Gender Differences in Programming?

The content of this web page formed part of a poster presented at the ITiCSE 2001 conference. Delegates were presented with four fragments of code extracted from student assessments. They simply had to determine for each piece of code whether a male or female student wrote it. Only 25% of respondents correctly deduced the gender of each author.

Think you can do better? Take a look at the code displayed here.

· Did a male or female student write it?

· How can you tell?

· Are you sure?

NoDeliveryException, NoCashierException{

Pump p = f.findPump(myTank.getFuelType());

// define a variable because expression too unwieldy

double amount = myTank.getCapacity() - myTank.getCurrentLevel();

System.out.println("Amount of fuel requested: "+amount);

System.out.println("Fuel level before delivery: "+

myTank.getCurrentLevel());

p.deliver(myTank, amount);

System.out.println("Fuel level after delivery: "+

myTank.getCurrentLevel());

Cashier c = f.findCashier();

c.receivePayment(p);

}

}

class Pump{

public Pump(Vector myTanks){

myTanksList = new Vector();

myTanksList = myTanks;

}

// accessor

public double getCostOfLastDelivery(){

return costOfLastDelivery;

}

// method to invoke fuel delivery from forecourt tank

public void deliver(Tank car, double quantityRequested)

throws NoDeliveryException{

for(int i = 0; i < myTanksList.size(); i++){

ForecourtTank ft = (ForecourtTank) myTanksList.elementAt(i);

if(car.getFuelType() == ft.getFuelType()){

costOfLastDelivery =

ft.deliver(quantityRequested, car)*ft.getCostPerLitre();

Related Publications

· Where have all the girls gone? What entices female students to apply for Computer Science degrees

· Arresting the Decline: how can we encourage female students back into Computer Science.

· Gender Differences in Learning to Program.

· Gender and Programming: what's going on?.