Comment by ScottWhigham

If "programming/etc" stories (that OP is saying used to be more prevalent here) are on the "best" list, that means they are very popular here. It does not, though, mean that there are more/fewer of the other stories. Correlation != causation and all that. The best list has nothing to do with distribution of stories. We could have fewer programming-related stories, for example, but find that the ones that are submitted have a disproportionally higher upvote rate because the community likes those so much more.