Looks like Summer (my daughter) is getting the Flash fever... Here is her latest, a dress-up and 'accessorizer' game. Now if she can only incorporate a way to have a Dad waiting in the parking lot for two hours, and maybe a check-out counter, I think she'll have a hit on her hands : ).

Summer's Dress-up Game

It always amazes me how a 13 year old girl will make completely different things on a computer than, say, 15 year old twin boys. Sky and Free recently landed a summer job making video games for a company in Florida, which seems to have kicked up Summer's motivation level a notch (and theirs of course!). At least the motivation part of the equation has a common denominator : ).

Speaking of girls and gaming, I was really lucky to be somewhat involved in a province wide program called 'Girls in Gaming'. It was the brainchild of Norm Lee, who has an incredible track record with effective tech programs. The basic idea was getting groups of high school girls together every weekend, add motivation and mentoring, and see what they come up with. It has been very rewarding for everyone involved I think, and really fun to watch what evolves. I think this kind of thing is *really* important. Women are obviously way under-represented in programming, and this is a huge loss. It isn't just the 'man'-power potential there, it is the different way of thinking. Women are way better at communication imo, and programming has been steadily shifting from a math domain to a communication domain. Good code communicates it's intentions clearly. Leaps in programming tend to be leaps in the ability to communicate intention.

One of my favorite programming stories is the story of Grace Hopper, the inventor of the first compiler. Really I think only twice in history have humans attempted to communicate with computers, the first time was Lady Ada, who invented the idea of programming (abstract out your instructions rather than manually set up the machine each time), and the second time when Grace Hopper tried to talk to machines in English. Imo these were the two largest step we've taken, and both from women who knew communication with a machine was the point. So this is what we miss with 90%+ male programmers. It would be awesome to see a program like GirlsInGaming repeated in other places, Norm will be running it again here in Manitoba next year, which is great to see.

"Pursuing her belief that computer programs could be written in English, Admiral Hopper moved forward with the development for Univac of the B-O compiler, later known as FLOW-MATIC. It was designed to translate a language that could be used for typical business tasks like automatic billing and payroll calculation. Using FLOW-MATIC, Admiral Hopper and her staff were able to make the UNIVAC I and II "understand" twenty statements in English. When she recommended that an entire programming language be developed using English words, however, she "was told very quickly that [she] couldn't do this because computers didn't understand English."

(quoted from here).