[starchy]

What you've done here is to create a straw man by asserting that gender and race are always meaningless criteria. Adding more developers who don't happen to be white and male to the workforce and to books like these helps to create more developers who don't happen to be white and male to the workforce, which aside from being good for those particular people can only lead to a wider variety of ideas in the memepool, which can only be good for those of us who care about ideas. That would be those of us reading this site, unless I've missed something.

[gloob]

can only lead to a wider variety of ideas in the memepool

That's rather a weakish argument, I would think. I suspect that people coming from different cultures would be far more likely to think differently about things than someone who comes from the same culture but happens to have a different set of genitalia.

Mind you, I'm just pulling this out of my ass myself, so it's entirely possible I'm wrong. Haven't run across any studies about this sort of thing in my casual perusals of the net, though.

[jamesbritt]

"Mind you, I'm just pulling this out of my ass myself, so it's entirely possible I'm wrong. Haven't run across any studies about this sort of thing in my casual perusals of the net, though."

Still, this is common enough reasoning put forth to have "diversity" in programmer squads and gatherings.

I recall looking at a picture of the Clinton White House staff (I think, or cabinet maybe), where the intent was to show the range of sexes and skin colors. Look, diversity!

Yet, as a read the names, I was thinking "lawyer, lawyer, lawyer, not sure, lawyer, lawyer, ..." and wondered where, exactly, was the diversity?

What is the argument that a geek with black skin will have different geek ideas to offer than a geek with white or yellow skin? Or that genitalia confers a unique technical point of view?

I prefer to be among a technical group where there's a diversity of informed opinion, but I'm skeptical that such diversity has a correlation with sex and race.

I'd prefer to hang with a mixed crowd of Lispers, Smalltalkers, PHPers, and embedded system developers, than a Rainbow Collation of nothing-but-Java developers.

[ilyak]

Modded up, but please no PHP.

[hughprime]

which aside from being good for those particular people

I'm not sure that being a software developer is really that great a prize, unless you happen to be one of those small minority of people who just happens to have a brain which really enjoys software development.

can only lead to a wider variety of ideas in the memepool

Any evidence for the idea that inter-group differences between male and female programmers in terms of the kind of ideas they produce is significant?

more developers who don't happen to be white and male

I can understand the gender-imbalance thing, but do you really think there's a significant dearth of non-white developers? I could have sworn I saw a bunch of Asians and Indians around here somewhere...

[starchy]

"I'm not sure that being a software developer is really that great a prize..."

How many software developers give it all up to become housekeepers? Not everyone is best suited for any one job, of course, but that hardly suggests that any one arbitrary class alone is not well suited for it.

Considering the average salary, benefits, and job conditions when stacked against many - although certainly not all - careers, being a software developer can be a pretty sweet prize indeed. Finding a non-niche comparable career that is not male dominated to a similar degree is left as an exercise to the reader.

"Any evidence for the idea that inter-group differences between male and female programmers in terms of the kind of ideas they produce is significant?"

I haven't so far turned up any studies specifically answering the question of significance. However, my assertion that including a greater demographic spread "can only lead to a wider variety of ideas in the memepool" seems self-evident; it could hardly lead to less variety or the same amount, even if the difference would wind up being less than we might hope for.

"I can understand the gender-imbalance thing, but do you really think there's a significant dearth of non-white developers? I could have sworn I saw a bunch of Asians and Indians around here somewhere..."

Asian and Indian, yes. Black and Latino, not nearly so much in my experience.

[prodigal_erik]

> including a greater demographic spread "can only lead to a wider variety of ideas in the memepool" seems self-evident

Men are interchangeable? Women are capable of thoughts men aren't? Every rationale for such a statement I've come up with is appalling.

[roundsquare]

There are certainly some experiences in life that are unique to each gender. I don't know how much this would affect development though...

[starchy]

The set of all men plus all women is greater than the set of all men. If you find that concept appalling, more power to you.

[prodigal_erik]

A larger set to recruit from is merely an easier way to find more developers total, unless there's some reason more women would be valuable but more men would be useless.

[michaelcampbell]

> What you've done here is to create a straw man by asserting that gender and race are always meaningless criteria.

As opposed to the much more popular one of asserting that gender and race never aren't meaningless.