Should Tech Search for Young Girl Programmers the Way the Chinese Find Basketball Players?

Slashdot today hosts a roiling debate about whether women coders are "better" than men. This made me recall a recent Esquire piece that raises some interesting questions about how people choose their professions, and whether society would be better off helping people choose -- in the manner of the Chinese Olympic basketball program hunting for unusually tall kids.

Whether or not you believe women are actually better at coding, one thing is clear from the Slashdot discussion: there are hardly any women coders. And there's no question that's not good -- an entire profession essentially missing out on the brains of 50% of the population.

Studies suggest girls lose interest in technical subjects around middle school, thanks to a combination of forces that have little to do with girls' capabilities. The field has tried to find ways to keep girls of that age going in tech, but it's clearly not working that well. So maybe the industry needs a Chinese basketball-like program -- finding gifted girls and encouraging and maybe even rewarding them to coax them along a path toward technology careers. The industry would certainly benefit.