Hacker News Reader

Comment by cantastoria | Hacker News Reader

Why? If I'm able to get quality answers what advantage does racial/sex "diversity" in and of itself bring to the table. Should I feel extra good about getting a quality answer from a black female programmer over a white male one? If so why? It would seem to me that using diversity to assess community quality on a programming Q&A site is a poor measure given it has no bearing on programming ability. Unless of course one is purely interested in aesthetics.

View on HN

If I'm able to get quality answers what advantage does racial/sex "diversity" in and of itself bring to the table.

I think this is a wrong assumption. Qualitatively, it should be obvious that a diversity of perspectives and backgrounds would yield more answers. (Also a larger group of contributors can post more content to the site.) Empirically, multiple studies have shown that diverse groups are better at creative problem solving. Example: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=685821...

It's not obvious at all unless you're talking about a diversity of programming backgrounds in which case I agree. C++ doesn't work differently when it's used by a black or female programmer. Same goes for programming perspectives in general. I don't design my classes differently because I grew up in the inner-city (nor would I need to tailor an answer for someone who did). I think your taking an argument usually reserved for social environments that are more dependent on interaction and group dynamics (e.g. a classroom) and trying to apply it to a more static engineering one. And while that study did find that increased diversity improved performance on "business measures", it did not find a causal link that specifically pointed to diversity as the reason, although I'm not sure it would have much bearing here anyway. Being creative in a broader business/social context is not the same as solving the type of specific engineering/programming questions generally found on SO. Programming skill is completely divorced from race/gender/class and that's something we should all be happy about.

Hmm, maybe start with the idea that the world isn't all about what works for you?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com