Some people are of the opinion that “proper developers” just eat, sleep, code, repeat (but does this make a good coder?). Some people have loads of side projects, but you don’t need to in order to be a good developer, any more than you need to write all the time to be a good author.
I very rarely code at home and haven’t really done since I was a teenager. I’ve managed to learn, improve and get my fix during work hours - I do a lot of reading and go to conferences and on courses. It doesn’t make me any less passionate about coding. I’ve spent a week on code retreat with a group of people I’d never previously met. But I took time out of work to do that, not my home life.
I think I was the only person on that retreat that had a Computer Science background, there was an ex-nurse, an ex-choreographer, a sometime actor/clown, an ex-TV presenter, young people and older people, men and women, those working on all sorts of projects, from games developers, to enterprise software, to training programmes for people working on routing trains safely. Everyone brought something.
Some of my team are the same, some are different, it depends on what your aims and interests are. Some people have other hobbies, which may inspire them to create new apps, or may teach them skills which are useful in their working life.
The important thing is that there are lots of ways to be a good developer.
Right, now I’ve had my rant, we’ll have a little bit more of a measured look at why it’s worth bothering about diversity.
Have something in common with them, similar interests, can see openings which others might not be able to. Design - even left/right handed, colour blind, older, dyslexic, iPhone/Android
Asch Conformity Experiments - Solomon Asch ran conformity experiments in 1950s
Diversity of ideas, more innovation
More experienced people, likely to know what the pitfalls are
Young people can bring in fresh ideas
More confident to challenge if not everyone has fallen into the “groupthink”
People who’ve worked in other kinds of organisations - contractors, start ups, establishment (more room to do things differently)
Especially if you are different
Work life balance
End up with homogenous teams
Project Implicit is a non-profit organization and international collaboration between researchers who are interested in implicit social cognition - thoughts and feelings outside of conscious awareness and control. The goal of the organization is to educate the public about hidden biases and to provide a “virtual laboratory” for collecting data on the Internet.
Project Implicit was founded in 1998 by three scientists – Tony Greenwald (University of Washington), Mahzarin Banaji (Harvard University), and Brian Nosek (University of Virginia). Project Implicit Mental Health launched in 2011, led by Bethany Teachman and Matt Nock. Project Implicit also provides consulting, education, and training services on implicit bias, diversity and inclusion, leadership, applying science to practice, and innovation.
Lets embrace it all, spaces, tabs, emacs, vi, cuddly braces or not.