jobs in the fields related to software.

Females don't take as active of a part in *anything* related to computers. Perl is not special. The reason that I believe is the closest to the truth is 'social engineering.' Females are not encouraged by their peers, or their teachers, from grade school, to be competent professionals in fields related to computers. The women who *do* make it past this socialogical barrier do quite well, so I do not believe that genetics has any part in it. They are assumed to not be interested, so they don't become interested.

I'm 23, married, and we just had our first child. I disagree with her 'socially immature' comment. I describe it as 'socially disinterested.' Why enter mundane and boring conversations about the weather or the latest movie, when I could be learning a technical skill that could actually improve my understanding in my field? People assume that because other people are unlike them, that these other people are lacking. I don't tell people like her that they are lacking because they happen to enjoy boring conversations with people that they don't even like at occasions that they wish they weren't even at.

Just a critique of people like her... I don't know her, so I might be way off base... :-)

There are quite a number of married monks. There are also a decent number of female monks (and yes, that is the correct term). I happen to be neither -- I'm quite single, and male. I find it interesting, however, that PM seems to have a quite large proportion of females, for as technical a world as it is -- I see far more women here then (say) on any computer mailing list I've ever been on, or any other technical community I can think of. In fact, I see more female monks then female students in intro-level CS classes.

There are probably several reasons for this, the most important reason being that I mainly notice people on the CB, and the CB is a social medium. (As sexist as it sounds, I think men are more drawn to technical fora and women to social fora. If you think about the population of PM vs. AIM or LJ, your'll see what I mean... the population of the internet, surveys have shown, is predominatly male, but AIM and LJ are both overwelmingly female.)

Please read HOWTO Encourage Women in Linux - http://ldp.kernelnotes.de/HOWTO/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/ for some interesting thoughts on the topic "women / computers / sexism"

As for the stats:

I'm not married but living together with my girlfriend (and our two kids (7 and 3)) for eight years. Neither of us is social immature, and we're nearly the same age (although I'm 10 months older...)

Also what is about Perl that attracts more males than femals

I think that compared to other very technical fields, Perl attracts more women than those. This might be because you do not need to decode a lot of complicated technical jargon ( a common technique used by males to shut out women) to start using Perl.

--
#!/usr/bin/perl
for(ref bless{},just'another'perl'hacker){s-:+-$"-g&&print$_.$/}
[download]

-derby

ps: married almost seven years to a very non-computer gal who is more socially mature than me.

Got you beat. Married 16 years to an extremely non-computer gal who has JUST taken to web browsing at just short of gunpoint and she is DEFINITELY more social and mature than me.

But then again you're only as old as you want to be, right? : )

There is no emoticon for what I'm feeling now.

A friend once told me that "computer people" tend to be male and socially immature.

"computer people" tend to date younger women because our maturity is more on their level.

As to married; 10 years and we have a daughter that is almost 2.

Also what is it about Perl that attracts more males than females? Does Perl's use in systems administration have anything to do with it?

As to Systems Admin and Networking. I can only think about 8 women I have worked with or knew about.

Since monks can include our pictures on our homenodes, why not also include whether we are single and looking?

Or would that be the madam? ;-)

NodeReaper already is the Love Master, just ask rozallin :)

John J Reiser
newrisedesigns.com

Congrats, best wishes :).

I am married but I wasn't a monk back then so it's more like 'Do marrieds become monks?' I will be married to the same woman for 21 years at the end of this month. I'm a bit of a loner but like to be with close friends. She's a bit more outgoing than I am but would probably also rather stay home than be in a crowd. We have four daughters. See the picture on my home node.

From what I've seen here, it looks like the male to female ratio is about the same as any other group of programmers I've been with.

Update: My wife prefers to know as little as necessary about computers. As long as she can read her mail and talk on IM, she's happy.

---
print map { my ($m)=1<<hex($_)&11?' ':'';
$m.=substr('AHJPacehklnorstu',hex($_),1) }
split //,'2fde0abe76c36c914586c';
[download]

Going on 18 years with two kids. The frightening part is we've been together (dating, living together, married) for over 25 years.

I met my wife before I ever touched a computer but she stuck with me as I became a geek. Personally, I think she's just afraid of losing the home sysadmin at this point. Once my son picks it up I think I'm history.

And you wondered if monks got married! :)
Dave

Does that mean they were upgrades or bug fixes? ;)

There is no emoticon for what I'm feeling now.

It depends on who you ask.... :)
Dave

---

Code On!

Truthfully, I don't see much correlation between being a "computer guy" and being socially less successful. I'm only 20, but most of my seniors in the computer field are married.

--PotPieMan

A friend once told me that "computer people" tend to be male and socially immature. She wasn't trying to insult me. She just said that "computer people" tend to date younger women because our maturity is more on their level.

Well, I'd have to agree that "computer people" do seem to be male most of the time just like cheerleaders tend to be female. It just seems to be the focus of interests for those masses. And as time goes progresses these trends seem to flatten out, too. I disagree with the correlation of "computer people (guys)" dating younger women because they are computer people, however. Guys in general date younger women. I don't believe that inherent interests have anything to do with this trend. I doubt that, although I don't completely disagree with it, the maturity level of a guy has much to do with his choice of dating a certain age female. I would almost say its more physical. Now, the bond between a man and a woman is most definitely something that can be determined by the maturity level of a man and a woman and how close they are to the same level of maturity.

Women do tend to be more mature at earlier ages than men but men catch up at some point in their lives and thus a statement such as the one she made cannot be so general but could probably be stated more accurately if broken up into age groups.

Anyway, this got me thinking. How many monks are married? We have stats for many things. But do we know how many of us are married? Since monks can include our pictures on our homenodes, why not also include whether we are single and looking?

I am married (and somewhat separated right now too, but we are working on that) for 4 years now...about to hit 5. We have no kids (marital difficulties and whatnot). There is a loooong story behind my marital issues but may I just end this paragraph with 'long-distance dating without sufficient prior knowledge of who your partner is and then getting married is a baaaaad idea'. When I say 'prior' I mean that if you get into a long-distance relationship before you know each other and then get married without getting to know each other well in-person, I speak from personal experience, this this is a very difficult thing to work through in a marriage generally. Anyone else had an experience like this? Oh! And by the way...NO We did *not* meet online. :) In fact we tried the whole chatting online thing while we courted and we just couldn't communicate very well. So it was back to the long-distant phone bills for us after a couple of tries of irc.

Also what is it about Perl that attracts more males than females? Does Perl's use in systems administration have anything to do with it?

I don't know that it's Perl but rather programming in general. I personally think that women could be and maybe are better programmers than men are in general, but they just aren't interested in it. I know my wife can't figure me out, though. She has *no* patience. I have a *lot* of patience. She sees me struggle with code that I can't seem to get to run right and she can't understand how I can work my way through the problem without going bonkers. She admits that she would not be able to finish any projects due to her lack of patience. My wife is *not* a computer or technically oriented person.

I do find this an interesting topic, however. For instance, I am a programmer/Systems Admin/Network Security Analyst/blah blah blah. It's probably safe to assume that many of us wear many hats besides programming. I find that I enjoy the programming portion the most. However, how many other hats do we wear? I don't "look" like a programmer. In fact, I also work in law enforcement and I look like a police officer more than I look like a programmer. I also dabble in acting. I definitely don't look like an actor. What I find interesting is that as the general population becomes more interested in computers the "look" of computer people becomes more obscure. I would almost say that there is no such thing as a "computer person look" in today's society in America. You do, however, have people that look like they are nerds or geeks but that certainly does not show that those kinds of people are proficient in computers or programming. by the way, I am a geek/nerd and I admit that I am proud of it.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
- Jim
Insert clever comment here...

Good luck!

Re maturity level: I think that geeks don't reach full maturity until age 30. More complex brain and all.

But I dated older women because my peers in school were older than me.

What makes you think that Perl attracts more males than females? If you allow for the fact that more programmers (of all types) are male, how does the m/f ratio for Perl compare to C++ or Smalltalk?

Married, but a few non "computer people" looked at me strangely when I told them the venue for my wedding (on a glacier during a shore excursion at the 2000 PerlWhirl).

Who says you can't have it all? :)

oakbox

Look at every programmer you know, are any of them Jerks?

Yell yeah. Actually I'd say about 70% of them are. I also have found a correlation between being a "Jerk" programmer and writing unmaintainable, ugly, overall low-quality code.

If you're confident in what you do and approach your tasks with a positive attitude, you tend to improve faster.

Cool! Another monk got married on a given date for tax reasons. *grins* And, here I was, thinking I was the only one...

------
We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

Don't go borrowing trouble. For programmers, this means Worry only about what you need to implement.

I had a starter marriage and I am currently sharing life with a perl geek.

As for women in perl, there have been nodes on that before.

Bah. "socially immature" people tend to become computer people. It's not the other way around.