Also, these scholarships are based on financial aid. Yanked directly from article: " 10 female students, we’ll provide a $5,000 needs-based scholarship"
I just want to understand why you feel that offering a grant is "belittling." You claim to not assume what people think, yet you are trying to judge how women make decisions to get into a particular field. Being involved in outreach, I know that intimidation and lack of relation to others plays a factor. While I certainly know many women that won't get into CS because they aren't into it, I certainly do know handfuls of women that didn't get into it particularly because of the gender gap.
I think it's interesting how you assume you know what a woman thinks coming from a man. Have you asked women you know about their opinions about a Computer Science degree?
Job descriptions just shouldn't have "rock star" or "ninja" unless they are hired on their ability to perform music in front of an audience or on their katana wielding skills.
I appreciate Jeff's mature response to Ryan's article. What most irked me about Ryan's initial article was how he seems to yell "FIRE!!!" and tries to backpedal the situation. It is hard to take that seriously even when he has some good points.
I am a huge advocate for the Django web framework, yet I always tell people that web frameworks (Django|Rails|etc) are not for beginners. Like many have mentioned, it's easy for experienced web programmers that have been mucking around things done "the old fashioned way" and without any true MVC structure.
I assume it would be difficult for novice programmers to really understand what the advantages and best practices of MVC web frameworks are for, when they have little experience of having worked in anything else.
This guy is SO out of touch with independent music it's not even funny.
How many people know amazing, talented bands that get no where? Good music within itself does not promote itself. You have to advertise, whether it's engaging in fans online or offline, or making friends with other musicians to split the bill.
Do not have a backup plan? Is he insane? For every insanely lucky guy like him there's thousands of other guys working off their blood, sweat, and tears only to end up extremely poor or with nothing. What he's saying is like every startup is going to be Facebook or Google... I'm sorry that's not going to happen. But at least even in a startup you tend to make decent money, not near poverty wages like touring musicians have to endure for years before any "break" ...