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