I was at RubyConf, and I have to say my new conference pastime is counting the number of attendees who are either women or people of color and then getting really depressed about the future of the industry in which I work.

And then there's rubbish like this.
 

I don't see why there is implication that this is result of some conspiracy or whatever. Can't you for a change assume that it is based on the free will of the individuals to choose profession they like and there is no hidden agenda. No more no less.
You make premise by opposing prevalent commonality in particular setting. Why not complain that there is no bald guys, now I feel offended. :-)
 

I don't see why there is implication that this is result of some conspiracy or whatever.

I don't see that either. Where does the article say there is a conspiracy?

Can't you for a change assume that it is based on the free will of the individuals to choose profession they like and there is no hidden agenda.

I have an idea. Why don't we assume that everything that happens in North America, including all jobs, all university enrollments, who goes to prison, everything... it's ALL the result of individuals making their own free-will choices.

When we see something in the aggregate, we know that the explanation is simply people making choices, no more and no less.

Why not complain that there is no bald guys

What makes you think I wasn't complaining about the lack of bald guys? Well actually, I wasn't. You have me there.

I wasn't saying there should be people of colour, or womyn, or gays, or talls, or balds, or anything else. It isn't about that.

Instead, I was pointing out the incredible uniformity of what I see in the picture. That's all.
 

wouldn't you agree that reason for uniformity is commonality of shared interest, the more specific interest is more likely it will draw similar looking people as well

I guess most people want to fit in physically as well as intellectually ,but you will find few to admit that

famous "peer pressure" :-)
 

can you look inside you and understand why particular picture saddens you ?
 

I was at RubyConf and it was a geek fest to be sure, but what would you expect? There are very few females or African Americans in the IT industry in general so why would any show up at a Ruby conference?

BTW, I was also at Ruby Hoedown in Raleigh where the theme was "crossing the chasm" or what does Ruby need to do to get into the enterprise. Indeed at RubyConf I saw a small corporate presence. Sun was there with a small presence and there were a few corporate project managers poking around to see what all the fuss was about.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Ruby has been an enthusiast language that is starting to look outside of that based mostly on the success of Rails. If Ruby moves into the enterprise then you will probably see that picture change to reflect the diversity in IT, but it would surprise me to see Ruby be the carrot that finally attracts females (and others) to work in the IT enterprise.
 

cunac:

You seem obsessed with why things are a certain way, and whether the causes can be explained, or justified, or understood. My only interest is in the result. And it's ok that we have different perspectives on this simple photograph.

Now about looking inside myself:

"I was thrown out of N.Y.U. my freshman year for cheating on my metaphysics final, you know. I looked within the soul of the boy sitting next to me."

--Woody Allen
 

There are very few females or African Americans in the IT industry in general so why would any show up at a Ruby conference?

Do you think I was suggesting that Ruby was somehow different than the rest of the IT industry?
 

What percent of people of color should be in that photo? Maybe one based on the ethnic makeup of the US (wikipedia says 12%). So they were missing one guy, is that much of a big deal?
 

What percent of people of color should be in that photo?

What makes you think this is about colour? It's about uniformity, not about any one omission. Doesn't it strike you how utterly alike everyone is?

All I'm saying is that there is no diversity in that photo, none.
 

I've been at role playing game sessions that were more diverse than that.

"Roll 2d6!"
 

I'm at ApacheCon right now, we have something like 50 geeks scattered around the room, and it's just every bit as diverse as the RubyConf picture.
 

How diverse is a hardcore group of Java developers? (Hint: they are over 40 and puts backwards compatibility and design by committee on a pedestal)
 

I joined MentorNet through the ACM. It may not singlehandedly fix the problem, but it at least helps somebody.
 

"Do you think I was suggesting that Ruby was somehow different than the rest of the IT industry?"

Why did you pick on Ruby when its a much wider problem?

And why do you think Ruby should/could solve the problem when nothing else seems to be able to?
 

There are too many youngsters! That's what he's railing against. Where are the bearded UNIX folk? Or the balding LISP folk? What about the suits? Why aren't they there to sing their IBM song?
 

As someone who would have added diversity of the photo, I'm glad you noticed the lack of diversity and felt it noteworthy.

There are many many factors that have contributed to the predominance of white males in the US IT industry, at least among those born in the US. And having attended a few meetings of local users groups and larger conferences, it can feel a little lonely to be among the 10-15% of participants who are women. On the other hand, at least there is rarely a line in the bathroom.
 

Why did you pick on Ruby when its a much wider problem?

I didn't pick on Ruby. I will pick on people who have trouble with reading comprehension. Pull out a highlighter. Carefully mark the phrase where I said this was a problem. You might find a phrase where I said this might not even be a problem.

Mark where I said this had anything to do with Ruby. Oh, it's a picture of people at a Ruby convention. So?

Would you have asked me why I was picking on Golf if it was a picture of people wearing plaid? Or of Apple if it was a picture of a room full of undergraduates all using MacBooks?

And why do you think Ruby should/could solve the problem when nothing else seems to be able to?

I have a real problem with statements like this. Let's say you think this is a problem. What, nobody can talk about it unless they have a solution that is unassailable? Don't be ridiculous.

I will state a problem: erosion of civil liberties due to the "War on Terror."

Am I saying I know how to make the world a safer place without extraordinary renditions and secret torture camps? No, I am not proposinga solution. No, I am not telling anyone to stop doing what they are doing.

But, I am still saying something saddens me. It saddens me that every email is probably scanned. It saddens me that every phone call is probably recorded. It saddens me that there are gatherings like this where the height of non-conformity seems to be having a beard.

Is it a problem? Maybe not. Does it have anything to do with a programming language? Of course not.

But, does that mean that if it is a problem that Rubyists should do nothing about it because "it's part of a wider problem, and it isn't exclusive to Ruby conferences"? Also of course not.

Follow your own conscience.
 

Sure whatever Reg, your blog! Don't answer the question, but why post this article at all then! It's totally meaningless. Gee guess what gang we have a diversity problem. No duh!

As far as the grey beards go (one of the latter comments not by Reg), there were plenty of them at RubyConf they just didn't want to play Werewolf I guess. The picture was taken after the day had finished and some were playing a game which others have found issue with!
 

Gee guess what gang we have a diversity problem. No duh!

IMO, most of the things I write about are obvious.

Since you seem so very defensive about my "picking on Ruby," this is easily explained as a case of selection bias.

This is the second time I have seen either this exact photograph or one very much like it of people playing a game at a Ruby conference.

I didn't see any photos like it of people at, for example, .NET conferences. Why not? Quite possibly because I do not participate in the .NET ecosystem, and rarely read blogs written by people who do.

As a result, I am statistically much less likely to see pictures of .NET programmers than Ruby programmers.

Likewise, programming interest me greatly. So again, I am far more likely to notice a picture of rampant uniformity amongst programmers than, say, Ivy League college graduates.

What would you have me do? Hold off on posting my thoughts until I can do a statistically rigorous study of diversity amongst all of the various subcultures in IT? Or across all professions?

Or perhaps your dictum is that I should not voice my dismay unless I have a proposal for how to make the world a so-called better place?

Look, I write an awful lot about things that give me joy in the world of programming. Some of it is practical, some not. Posts like this are equal time for the things that don't put a smile on my face.

Not all of the fun things I post are practical. I doubt that "unfold" is going to start sprouting up in production code any time soon.

And likewise, my lamentation is equally impractical. I have no solution to offer. For that matter, I am still not sure it is a problem. What, exactly, is wrong with a bunch of people who happen to be visibly indistinguishable from each other playing a game?

Is it their fault that a bunch of people who don't look like them didn't elect to go to that conference? Or if they went to the conference they chose not to play a game after hours?

I'm in no position to point fingers at people and suggest they have done wrong.

But even so, I am disquieted by what I saw in that picture and, for that matter, so many others just like it.

And while you may feel that the post was a waste of time, you are correct in pointing out that it is my blog. I write what I feel. And I think I was perfectly clear in saying that this was a matter of emotional weight with me: all I was trying to do is share my feelings on the subject.

I'm sorry they seem to offend you so greatly.
 

Sorry Reg, no offense intended, I guess this is a really soft spot maybe. I have no idea how to fix it either because programming is not a female pursuit at the moment (and neither is it of people w/o access to technology and/or education).

I thought Nutter's comments that people should only program at conferences (and not play games after the day is done) to be a bit on the self serving side. Personally, I believe engaging other people on a different level is important too.

As far as the game (Werewolf) being exclusive to people who want the "inside track", that could be true I don't know but the conference itself did not seem to discriminate (at least that I could see).

Anyway Reg, I'm a fan of your blog (ducks). I'm trying to grok unfold. It is powerful stuff I remember it from a Miranda functional programming course I TA'd a number of years ago. Ruby is the closest commercial language that I know alows one close to that cool stuff. Although maybe OCaml or Erlang may be commercial at some point.
 

There are grey beards and balding folks with kids and non-whites and even females at our local Ruby User Group.

What kind of diversity are you talking about in particular, anyway? There's a lot more kinds than the colour of your skin and your age. I bet those people in that group are very diverse. How could you know without talking with them?

This post, Reg, saddens me. What is the problem you are alluding to? Care to elaborate?
 

What kind of diversity are you talking about in particular, anyway? There's a lot more kinds than the colour of your skin and your age. I bet those people in that group are very diverse. How could you know without talking with them?

There's no need to have a debate over how diverse that particular group is or isn't. In some respect, every group with more than one person has some kind of diversity.

For example:

I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump. I ran over and said: "Stop. Don't do it."

"Why shouldn't I?" he asked.

"Well, there's so much to live for!"

"Like what?"

"Are you religious?"

He said, "Yes."

I said, "Me too. Are you Christian or Buddhist?"

"Christian."

"Me too. Are you Catholic or Protestant?"

"Protestant."

"Me too. Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?"

"Baptist."

"Wow. Me too. Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?"

"Baptist Church of God."

"Me too. Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?"

"Reformed Baptist Church of God."

"Me too. Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915?"

He said: "Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915."

I said: "Die, heretic scum," and pushed him off.

I believe the same sentiment was expressed more concisely in The Blues Brothers, when the bar owner assures the band that they play both kinds of music in his bar, Country and Western.
 

I completely agree with Reg here on two points.

First, I attended this RubyConf, and I had the privilege of playing Werewolf with Tim Bray (we were a darn good team of co-werewolves, if I do say so myself), so I can speak from first-hand experience. I noticed the EXACT same thing that Reg noticed. It was so striking to me that when my wife asked me how the conference was, I told her "great" and "wow, everyone looked exactly the same."

Maybe it's because I live in NYC where diversity is status quo. As such, I am always cognizant of a lack of diversity. And despite Reg's (arguably tongue-in-cheek) comment, there is NOT "rampant uniformity amongst Ivy League college graduates" either. Maybe it's because I learned to program with such a diverse group, seeing a homogeneous group of programmers is unusual to me.

Second, I also agree with Reg's statements in the comments. He doesn't have to have a point or an opinion to mention something. Or maybe the the fact that he notices diversity (or lack thereof) is in itself a point. Whenever I play basketball with 9 asian guys or 9 black guys, I notice. When I go to a lacrosse game and see only white people, I notice. And when I'm working with only young, bearded males in geeky t-shirts, I notice that too. I don't pass judgment; I don't have a follow-up comment; I just *notice*.

An alternative explanation is that engineers like Reg & I are just really adept at pattern matching :)
 

In order to cheer up the mood, here are links to 2 (rather old) pictures from the Montreal on Rails bunch.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cmercier/1326348705/in/set-72157601859154620/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cmercier/1326348393/in/set-72157601859154620/

We even have friends with blue faces!

Seriously, I think we not only have a very nice cultural variety (origins, english/french language), but we also have a nice age diversity. Very nice bunch.

I don't wanna brag, mind you. I'm just saying. You know, there are little pockets of hope here and there...
 

I thought that this was, as always, an excellent post. There is not enough diversity in the IT industry in general and until we start discussing it it will continue to be a problem.

Thank you, Reg.
 

Is the set of people "out of shot" the empty set?
 

From reading the comments it appears Reg's readers favor some type of quota system for RubyConf????

AFAIK (note: I had nothing to do with RubyConf organization and/or plannning it) signing up for RubyConf was first come first serve. What is wrong with that? You get what you get.

The "my group is more diverse than your group" nah nah nah comments here seem like childish school ground stuff to me.

My opinion is that RubyConf was a good learning experience. I found out who the leaders were and s little insight into how they think. I also saw who the rank and file Ruby programmers are and a little of how how they think. Overall I cam away impressed with the younger talent. The grey beards were there but there impact was definetly on the lighter side JMHO
 

Reg:

You seem obsessed with why things are a certain way, and whether the causes can be explained, or justified, or understood. My only interest is in the result. And it's ok that we have different perspectives on this simple photograph.

The bottom line is you have bunch of different people, you just fail to see a difference because picture is too shallow to capture it
 

baxter said...

I thought that this was, as always, an excellent post. There is not enough diversity in the IT industry in general and until we start discussing it it will continue to be a problem.


can somebody explain to me what IS diversity problem. I guess it has to have measurable manifestation in some way.
 

Wait, this was a role playing game? That actually explains the lack of diversity in the picture more than any implication from inudstry perspectives could. For example, while I wasn't there, I had quite a few friends who were and they were most likely off drinking. I mean, no offense intended but, as a geek, are the role playing geeks the geeks of the geeks?
 

There are many reasonable explanations for this picture, including the reasonable one that it shows a group of people who have a lot in common with each other enjoying a social activity together.
 

An old guy here...

The last software conference I attended, at one of the breaks, I heard one of the few women attending remarking gleefully that the queues were for the Gents for a change.

So far as ethnic diversity goes, I think that's being sorted by the worst possible mechanism -- when I've been involved in recruiting recently, a lot of candidates have been non-European in origin. While this means that I work in a quite ethnically diverse environment, I suspect that the education system here is destroying home-grown potential.
 

@erik:

I think it's a parlor game called Werewolf and not an rpg.

Also, please see the hierarchy of geekdom. Each sub-group of geeks has its own geekiness tolerance:

http://www.brunching.com/geekhierarchy.html
 

Instead, I was pointing out the incredible uniformity of what I see in the picture. That's all.

That's not true. You pointed out the uniformity and made it clear that it saddened you. In the absence of further evidence toward your point, one has to make assumptions about why it saddened you.

And frankly I am curious. Why did it make you sad? And 'lack of diversity' is not a reason. Why does a lack of diversity make you sad?
 

In the absence of further evidence toward your point, one has to make assumptions about why it saddened you.

No, you don't have to do anything. Nobody is compelling you to try to guess what I mean and what I don't mean. If you ask and I choose not to answer, you can chug along with your life perfectly happily.

'lack of diversity' is not a reason.

You must be new here. Look around this blog. Read what I have been saying since 2004. How much of it celebrates everyone doing the same thing for the same reason the same way as we've always done it?

This weblog celebrates diversity. Why would it strike you as odd that an apparent lack of diversity would make me sad?

In fact, think of the irony in the photo. Ruby itself is a kind of diversity, a "scripting language" invented by a Japanese man for the purpose of giving Joy to programmers.

Rails, built on top of Ruby, is an anti-corporate framework. Ruby on Rails is itself a victory for diversity.

And then you look at the photo. If you aren't sad, can you at least chuckle at the contrempts it suggests between how we got here and where we ended up?
 

See that confirms my suspicion that you blame/scapegoat Ruby for the general lack of diversity problem. I had never thought that Ruby had that particular responsibility laid on it before this article.

AFAIK, Ruby has pretty much the same diversity now as when it started. Although with the push (for lack of a better term) into the enterprise, Ruby diversity may change a bit but as I said the enterprise itself is not diverse so I would be surprised if Ruby community becomes much more diverse by joining the borg.
 

See that confirms my suspicion that you blame/scapegoat Ruby for the general lack of diversity problem.

I will confirm that you have this suspicion and that you are digesting everything I write looking for things you can interpret to support your hypothesis.

But I'm sorry, that simply isn't the case. See my comment above about selection bias. It explains everything.
 

Vorlath says:

I usually disagree with most of what Reg says, but in this case, I was struck with the same feeling. Simple message, simple post. No need to go overboard on the assumption train.
 

For everyone who is rationalizing this by saying stuff like IT simply isn't diverse, so of course this is going to happen at RubyConf: all aboard the cluetrain, no tickets needed today.

IT is dominated by a bunch of white guys. This is a bad thing. It does not reflect the diversity we have in this nation/world. It's a statistical absurdity. "Something" is clearly broken, and to suggest otherwise is willfully ignorant.
 

"a "scripting language" invented by a Japanese man for the purpose of giving Joy to programmers."

A full complement of Japanese were at RubyConf. I did notice that they (Japanese men) were held back by the language barrier. One could see Matz having trouble translating fast enough sometimes but he managed.

No I think this whole kerfluffle is actually about petty human emotion things disguised as something more noble like lack of diversity. Sad

Disclaimer: I have absolutely no pull in the Ruby community. I'm one of the peons who didn't get an invite to the young white meeting after hours either
 

Russel:

No I think this whole kerfluffle is actually about petty human emotion things disguised as something more noble like lack of diversity. Sad

If your goal was to come here and insult my emotions as "petty," you have done that.

I have nothing further to say to you, so if you want the pleasure of having the last word on the subject, you can carry on arguing with yourself. I will not censor your comments here.

I will, however, encourage you to write your own blog where you can carry on at length and in detail about whatever subject pleases you, including criticizing other people's words and beliefs.

Should you decide to pursue that course of action, you are welcome to leave a comment here with a link to your own essay(s).

Good bye.
 

Maddox : IT is dominated by a bunch of white guys. This is a bad thing. It does not reflect the diversity we have in this nation/world.

I bet if you go out to the IT departments of other countries you see the diversity of their country.

Is it really a loss if people don't want to go into IT where the hours are long, there's always deadlines, and the real hourly rate is on par with other jobs that don't require nearly as much dedication.
 

1. Reg, I appreciated this post.

2. To address why diversity is important: First, lack of diversity, especially the extreme lack of diversity in CS, does not necessarily imply that anything as bad as active discrimination is going on, but it sure implies that there is something worth looking in to going on.

Second, isn't it only right to be sad that some people are missing out on something you love? While you should never force someone into your field, it is only natural to want more people and more perspectives in it and encourage them to join you.

Third, diversity is practical. Different people have different perspectives, and different perspectives improve design. Maybe someone who is a woman or Hispanic or gay or poor or from a different educational background has some experience that you do not. People who are different in societally labeled ways are more likely to be treated different in large ways than individuals within what society sees as a single group.

3. Finally, for those people who think this post was obvious, pointless, and non-noteworthy, why did you comment on it? It must have struck some chord.
 

"3. Finally, for those people who think this post was obvious, pointless, and non-noteworthy, why did you comment on it? It must have struck some chord."

Not necessarily in the good, "so we must be onto something" way you seem to mean, though. What if it tickled a raw nerve in people who've been chewed out about the situation off and on for decades?:-|

Whatever is going on is big and important and I don't much like the outcome. As erika points out, there'd be various very-probably-good consequences to a broader distribution, and if we imagine some accident suddenly further narrowing the distribution (left-handed green-eyed people are the only programmers resistant to asteroid strikes, who knew?) it'd very probably be bad.

Most of the people I've seen pointing it out use professional tech as an example. But whatever is going on seems a lot broader than the ruby conference, the software industry, or the tech industry. By high school in lots of (all?) different countries, boys are doing substantially differently in math-related stuff (some performance difference, often difficult to separate from big difference in choices).

The choice difference that's currently on my mind is that in every self-selected leisure activity I am familiar with, if people are doing something with a lot of fiddly little details and a sharp success/fail outcome, it's a very good bet that the people are strongly skewed male. (Not 100% male, but skewed enough that it's usually not hard to take a photo like that. Most of the last few weeks the strongest Go player that showed up in our group of a dozen or so was a woman, but over the last five years that's unusual, and last night I could've taken a photo like that.)

It doesn't seem to be that women don't pursue otherwise-similar leisure activities, either. Where I've met to play Chess or Go, sometimes women meet to play Mahjongg. At some of the hobby-ish shops where I've shopped for parts for robots or model airplanes, I can see women shopping for material for decoration-oriented crafts.

I don't see any way for a concentrated sorting mechanism to be causing this. There could be some very diffuse pressure which encourages the women to start a Mahjongg group instead of an Othello group, and/or pushes the men into meeting for Chess instead of meeting for dominoes. But it seems impossible for any small chokepoint of enforcement to explain it.

Lots of hobbies have been discovered or gone obsolete over decades when lots of people have agitated vigorously against sexual differences. Why did so little of the old stereotypical stuff (dunno: sewing circles? bake fairs?) mutate into stereotype-breaking stuff like model rocketry circles and cryptogram fairs?
 

pushes the men into meeting for Chess instead of meeting for dominoes

Right there you can see where cultural diversity comes into play: In Barbados, the men meet for dominoes :-)
 

I realize you were joking, but I'll try to respecify my point more carefully anyway. What men choose to spend their time on is not necessarily fiddly detail things with sharp outcomes, men do grunge bands and Dungeons and Dragons and Honda Civic decorations and all sorts of things. But when you run the conditional the other way, the precondition of groups of people meeting to do fiddly detail things with sharp outcomes does seem to predict a "mostly men" outcome like the one in that photo.

(And from my limited stock of intercultural knowledge, I will volunteer that I have heard several times about pro Go players in East Asia relaxing with Mahjongg.)
 

I count two werewolves and four villagers. *sigh* The werewolves are always in the minority.
 

Where are the bearded UNIX folk? We're too busy fussing with the mail server to attend conferences.

Diversity is a problem in IT.

Because a department full of white, young geeks lacks depth.


A group that know Visual Basic and has MSCE tickets .. you'll get one kind of a solution.

Another group that knows Ruby, Rails and how to jockey linux, you get another.

A third group that has members with a mixed background will come up with a solution that fixes the actual problem without caring which technology predominates.

That was simple and lame but I hope it gets the point across: diverse people, backgrounds, races and genders will produce a group that is flexible and can adapt. And that produces works of quality.


Or at least that is my experience - one of the best teams I was on had a grumpy old guy, three woman, two black dudes, me and two other white guys and two Hispanics. One of whom was the boss.

We didn't come together because of diversity regs (as far as I know) it was just one of those thing that happened. And while we were together we kicked ass. Because of the depth of talent and background.