<i>If you aren&#x27;t interested in &quot;computer parts and tech magazines&quot; then what exactly is it about computing that makes you want to do it?</i><p>I am a woman with a Certificate in GIS. I know some HTML and CSS. I run some blogs.<p>I joined an email list -- a parenting&#x2F;homeschooling list -- when my now 28 year old son was 11. It led to me becoming a moderator of an email list for a time. My advice was seemingly popular on that list. Someone liked my writing and wanted to put some of it on their website. Later, she helped me move that to a site of my own and take over the coding.<p>There are things I would like to do in this world to help other people -- to educate them, to empower them to solve hard personal problems. I joined Hacker News in hopes of eventually learning to write code to do that. So far, life has gotten in the way.<p>My two adult sons are masters of framing traditionally male interests in a way that appeals to me. My oldest son got me playing Master of Magic -- now one of my favorite games -- by telling me &quot;It&#x27;s like SimCity&quot; and then helping me to play it in a way that appealed to my interest in civilization building. My sons want to make video games for a living. If things work out, I may join them in that endeavor at some point.<p>Having girly motivations does not mean writing code is of no interest to you. You can be interested in people or whatever and see code as a way to accomplish your goals. <i>Mulan</i> is the single best movie I know of that portrays a woman having success in a man&#x27;s world doing a man&#x27;s job for girly reasons: She loved her father. She felt guilty that she was a daughter and not a son. If she had been born a boy, she would have been conscripted, not him. So she went in his place -- and saved a nation, to keep her beloved family member alive.<p>You can be a girly girl and love someone enough that you would murder others over it. We aren&#x27;t all helpless whiny crybabies. Sometimes, doing things like a girl makes you a total badass.<p>But there are serious &quot;marketing&quot; problems with how we approach the problem space currently.