Julia Evans tweeted earlier today:
“programmers are 0.66% of internet users, and build the software that everyone uses” – @heddle317
The strengths of having diversity on teams, including software teams, is well known and I won’t repeat those arguments here.
See: Why Diverse Teams Create Better Work, Diversity and Work Group Performance, More Diverse Personalities Mean More Successful Teams, Managing Groups and Teams/Diversity, or, How Diversity Makes Us Smarter, for five entry points into the literature on the diversity.
With 0.66% of internet users writing software for everyone, do you see the lack of diversity?
One response is to turn people into “Linus Torvalds” so we have a broader diversity of people programming. Good thought but I don’t know of anyone who wants to be a Linus Torvalds. (Sorry Linus.)
There’s a great benefit to having more people master programming but long-term, its not a solution to the lack of diversity in the production of software for the Internet.
Even if the number of people writing software for the Internet went up ten-fold, that’s only 6.6% of the population of Internet users. Far too monotone to qualify as any type of diversity.
There is another way to increase diversity in the production of Internet software.
Warnings: You will have to express your intuitive experience in words. You will have to communicate your experiences to programmers. Some programmers will think they know a “better way” for you to experience the interface. Always remember your experience is the “users” experience, unlike theirs.
You can use, express comments on, track your comments and respond to comments from programmers, on software built for the Internet. Programmers won’t seek you or your comments out so volunteering is the only option.
Programmers have their views, but if software doesn’t meet the need, habits, customs of users, it’s useless.
Programmers can only learn the needs, habits and customs of users from you.
Are you going to help end this lack of diversity and programmers to write better software or not?