As many have said, math is really not that important for software development. And many developers find work without a computer science degree. Some developers (like me, in the past) are even English majors.

We could dig into all these issues in more detail, but they don’t seem to the real issue. The real problem seems to be the unwritten assumptions, clubby atmosphere, and outright sexism that discouraged you in the past (and still in the present) from going deeper into some of the tech pursuits that interested you.

As a person who’s now mostly a tech educator — and a parent of three girls — I wonder how much this situation is changing. There are (finally) visible female role models in the tech world, and I can rattle off plenty of female developers who are far brighter than I am. But how hard do they need to fight to get there? And what about the experience of the average woman who’s interested in tech— are they still facing subtle and overt cues telling them this isn’t really place where they belong?