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Gender differences and programming environments: across programming populations

Authors:

Margaret Burnett,

Scott D. Fleming,

Valentina Grigoreanu,

Mary CzerwinskiAuthors Info & Claims

ESEM '10: Proceedings of the 2010 ACM-IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement

Article No.: 28, Pages 1 - 10

https://doi.org/10.1145/1852786.1852824

Published: 16 September 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Although there has been significant research into gender regarding educational and workplace practices, there has been little investigation of gender differences pertaining to problem solving with programming tools and environments. As a result, there is little evidence as to what role gender plays in programming tools---and what little evidence there is has involved mainly novice and end-user programmers in academic studies. This paper therefore investigates how widespread such phenomena are in industrial programming situations, considering three disparate programming populations involving almost 3000 people and three different programming platforms in industry. To accomplish this, we analyzed four industry "legacy" studies from a gender perspective, triangulating results against each other and against a new fifth study, also in industry. We investigated gender differences in software feature usage and in tinkering/exploring software features. Furthermore, we examined how such differences tied to confidence. Our results showed significant gender differences in all three factors---across all populations and platforms.

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Cited By

Inie NStray JDerczynski L(2025)Summon a demon and bind it: A grounded theory of LLM red teamingPLOS ONE10.1371/journal.pone.031465820:1(e0314658)Online publication date: 15-Jan-2025
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0314658
Santos IFelizardo KSteinmacher IGerosa M(2025)Software solutions for newcomers’ onboarding in software projects: A systematic literature reviewInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2024.107568177(107568)Online publication date: Jan-2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2024.107568
Newendorp AGilbert S(2024)Gender-Related Preferences for Learning by Tinkering: Updated Research is NeededProceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting10.1177/1071181324127211868:1(165-169)Online publication date: 24-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1177/10711813241272118
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Index Terms

Gender differences and programming environments: across programming populations
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)

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cover image ACM Conferences

ESEM '10: Proceedings of the 2010 ACM-IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement

September 2010

423 pages

ISBN:9781450300391

DOI:10.1145/1852786

General Chair:
Giancarlo Succi
Free University of Bolzano, Italy
,
Program Chairs:
Maurizio Morisio
Politecnico di Torino, Italy
,
Nachi Nagappan
Microsoft Research

Copyright © 2010 ACM.

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Publication History

Published: 16 September 2010

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National Science Foundation

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ESEM '10

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SIGSOFT

ESEM '10: 2010 ACM-IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement

September 16 - 17, 2010

Bolzano-Bozen, Italy

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ESEM '10 Paper Acceptance Rate 30 of 102 submissions, 29%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 130 of 594 submissions, 22%

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Cited By

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0314658
Santos IFelizardo KSteinmacher IGerosa M(2025)Software solutions for newcomers’ onboarding in software projects: A systematic literature reviewInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2024.107568177(107568)Online publication date: Jan-2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2024.107568
Newendorp AGilbert S(2024)Gender-Related Preferences for Learning by Tinkering: Updated Research is NeededProceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting10.1177/1071181324127211868:1(165-169)Online publication date: 24-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1177/10711813241272118
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Santos IPimentel JWiese ISteinmacher ISarma AGerosa M(2023)Designing for Cognitive Diversity: Improving the GitHub Experience for Newcomers2023 IEEE/ACM 45th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Society (ICSE-SEIS)10.1109/ICSE-SEIS58686.2023.00007(1-12)Online publication date: May-2023
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