The 20 Girls Who Code participants working out of AppNexus's Flatiron office (Photo: girlswhocode.tumblr.com)

“Maliyah, step away from the mouse!” called Ashley Gavin, a software engineer at the MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory and instructor at the Girls Who Code summer program. Maliyah Greene, the recipient of Ms. Gavin's reprimand, reluctantly tore herself away from Photoshop to come and talk to Betabeat. We were sitting in AppNexus’s Flatiron office, watching her fellow Girls Who Code students work on virtually tagging brick walls with their names. “It’s not as hard as I thought it would be,” Ms. Greene smiled.

She is one of 20 high school girls who gave up summer vacation to learn about app development, robotics, web design and other topics at Girls Who Code, a summer computer-engineering program for girls.

Though this is its first summer in existence, Girls Who Code already boasts executives from Gilt Groupe, Twitter and General Electric on its board and has been working with AppNexus and other New York startups throughout the summer.

Girls Who Code isn't the only high-profile effort to make coding more female-friendly. Other programs have also received financial backing from fellow startups. Earlier this year, New York City-based Hacker School, a freeform three-month coding workshop for adults, announced a partnership with Etsy, Yammer and 37Signals that would provide 18 grants to women who wanted to attend the program. Girl Develop It, a group that arranges coding workshops for women around the country, has also hosted meet-ups at the offices of Etsy, Twitter and Google. With few women pursuing programming careers, this move is an act of survival for many companies, who hope to increase the size of the talent pool--and maybe even grow revenue by leveraging an XX-perspective on innovation.

Indeed, labor conditions have made tech executives, in a word, desperate. As the Girls Who Code website points out, projections suggest that by 2018, there will only be enough computer science graduates in the U.S. to fill 29 percent of related job openings. Vaughan Smith, Facebook’s director of corporate development, told The New York Times that each engineer was worth $500,000 up to $1 million. And in an industry where the majority of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Etsy users are women, a female programmer could help companies to develop features that better fit that demographic's needs.

One of Hacker School’s backers, 37Signals, does not currently have any female programmers on staff. Hardly uncommon in the business world, where only 18 of the Fortune 500 companies are run by women. As we've noted, the gender gap among the top venture capital firms is even more abysmal.

“It’s self-serving in that sense: showing women that they can be successful ... means that we’re going to have many, many more really qualified engineers down the road,” said AppNexus co-founder and CEO Brian O’Kelley, adding that some female workers in the office were even inspired by the Girls Who Code students to learn more about computer programming. “It’s really just shown our employees, if a bunch of young women can learn to code, you can too. It’s really empowering.”

Of course, this all hinges on whether the students and women who enroll in these programs will choose to pursue a career in computer-related fields. While Ms. Greene is only a sophomore in high school, she said would like to look into studying graphic design in the future, and another student, Diana Navarro, said she is considering majoring in computer science. However, other Girls Who Code members are not so sure.

“I don’t know. I’m not very good at it currently,” said Lucie Pierre-Louis, a rising junior. Maria Gonzalez, a rising senior looking to go to University of Chicago, said she really wants to study business but might consider a minor in computer science.

“It seems like the number of the girls have family pressures not to remain in engineering and sciences,” said Alexis Maybank, the founder and CSO of Gilt Groupe and a board member of Girls Who Code. When they visited the Gilt offices, many of the Girls Who Code students asked Gilt Groupe's female engineering interns: “What do your parents think about it?”

Rasmus Lerdorf, the creator of the programming language PHP who now works at Etsy, visiting Hacker School (Photo: twitter.com)

If Hacker School's previous co-ed classes are any indication, the program could directly benefit Silicon Alley's startups. Five out of the six original Hacker School students later found a job in programming, and other graduates work at companies such as OkCupid, Betaworks and Tumblr. Startups including Bit.ly, Quora and Pinterest also pay Hacker School to recruit talent to their business.

“I just hope that by helping we can increase the possibility that there will be some great female programmers out there who we might be happy to consider for jobs if they were to apply,” said 37Signals co-founder Jason Fried.

Other companies are motivated to fund these type of programs as a way to balance the scales.

“I think Etsy genuinely supports the cause of what we're doing in terms of a new type of programming education and one that's much more inclusive of women. They were very clear that they would be happy and see this as a success even if they didn't hire any graduates,” said Nicholas Bergson-Shilcock, a Hacker School cofounder.

Despite the increased support from the tech community, Sara Chipps, the co-founder of Girl Develop It, noted that this new breed of non-profit female-oriented educational programs sometimes has a more difficult time getting funded than their less gender-specific counterparts. She declined to comment on whether this was the case with Girl Develop It, but she did say similar initiatives have gotten stuck in the funding phase.

Ms. Chipps said she thinks this problem arises because “organizations that usually donate to nonprofits really don't have an understanding of what we're doing because it really hasn't been done before.”

She pointed to the difficulty Black Girls Code, a program that aims to educate female minority students in programming, faced when trying to raise $18,500 through IndieGoGo. While more than 400 individuals contributed to the campaign, the program only received about five donations over $150. Within 33 hours of closing, the campaign had only raised $12,477. The project eventually raised more than $21,000, but only after two local companies--RailsBridge and Blazing Cloud--agreed to match up to $2,000 of donations.

Black Girls Code had a harder time raising than similar IndieGoGo campaigns run by more general developer education programs. Another, non-gender-specific coding program, CodeNow, also launched a campaign this summer to raise $15,000 for their summer coding program. Unlike Black Girls Code, nearly 20 people contributed more than $150 to the campaign, including multiple $1,000 donations. CampInteractive, a technology education program for underprivileged youth, was able to meet their $20,000 through a lucrative partnership with Nokia, who matched $10,000 in donated funds.

Kimberly Bryant, the founder of Black Girls Code, said she initiated the IndieGoGo campaign because her program wasn't raising sufficient funding through traditional methods, pointing to an "issue of cluster."

"Corporations are saying that they want to increase the diversity across the technology and STEM fields, but kind of only focusing on a couple of organizations to funnel their dollars to," she told Betabeat.

However, Reshma Saujani, the founder of Girls Who Code who has close ties to the tech industry, said she did not have difficulty raising adequate funding for the program. Similarly, Hacker School was able to raise more grant money for women than expected. After admitting 23 women into the program, three more than initially planned, Hacker School realized more participants were requesting grants than the 10 they initially bargained for. Thus Etsy reached out to 37Signals and Yammer to provide funding for eight additional grants, bringing the total to 18. (Five women attended without scholarship money.)

Etsy has also allowed Hacker School to operate out of its Brooklyn office, a situation that Mr. Bergson-Shilcock said has proven very beneficial for the program’s participants. Working in Etsy’s office has provided “a lot of cross-pollination and mingling,” he said, noting that Etsy employees and Hacker School students have had a lot of time to interact during the twice-weekly companywide lunch called Eatsy.

Ms. Saujani said their partnership with tech companies has helped her students get a better, less stereotypical vision of what it is like to work in the tech industry. After touring Google’s plush New York office (which includes a tricked-out bistro, rooftop garden and gaming room), “One of the girls said, 'If this is work, I'm going to work everyday,’” Ms. Saujani recalled. The girls have also worked with a series of speakers and will eventually choose one of these speakers as their mentor.

“There's really this community of people that are coming around these girls and lifting them up and helping them,” Ms. Saujani said. “We're already changing the cultural stereotypes of what a computer scientist looks like or feels like or sounds like. And it's powerful.”

Brotown, USA (Photo: Twitter/Jack)

On Twitter, judgement is swift--and vociferous. Minutes after Jack Dorsey tweeted out a photo of lunch with Square's summer interns, users (of the service he cofounded) notice a glaring absence of any XX chromosomes at the table. "Looks more like a sausage party, than a ham & cheese party," quipped designer Jody Ferry. 

Lunch with the @Square interns. Featuring little sandwiches with the crust cut off. #aw #summerbreak #backtosquare

— Jack Dorsey (@jack) July 3, 2012

"no female interns @Square? We like mobile payment, too!," chided Charlotte Han, a community manager at SAP Community Network. Activate founder Anil Dash also chimed in, "none of your interns are women?" An anonymous user who tweets under the handle @rrocckstarr added more of the same, "@jack @square Where are the females?! Don't see a lot of diversity in that pic..."

Mr. Dorsey quickly admitted that there were no female interns "in this batch," adding, "We'd love to find some." But that offhand expression of interest failed to appease techies who have been actively trying to right the ratio. "@jack what were obstacles to hiring female interns this time around? no qualified? no interested female candidates?," asked HuffPo's executive tech editor Bianca Bosker.

Mr. Dash, as he is wont to do, offered up a practical solution, suggesting Square take a look at Etsy's partnership with Hacker School to offer $5,000 grants to train more women into the engineering. "We will research," Mr. Dorsey promised in return. Mr. Dash then delicately invoked Mr. Dorsey's much-admired leadership skills. (The serial cofounder recently sat down with Wired to discuss how Square, "hopes to infuse financial transactions with a dose of human intimacy," in which case it never hurts to include half the population.

@jack @square please do. So many admire that you're detail-oriented & care about culture -- and this is much bigger than a small detail.

— Anil Dash (@anildash) July 3, 2012

So do you think @Jack regrets sending out this tweet or regrets inventing Twitter? Our money is on the sandwiches--if only those crusts hadn't been so #awww.

The map of participating NASA Space App Challenge locations

3..2..1..BLASTOFF. It's official: NYC is now one of the spots for NASA's Space Apps Challenge, a two-day development event happening in cities on six continents and aboard the International Space Station. StartupBus NYC and the NY Tech Council are both helping with the coordination of the event, which focuses on how technology can address problems with minimal resources in creative and innovative ways. Register here.

SPLISH SPLASH. Don't you hate it when all your friends get into a band you've already been sick of for weeks? You tried to spread the good sonic vibrations early on but to no avail—the world simply wasn't quite ready for that new fangled rock 'n' roll music. But that's not a problem anymore. Splash.FM, a new social music platform, will make sure you get the credit for discovering a band before they were cool. Splash.FM has been in private beta since Jan. 16 and is preparing to go live publicaly on April 17th. Like on Spotify, users can follow friends, search for and stream songs and make recommendations for friends—called "splashing." Beyond that users will be be able to see what songs are trending among their friends and assign "splash scores" to rate other's music discovery skills. It's an official hipster socreboard! Splash.FM plans to eventually allow artists and labels into their analytics to see how when, how often and where their songs are being played. Take that, Spotify!

HACKER'S RETREAT. Hacker School, an intense three-month, full-time program for people serious about improving their coding skills is now accepting applications. The New York-based school provides space and touts a nice balance of structure, focus, time and community of like-minded techies eager to develop into coding wizards (and witches). Although admission is gratis, NYC living certainly is no—that's why Etsy is providing ten Hacker Grants to ten female students to the tune of $5,000 each. The first day of class is June 4th.

HIGH PROFILE. Microsoft BizSpark is sponsoring The Next Web Conference where 19 startups will go live in front of a global audience of investors and jorunalist with the goals of attracting capital and building buzz for their product in the press. The competition is divided into two tracks: alpha competitors will launch their business for the very first time while established, beta participants, will seek to make headlines with major announcements. The judging panel will be chaired by Amazon's Werner Vogels with Alex Ohanian of Reddit, Mark Randall from Adobe, Joe Gebbia of AirBnB and Chad Hurley from YouTube and Delicious. We're most excited to see the debuts of DeadSocial, a service for sending messages post-mortem and Snowciety, a mobile app that provides athletic data and friends' locations on the slopes.

PIMP MY DESK. Turnstone, the workspace solutions company that distributes everything from bike hooks to cable drops, is giving away five office makeovers to companies with 99 employees or less. For $25,000 worth of design services and furniture, companies must submit a video to convince voters that new space will make all the difference. Judges will pick the top 25 videos and then public voting will pick the top five winners. Finalists will be notified by May 1st.

TECHANTHROPY. The Future Energy Investor Feedback Forum is tonight at NYU's Stern Business School. The event begins at 6:30 at 44 W. 4 Street in the Kaufman Management Center where eight startups will pitch judges to solve the global problems of energy demand, supply and environmental stewardship. Future Energy will conclude with drinks nearby at 8:30 General admission tickets are sold out but last minute tix may still be available via the wait list.

TRAVEL AND TELL. Wanderfly, the travel recommendation site, just launched 600 ever-evolving travel guides. The Wanderfly 2.0 has only been live for about a month but has already scaled very quickly as travelers constantly update and improve the "lenses" by submitting their own content. Some cities have multiple lenses—partying versus sight seeing, for example. Check out one of NYC's right here.

SHOPCHELLA. Kaleidoscope, the app and widget that lets shoppers browse editorial and street-style photos, is partnering with the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival to bring five to 10 men's fashion festival looks to Details magazine as soon as the first week of the festival is over. Details announced that this is the first time any magazine has worked with Kaleidoscope. Indian headdresses and short denim shorts-shorts coming to a Details readers everywhere.

HI-HO, HI-HO. TheLadders, a matchmaking service for professionals and employers, is hiring for a bunch of positions including software and lead software engineer, front end-architect and lead SQL database engineer. Benefits include comprehensive healthcare and unlimited vacation.  Early stage VC firm Greycroft Partners is hiring a pre-MBA Associate for a two-year commitment in their NYC office. Applicants should have strong analytical skills, be team oriented and have attention to detail. The selected candidate will evaluate potential investments in early stage companies and assist in the prep of fundraising documents. Send your resume to resumes@greycroftpartners.com. Two Silicon Alley jobs fairs are coming up: the third annual NYC Startup Job Fair and the Uncubed Tech Talent Fair, plus networking fest NY Tech Day is coming up on April 19.

(etsy.com/shop/cellsdividing)

There is only one woman in Hacker School's current class of 20--but a generous pool of grants from Etsy could literally change the ratio. Etsy is offering $5,000 grants for up to ten female developers who want to attend the summer session of Hacker School, the immersive programming class hosted quarterly in New York. The hope is that the grants will allow women to move to New York if necessary to attend Hacker School (and then come work at Etsy afterward). 

In September, Etsy had three women out of 96 employees in its engineering and operations department, and none of those women were managers. Given that Etsy.com makes a majority of sales to women, the company decided that wouldn't do. Six months later, Etsy managed to hire eight more women in engineering. "That’s a great start, but we still have no female engineering managers, and we’re nowhere near a gender-balanced department," Marc Hedlund, Etsy's VP of engineering, wrote in a company blog post yesterday.

Hacker School is funded by startups who recruit its graduates; companies also provide the space for the class. Etsy is hosting the 2012 summer session. The summer class will be 40 students, and Etsy is hoping that Hacker School can find 20 women to admit.

"Twenty is a small number, but it would roughly match the total number of female engineers I’ve hired in the past 17 years. Even a small change can have a large impact, given the severity of the issue," Mr. Hedlund wrote.

Applications for Hacker School and Etsy's Hacker Grants are now open.

STEALTH TOWN. What is fiftythree.com? Sources say a local VC is leading their round. The web offers no clues, their Twitter page doesn't work, and we haven't received an email from their stealthy splash page. Things that are 53: a bank and savings and loan holding company, the We Are the 53 percent meme, and the Year of the Consulship of Silanus and Antonius.

FALLTHROUGHS. Dave Lifson's Postling was on the verge of closing an acquisition, sources told Betabeat, expected to close in the next several weeks. But just as investors started to do the exit victory dance, the buyers dropped out. The company is "talking to a couple other suitors at this point," a source said.

ROCKSTARS.  Hacker School and General Assembly's Career Fair both required applications, and not everyone is getting accepted. "I'm getting the idea that this is a closed economy where the same 100 Ruby coders are just getting passed around from seed company to seed company," wrote on disgruntled coder. "I don't see anyone hiring in the middle range... everyone wants just the 'rockstars.' I remember this anytime a founder starts saying in a public forum, "All you have to do to get a job is... 'what, be rich, white, and have gone to MIT?'"

THRIVING! Thrive Capital has been quiet lately, one source noted; they had the GroupMe acquisition, and not much has been heard from them since. Perhaps it's because the boutique investment firm just slipped into a fancy new office? Moving can be a bitch. UPDATE: A source points out what a quick Crunchbase search would have shown: Thrive has put money into Dispatch.io, Art.sy, Codecademy and Warby Parker, among others. Guess the rumor roundup was too quick to start the weekend; we also forgot to put a title on this post (fixed that).

Disclosure.