It’s not often a website about women’s clothing excites myself and most of  the PC Pro team, but today at lunch that’s just what happened.

A story on The Guardian reveals a web app that pulls in sizing data from women’s shops. Enter in your measurements, and it tells you what size to pick at various stores.

This is genius. It’s an absolute revelation for anyone who’s tried to buy a shirt, dress, trousers or anything else from an online store, or indeed, even in a high street shop. Computer programmer Anna Powell-Smith, who created What Size Am I?, explains she was fed up of lugging three sizes of every garment into fitting rooms. Rather than moan about what a pain shopping is, she took her coding skills and did something about it, thankfully sharing it with the rest of us.

While the site itself will markedly improve my own life (I’m not exaggerating), it’s also an excellent argument for diversity in technology — not merely encouraging more women into IT, but teaching programming skills to as many people as possible.

Much of technology and IT is incredibly creative; it’s about applying skills to a problem, and coming up with a solution yourself. And the more different types of people we have coming up with ideas, the better off we all are.

I’d argue Powell-Smith’s site is a perfect example of that. The “average” — if there is such a thing — computer programmer may not put much thought into clothing, particularly women’s fashion. (Heck, I don’t.)

But a fashion-forward programmer has the right mix of ideas and knowledge to imagine something that is of actual, practical use (and not only for women: I’ve been hearing via Twitter and from cowboy-shirt wearing deputy reviews editor David Bayon that men’s clothes are just as inconsistently sized as women’s.)

As Powell-Smith puts it on The Guardian:

“I’m surprised no-one has explored the data or built a similar site before, but then being a computer programmer and a fashion fan is… unusual. Coders get an unfair press in some ways (I find most are articulate and charming) but when it comes to fashion, the clichés are largely true. Tech conferences are a sad sea of baggy black T-shirts.

“And therefore, programmers do not often write interesting fashion apps, and the fashion world ignores those of the dorky persuasion. This is a shame, because I see potential fashion hacks everywhere and hear about few.”

Powell-Smith sees fashion ideas everywhere, while in the PC Pro office, we have been very seriously discussing a biscuit review site — to each their own.

Whatever your interest is, you’ve probably had a clever idea.  And the more diverse the tech world is, the more  random, wonderful ideas we’ll have  – and that’s exactly what fuels this industry.