What Happened to All of the Women in Computer Science?

[Gormy Cuss]

16. Most web designers write code and thus some computer science background is helpful.

As to needing a degree, there's a difference between being an end user of applications and writing code for them. Because of my research background I know many statistical programmers and they use specialized languages like SAS to process raw data into sophisticated analytic reports. All of the *good* ones I know have extensive training in computer science though most don't have degrees in it. I know how to write simple programs in SAS but only because I had a set of templates handed to me by a programmer and I adapted them over the years. IOW, I'm not a programmer, but an end user who understands a little code. These days I work in web site design as a content provider but I can also make simple changes in the programming modules to modify style sheets beyond what is offered in the templates. I have a friend who is a web site developer and programmer and she writes a lot of code to add function and to tweak the look of sites for clients. So in her case, what she's doing is definitely on the computer science side of things. What I do is more like being the impatient kid who knows a few tricks so that she doesn't have to wait for the developer to make the changes for her.