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How I Stopped Worrying and Started Loving PyLadies

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Re: How I Stopped Worrying and Started Loving PyLadies

#21

Post by krakensden »

sp332 wrote: post #4
goodside wrote: post #2

"So first of all, let’s get one thing out of the way: Diversity is good for a community. "If we can’t agree on this fact, the rest of the article is futile. There are many studies that support this point and if you’re not convinced, this article isn’t for you." I'll bite: What real-world measure of goodness (that isn't tautologically identical to diversity) has been shown to increase as a function of an open-source c…

A tiny bit of Googling would answer this for you. There are several studies showing that diverse groups are much (much much) better at problem-solving than homogenous groups. e.g. http://www.pnas.org/content/101/46/16385.full Also, having more diverse groups of open-source developers makes it more likely that the product will appeal to more end-users, and also attract more developers :)

I'm doubtful the link actually shows what you think it shows. Besides, it takes "identity diverse means functionally diverse" as a given, while the parent is asking if that is true.

Re: How I Stopped Worrying and Started Loving PyLadies

#22

Post by rada »

jmduke wrote: post #15
roguelynn wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We have created this diversity statement because we believe that a diverse Python community is stronger and more vibrant. A diverse community where people treat each other with respect has more potential contributors and more sources for ideas." Source: http://www.python.org/community/diversity/ Universal Design, the idea that produces "buildings, products and environments that are inherently accessible to both peop…

I'm not criticizing your broader point, but I'd love to see your source that the entire marketing department at Apple is male.

She (?) is hardly the only one who'd noticed:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/the-ipads-name-make...

http://articles.cnn.com/2010-01-27/tech/apple.ipad.reaction_...

Sample comment: "Are there any women in Apple marketing?" asked Brooke Hammerling, founder of Brew Media Relations, a technology public relations firm. "The first impression of every single woman I've spoken to is that it's cringe-inducing. It indicates to me that there wasn't a lot of testing or feedback."

(google iPad + feminine hygiene for lots more examples)

Generally, I think your comment, while perfectly sensible, highlights one of the main problems touched upon in the article.

The author is trying to tell us is that it's important accept the reactions of those who have first-hand experience at face value. No need to apply a rigorous is-this-a-100%-rational-reaction test every time someone says they feel a certain way.

Finally, it is absolutely not necessary for Apple's entire marketing department to be male. The parent could be talking about focus group input, not employee input. In fact, it's likely that iPad's cringe-worthiness was immediately apparent to the women at Apple but they didn't speak up simply because it's embarrassing to talk about periods at work.

Re: How I Stopped Worrying and Started Loving PyLadies

#23

Post by sp332 »

krakensden wrote: post #21
sp332 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A tiny bit of Googling would answer this for you. There are several studies showing that diverse groups are much (much much) better at problem-solving than homogenous groups. e.g. http://www.pnas.org/content/101/46/16385.full Also, having more diverse groups of open-source developers makes it more likely that the product will appeal to more end-users, and also attract more developers :)

I'm doubtful the link actually shows what you think it shows. Besides, it takes "identity diverse means functionally diverse" as a given, while the parent is asking if that is true.

That paper has two main points in its conclusion: Our result provides insights into the trade-off between diversity and ability. An ideal group would contain high-ability problem solvers who are diverse. and also But, as we see in the proof of the result, as the pool of problem solvers grows larger, the very best problem solvers must become similar. In the limit, the highest-ability problem solvers cannot be diverse.

Here's a paper (linked from my earlier link) that quantifies some of the benefits of diversity for problem solving. https://www.sciencemag.org/content/254/5035/1181.full.pdf and here's one that demonstrates that diverse groups get "highly nonlinear and universal increase in performance" http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/01672789909...

Re: How I Stopped Worrying and Started Loving PyLadies

#24

Post by lolcatstevens »

goodside wrote: post #2

"So first of all, let’s get one thing out of the way: Diversity is good for a community. "If we can’t agree on this fact, the rest of the article is futile. There are many studies that support this point and if you’re not convinced, this article isn’t for you." I'll bite: What real-world measure of goodness (that isn't tautologically identical to diversity) has been shown to increase as a function of an open-source c…

Typed like a rich white guy. There's a real barrier in our profession -- how many women are in your office? How many black people? -- and why do you think that is? How comfortable do you think your workplace is to a minority or woman? So how are we to study the effect of minorities on open-source when minorities don't want to work in open-source. It's not the money that's holding them back.

Real-world measure of goodness? Come on man. Do you hang out with women are colored folk or folks who came up differently than you did? It's nice, right? It's interesting to hear other folks's points of views, right? Maybe you even rethink some things you took for granted.

Have you never been around brogrammers? Have you never seen a group of dudes spiral into 4chan?

This is common sense, yes. Being a person and interacting with people is my real world measure of goodness.

Re: How I Stopped Worrying and Started Loving PyLadies

#25

Post by streptomycin »

ajross wrote: post #20
goodside wrote: post #2

"So first of all, let’s get one thing out of the way: Diversity is good for a community. "If we can’t agree on this fact, the rest of the article is futile. There are many studies that support this point and if you’re not convinced, this article isn’t for you." I'll bite: What real-world measure of goodness (that isn't tautologically identical to diversity) has been shown to increase as a function of an open-source c…

I'll bite too: state that theorem as its inverse and dare to argue for it: Demographic uniformity is a good thing. "Lack of diversity" means that people are excluded from a community, either actively or passively. That's a "bad thing" pretty much by definition. You're thinking about the metric ("how many women?"), while the author is thinking about the mechnism implied ("something is keeping women out"). The former i…

> "Lack of diversity" means that people are excluded from a community, either actively or passively. That's a "bad thing" pretty much by definition.

Why?

Re: How I Stopped Worrying and Started Loving PyLadies

#26

Post by true_religion »

streptomycin wrote: post #25
ajross wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bite too: state that theorem as its inverse and dare to argue for it: Demographic uniformity is a good thing. "Lack of diversity" means that people are excluded from a community, either actively or passively. That's a "bad thing" pretty much by definition. You're thinking about the metric ("how many women?"), while the author is thinking about the mechnism implied ("something is keeping women out"). The former i…

> "Lack of diversity" means that people are excluded from a community, either actively or passively. That's a "bad thing" pretty much by definition. Why?

The prevailing moral judgement is that excluding people from a group because of inflexible factors (like gender) is a bad thing.

Because its a moral judgment, we can assume that even if monocultures are functionally superior with regards to performance we still will prefer a diverse culture for the intangible benefit of 'good ethics'.

Re: How I Stopped Worrying and Started Loving PyLadies

#27

Post by lmm »

ajross wrote: post #20
goodside wrote: post #2

"So first of all, let’s get one thing out of the way: Diversity is good for a community. "If we can’t agree on this fact, the rest of the article is futile. There are many studies that support this point and if you’re not convinced, this article isn’t for you." I'll bite: What real-world measure of goodness (that isn't tautologically identical to diversity) has been shown to increase as a function of an open-source c…

I'll bite too: state that theorem as its inverse and dare to argue for it: Demographic uniformity is a good thing. "Lack of diversity" means that people are excluded from a community, either actively or passively. That's a "bad thing" pretty much by definition. You're thinking about the metric ("how many women?"), while the author is thinking about the mechnism implied ("something is keeping women out"). The former i…

>I'll bite too: state that theorem as its inverse and dare to argue for it: Demographic uniformity is a good thing.

Ok, I'll dare: per the mythical man month, the biggest factor limiting the success of programming teams is communication. A demographicly uniform team can communicate more effectively with each other (due to having a larger shared vocabulary of common experiences) and this reduced communication overhead greatly increases their productivity.

>If there were something keeping women out of the community, you'd want to fix it. Right?

This metrics vs. data thing is precisely why hearing people go on about the lack of women in programming makes me nervous. It reminds me of my manager going on about how our unit test coverage is only 60% and why isn't it 70%; if you define low test coverage as the problem rather than the symptom, we could easily write some terrible tests that would increase the coverage but make our codebase worse.

So likewise, if you start thinking about "only 4% of open source developers are women" as a problem /in itself/, it's very easy to jump from there to doing something that increases the number of women in open source, while actually making things worse (e.g. "let's offer a load of bursaries for female CS undergrads to work on open source projects"; quick, easy, increases that percentage, but could quite possibly backfire by giving women in open source a reputation for low-quality code - and more to the point, does absolutely nothing to address whatever actual problem you're referring to)

Re: How I Stopped Worrying and Started Loving PyLadies

#28

Post by pavel_lishin »

roguelynn wrote: post #5
goodside wrote: post #2

"So first of all, let’s get one thing out of the way: Diversity is good for a community. "If we can’t agree on this fact, the rest of the article is futile. There are many studies that support this point and if you’re not convinced, this article isn’t for you." I'll bite: What real-world measure of goodness (that isn't tautologically identical to diversity) has been shown to increase as a function of an open-source c…

"We have created this diversity statement because we believe that a diverse Python community is stronger and more vibrant. A diverse community where people treat each other with respect has more potential contributors and more sources for ideas." Source: http://www.python.org/community/diversity/ Universal Design, the idea that produces "buildings, products and environments that are inherently accessible to both peop…

I have never understood why buying tampons or pads was considered embarrassing, for either men or women. It's like being embarrassed because you're buying toilet paper, or kleenex, or condoms, or bandaids.

Maybe it's awkward when you're a teenager, but once you're an adult?

Re: How I Stopped Worrying and Started Loving PyLadies

#30

Post by rada »

goodside wrote: post #19
roguelynn wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We have created this diversity statement because we believe that a diverse Python community is stronger and more vibrant. A diverse community where people treat each other with respect has more potential contributors and more sources for ideas." Source: http://www.python.org/community/diversity/ Universal Design, the idea that produces "buildings, products and environments that are inherently accessible to both peop…

These are all policy statements and intuition-based speculations. I don't doubt for an instant that many people have speculated about why diversity might be good for software. What I doubt the existence of are empirical studies showing that diversity benefits open-source software in some measurable way. The original article seemed to be under the impression that such studies are common, and that their interpretation…

Yes, it's better to base one's actions on empirical studies than on intuition. Yet we all have to put our pants on one leg a time, and it's far, far better to be out of the house in time for work than to sit there paralyzed and unable to make a choice between "left" and "right" simply due to lack of definitive statistical analysis.

As a tangenial but relevant point, there are empirical studies that show the inverse correlation between the number of programmers on a given project and code quality. Nevertheless, I have never seen anyone argue for hard limits on the number of contributors per OSS project. Methinks all the calls for hard data, while seemingly all about science, are really about emotion on your part.

(Sorry about the ad hominem - I am really not trying to attack you personally, I promise - I just don't know how to make my point without it).

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