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Re:ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of spe... by boomboomsubban on Sunday June 04, 2017 @09:25AM (#14481447)
>A system based on something other than merit. If the people in charge aren't the people with the most merit, they aren't really qualified.

Merit isn't an absolute, there's no test that shows what your merit would be to a company. Diversity adds to your merit, both through positive PR and through having a range of experiences to draw from when dealing with a problem.

Re:ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of spe... by concede_pluto on Sunday June 04, 2017 @02:30PM (#14482781)
If my code sucks, I have exactly the same experience fixing it that a black woman would have, because the arbiter of correctness is a computer without any opinions about the author. Diversity in skill comes from having worked in different kinds of software and languages and frameworks, not going out and collecting fifty shades of node hipster.
Re:ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of spe... by pseudalopex on Monday June 05, 2017 @01:53AM (#14485501)
Sometimes code sucks because the programmer doesn't realize names work differently in other cultures.[1] Sometimes it sucks because it outs LGBT kids.[2] Sometimes it sucks because nobody noticed what the team called something was also a racial slur.

[1] https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...

[2] https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne...

Re:ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of spe... by concede_pluto on Monday June 05, 2017 @01:51PM (#14489638)
[1] is part of the basic domain knowledge that makes one competent. E.g., any programmer who deals with US PII should also know that social security number collisions exist even though nobody on the team has struggled with it. Your coworkers' personal experiences are not the only or best way to learn about users' problems, because not only are they a very small sample but they are self-selected nerds and inherently unlike most users (unless you sell programming tools).

[2] is a product design decision, not a programmer's ignorant error. "A product should side with a child against their legal guardian who actually paid for the product" is by no means the consensus across all cultures.

Re:ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of spe... by PrimHelios on Thursday June 08, 2017 @02:03PM (#14515886)
Neither of those things would be better because of a black woman being a programmer.

Even as an LGBT person myself, I probably wouldn't have thought about the implications of the second one.

The first one is fixable by not being a shit programmer. You don't need to know anything about the names of other cultures, you just need to know that everything should be using Unicode, although I agree that Euro-centrism dominates programming and computer science in general.