Girls Who Code

  Every year, Aliso Niguel introduces new clubs to students who may be interested and promotes them through the annual “Club Rush,” which invites students to join any club of their choice. One of these clubs is called “Girls Who Code” 

  Jayme Chen (12) is the leader of this club and has been interested in coding for quite some time. Jayme is a very hardworking and dedicated leader and is committed to her contributions as a representative of her club. 

  She shared, “Girls Who Code is a student-run club aiming to promote computer science education at ANHS while simultaneously bridging the gender gap in the technology industry.”

  According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, programming will become one of the fastest-growing occupations over the next 10 years. There will be 1.4 million coding jobs to fill in the US alone, with 67 percent of those jobs outside the technology industry. 

  The gender gap in coding is widely documented worldwide. Only a few studies, however, have investigated whether and how gender differences manifest early in the learning of computing, at the beginning of primary school. 

  Coding has entered the curriculum of primary school education in several countries. As the early years of primary education happen before gender stereotypes in coding are expected to be fully endorsed, the opportunity to learn coding for boys and girls at that age might in principle help reduce the gender gap later observed in Computer Science education. Prior research findings however suggest that an advantage for boys in coding tasks may begin to emerge already since preschool or the early grades of primary education.

  Boys have been more welcomed to the coding environment from the beginning in the early ages of school by many accounts of research and articles, whereas girls have been given less of an opportunity to invest in the science. 

  “Girls Who Code” positively welcomes more females into the field of study and teaches students things they may have not learned in their earlier years. 

  Jayme says that “each meeting I lead with a teaching presentation in which I teach my members about a new coding principle, such as conditionals, loops, or functions. I follow the presentations with a collaborative coding session during which members are able to implement their new knowledge while collaborating, strengthening both teamwork and programming skills.”

  The history of programming languages spans from documentation of early mechanical computers to modern tools for software development. Early programming languages were highly specialized, relying on mathematical notation and similarly obscure syntax. Throughout the 20th century, research in compiler theory led to the creation of high-level programming which uses a more accessible syntax to communicate instructions.

  Software engineering, or coding, has been around for centuries. Software made its debut in 1948 and wasn’t widely called that until 1952. It would be a decade later when the discipline of software engineering was given its name and its due as a form of engineering on the same level as others. 

  For the last 50 years, coding has had a great impact and become a vital part of shaping and maintaining the world. Men and women should be able to share this opportunity equally, which this club provides.