9 ms·

A Case for Feminism in Programming Language Design (2024)

22 points by smitty1e 1y ago

imgreen 1y ago
[flagged]
- kbelder 1y ago
  >Assembly - Kathleen Booth (female, 1947, though varies by architecture) Funny that the only female on that list designed the most hardcore masculine language.
  - aaron695 1y ago
    [dead]
  - n4r9 1y ago
    In response to the (dead) sibling comment: > Automatic Digital Calculators follows the Booths' groundbreaking 1947 work, Coding for A.R.C., which proposed an assembly code which could be converted into an executable machine code by an "assembler" utility programme. Between 1947 and 1953 they built three machines utilizing this language: the Automatic Relay Calculator, Simple Electronic Computer, and All-purpose Electric (X) Computer. https://www.peterharrington.co.uk/automatic-digital-calculators-172689.html https://www.peterharrington.co.uk/automatic-digital-calculat...
- aaaja 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - unconed 1y ago
    Notice how many of these were created after 2000, when efforts to get women into IT were already in full swing (certainly at my university). Women have had two decades now to demonstrate that it was the fault of gatekeeping that certain parts of programming remain almost exclusively male (with the giant asterisk of MtF-trans being an oddly prevalent archetype, and thus, really a false signal). It's sad, but the feminist perspective is to start from the assumption that sexism is the cause, and work backwards from that. As someone else pointed out: there is no substitute for just doing the work, especially in a field where all you need to do is show up and publish. The barriers couldn't be lower, compared to virtually every other field, but that objective measure is irrelevant because the motivation is to validate a subjective feeling of collectivized mistreatment. The implication is that we are sorely missing out on some unique insights and contributions, and yet, everyone would welcome those insights, if they were there. If you go look, you can find endless casual declarations about how women are better at communicating, empathizing, judgement and taste... but if there is even a single thing that it would appear men are always going to be better at, then that's treated as a Problem to be solved by complaining about it. This mainly serves to attract attention and resources so they can turn complaining into their job, or at least, a lucrative source of leads and income.
    - hulitu 1y ago
      > Notice how many of these were created after 2000, when efforts to get women into IT were already in full swing (certainly at my university). Let me guess: Western Europe or US ?
      - PeterStuer 1y ago
        Not Europe as there it was already in full swing since the 1980's.
    - wpietri 1y ago
      The feminist perspective is rooted in the massive amount of sexism and misogyny that necessitated the development of a feminist perspective. If you'd like to know about CS in specific, here's a good paper from one of the few women who made it through to be a CS professor: https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7040 https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7040 I happened to meet her at the 20 year anniversary of the paper and asked her if she was planning an update. As I recall it, she said that not much had changed, so she didn't see the point.
      - imtringued 1y ago
        I don't really see this as a productive perspective. AS the paper says, there is no overt sexism and misogyny. Computer science lacks social appreciation in general. All you need to do to experience this is be a male software developer in Germany. Germany is a horrible country to be a software developer in. The silicon valley types and maybe the new yorkers have a strong prestigious tech culture, but go away from these tech hubs and you will encounter that software development is pretty much low status work. The envy comes from cherry picking the most successful men working in the most successful locations. A lot of men get into software because they play a lot of video games and want to make their own video games. They don't get paid very much, because they trade passion for less money. These days men get harassed for playing video games. They get harassed for their primary motivation to sit in front of the computer. The paper also goes into the fact that men are pressured to perform and be successful. They don't have the luxury to sit things out because things are biased against them. If there is bias, then they are expected to overcome it through their own strength and to not rely on others. Take parts like this "Singly, these behaviors probably have little effect. But when they occur again and again, they give a powerful message to women: they are not as worthwhile as men nor are they expected to participate fully in class, in college, or in life at large" This seems incredibly outdated. These days things are swinging the exact opposite. Men are not considered as worthwhile as women, nor are they attending college and life at large as much as women, but here is the thing. Men are supposed to figure it out and face adversity themselves, whereas women often simply ask for help and support and they can often count on it. This means the pressure to perform simply isn't as high. Calling this "a bias" is essentially the same as begging for handcuffs and forced labor. The rat race must develop to a higher level.
  - xigoi 1y ago
    So women are not designing programming languages, but somehow it’s men’s fault?
    - wpietri 1y ago
      If you substitute, say, "being president" for "designing programming languages", then the answer is a pretty obvious yes. After the US revolution, some places in the US allowed voting for men and women of all races. White men quickly adjusted things so that only white men could vote, deploying violence where necessary, and building a system that excluded other people from the economic resources, education, and social power necessary to change things. It is only in recent decades we have started to undo that, and by no significant measure have we succeeded. And it's not just "being president"; it's provably true about many, many areas. Some men set things up to exclude women, and then the rest of the men went along with it. One of the ways we go along with it is by accepting a disproportionate share of the power and not using it to fix the system that gave it to us. Is "designing programming languages" one of those areas? I don't know enough about the topic to say. But I've talked enough women in software generally to know those same patterns apply to software development, an so I'd be surprised to find that "designing programming languages" is somehow an amazing egalitarian exception to the industry norm.
      - worthless-trash 1y ago
        No, you can't do this bait and switch, answer the question.
        wpietri 1y ago
        In the last paragraph, I did specifically answer the question. I even started that paragraph with the question so that people wouldn't miss it. But I'm not obliged to directly answer questions with wrong assumptions. If you think people are, tell me whether you've finally stopped beating your wife.
        worthless-trash 1y ago
iliti22 1y ago
[flagged]
- LoganDark 1y ago
  There are plenty of females (both trans and not) that program for fun.
  - imgreen 1y ago
    What's the difference between "trans" females and "not" when we're discussing programming for fun based on gender?
    - LoganDark 1y ago
      Not every trans person transitions during childhood, and someone AMAB may pick up a programming hobby pre-transition due to social factors that could have been different were they AFAB.
  - arresin 1y ago
    99% of the time when I see a female name on GitHub it is “Alyx” or some other clearly male perspective influenced choice and I know immediately.
    - LoganDark 1y ago
      Are you saying certain female names seem to you more common for transgender individuals?
wpietri 1y ago
[flagged]
- subarctic 1y ago
  Haha I thought you meant Poe's law until i clicked the link
andsoitis 1y ago
"For as long as I1 can remember, I have been in love with pro- gramming. As a pre-teen, I excitedly taught myself program- ming with BASIC books from the local library, and as a late teenager, I joined my high school’s computer club, and my high school capstone project was a rudimentary machine learning algorithm. In university, I chose compiler courses as electives, and my final MSc project included the develop- ment of a small programming language for SAT solving. It seemed a logical next step, when given the opportunity, to pursue a PhD in the direction of programming languages (PL). I am, for all intents and purposes, a very normal pro- gramming languages person, with one notable exception: I am female." but then: "Feminism Can Help Question Values and Priorities of Programming Languages. As I was trying to under- stand my mismatch with the PL community, I started to see that the current state of the art in PL research and de- sign prioritizes machines over people, there is a focus on programming languages that are easy to read for the ma- chine, rather than easy for people. The current standards of evaluation in the PL community are set from a masculine perspective as well, valuing formalism and formal methods over user studies, quantitative over qualitative work, and the examining of technical aspects over context and people" So they loved something as a kid growing up but now think it was dehumanizing ("prioritizing machines over people")? "Feminism in PL introduces interesting and exciting challenges that will require the deliberate work of examining different perspectives; seeking out users from a variety of different backgrounds and identities, and carefully investigating our programming languages and systems from diverse perspec- tives." I don't know that you can rely on feminism to drive inclusion of diverse perspectives at large. There are many backgrounds and identities that I do not expect feminism to bring to the fore for consideration and inclusion in PL design. I might be wrong on this, so would love a concrete example that draws that throughline.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- msgodel 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - exe34 1y ago
    Could you give some examples?
tines 1y ago
> Error messages are another PL design feature shaped by peoples’ standpoint, by their lived experiences and values. For many programming language designers, error messages are an afterthought. Other aspects of design will likely over- power the careful crafting of error messages, such as an op- timized compiler or an elegant syntax. Many language de- signers, explicitly or implicitly, take the stance that ‘users will just have to deal with error messages when they oc- cur’. Error messages in many languages explicitly do not include the user in their phrasing, saying things like ‘miss- ing bracket’ or ‘unknown variable’, which leaves the user out of the equation. For a person with the lived experience of being told they don’t belong in programming and being afraid of failure in the programming world (a common expe- rience for women in computing), unclear or unhelpful error messages are more likely to have negative impacts. More readable error messages are not just helpful for those with less prior knowledge, clear error messages are a better ex- perience and will help all users—even professional develop- ers. A recent study on error messages in Elm showed that their well-phrased error messages were the most-named positive experience of professionals working with the language [citation]. The author must consider the audience is either stupid or childish. An intelligent adult deserves respect and should not be talked about in this way, implying that they are emotionally unequipped to handle a straightforward computer error message.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- James_K 1y ago
  Talked about in what way? The text you quote says that error messages "may have negative impacts" on people, which seems undeniably true.
  - 1718627440 1y ago
    Nice sounding "non-negative" error messages also have a negative impact on people, in that they can't fix the problem, because the message isn't precise enough.
    - 1y ago
MichealCodes 1y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  [dead]
dismalaf 1y ago
Instead of writing that more programming languages should have a female perspective why doesn't the author simply write a programming language? Edit - apparently I can't read (bad habit of skimming long articles and reading the body of the more interesting headers). She did make one - designed to teach children Python. I still think it would be more interesting to write a general purpose language with the values in the essay.
- James_K 1y ago
  She has. It says it in the paper which you chose not to read.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - drivingmenuts 1y ago
    OK, but if the end goal is to teach Python, isn't the language just Python? I'm not sure I get the point of learning one language to learn another language (unless the point if just to start learning a plethora of languages). At any rate, I wish she'd included some sort of docs to read thru, rather than having to sit thru a bunch of busywork tutorials. I'd like to get an overview of what Hedy is about.
- arp242 1y ago
  She did: https://www.hedy.org https://www.hedy.org (have not yet read the article beyond the first few paragraphs, where this is mentioned).
moi2388 1y ago
“ Our goal is to illustrate opportunities for more inclusive practices that will introduce greater diversity to the design of programming languages and the demographic makeup of the programming language community.” Why would I care at all who wrote a programming language, and if the people writing them are diverse? I care about the language features and nothing else.
- DaSHacka 1y ago
  Meritocracy beliefs have been considered "white supremicist rhetoric" in many programming circles for some time now. Honestly I still don't get it, I guess its just one of those first-world problems people invent to occupy their time with outrage. But there is infact a large captive population of SWE's invested in these topics.
  - wpietri 1y ago
    It's because claims of true merit have for a long time been used as the justification for the exclusion of people systems have been rigged to exclude. Just to pick the most obvious example, the US's slave states systematically kept black people uneducated and beaten down, and then used their condition to justify their ongoing subjugation. For example, from the Texas declaration of Secession talks about the how the Northerners had "an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color-- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law." In their view, the southern aristocracy were the obvious and true holders of merit, and the system that put them on top was just proof of their merit. Or you could look at how women were systematically excluded for generations from education and economic resources, and then their condition was used at the justification for not letting them vote.
  - os2warpman 1y ago
    >Meritocracy beliefs have been considered "white supremicist rhetoric" in many programming circles for some time now. I've read this before and when I asked for examples, all of the examples given involved either people who were kicked out of open source projects for being huge dickheads or companies who held recruiting events at historically black colleges and universities being called woke. Do you have any examples of meritocracy beliefs being considered "white supremacist rhetoric"? BTW you spelled supremacist wrong. I'm curious about what browser/operating system combination did not highlight the misspelling.
miav 1y ago
Guys, the author presents an overall reasonable argument and I think it's more useful to engage with it in good faith than going "so it's all my fault just because I'm a man?" - no one's implying that. At its simplest, the point is that much of programming language design is done with a masculine perspective that values technical excellence and very little feminine perspective that focuses more on social impact. Most, including myself, have a knee-jerk reaction to dismiss this argument since at first glance it appears to trade off something known useful for something that's usually little else than a buzzword, but upon further reflection the argument is sensible. The theme of forsaking technological perfectionism in favor of reaching whatever end goal you have set is widely circulated on this forum and generally agreed with. Those of us that work as software engineers know that impact of your work is always valued more than the implementation or technical details. It's thus reasonable that when building programming languages, the needs and experience of the users should be considered. Not override everything else, but be factored into the equation. I know if I were to write a programming language I'd probably focus on pushing the boundaries of what's technologically possible, because I find it fun and interesting. But I would have to agree that even if I did succeed in doing so, the actual impact of my work would probably be lower than that of Hedy - the author's language. Hedy is not novel technologically, but the fact that it makes it meaningfully easier to learn programming for significant numbers of people is real, undeniable impact. Lastly, I want to note that the author's argument for underrepresentation of women in PL cannot be reduced to "those nasty men are keeping us out". Humans are tribal and any group of humans is bound to form complex social structures. Those are going to affect different people in different ways, linked paper investigates the effect on those structures on specifically women because the topic is close to the author. Whether you care about low numbers of women in PL design or not, the dynamics that have led to that being the case are worth investigating and are quite interesting on their own.
- aaaja 1y ago
  The bulk of low-effort hostile responses to her article in male-dominated spaces like HN really just illustrate her point over and over again. It is satisfying to read the engaging and curious reflections, like your own. Let us hope for more of these.
- 1y ago
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
raffael_de 1y ago
> For example, western PL designers might disregard cultural aspects of non-Western languages, like non-English numerals There is a reason why even in native Arabic¹ or Thai² communication Western "Arabic" numerals are used ... deliberately. Also I didn't find any suggestions or criticism actually regarding the _design_ of programming languages (from a feminist perspective); after all the title suggests that this is what the paper is about. There is only a single irrelevant reference to Python - I mean, practically thinking: what should be changed about Python to make it more "feminist"? Java, JavaScript, Rust, C++ aren't mentioned even once ... wouldn't it make sense to make the point clear by providing concrete examples of what is not satisfying about the status quo? Or is it maybe that there is no point to the question to begin with? 1: https://www.aljazeera.net/ebusiness/2025/6/5/countries-largest-sheep https://www.aljazeera.net/ebusiness/2025/6/5/countries-large... 2: https://www.thairath.co.th/news/crime/2862747 https://www.thairath.co.th/news/crime/2862747
1718627440 1y ago
Not an advocate, but isn't a core idea of feminism, that claims, that men think technically, in terms of power, while women think about social stuff, child-care, etc., are just roles and made up? How can than be claimed under the banner of feminism, that something isn't feminine (e.g. not social, to much technical) enough? Isn't that the "misogynous" kind of thinking, that feminism is supposed to fight? (Edit: Anyone cares to elaborate why this was flagged?)
- pchangr 1y ago
  Feminism, in my understanding, advocates for gender equality. It doesn’t deny differences among genders but addresses the flaws in the system that unfairly punish or prioritizes one gender over other. And achieving gender equality sometimes requires gender specific accommodations. I.E. Feminism would promote gender specific accommodations so that it becomes equally accessible for all genders. Having said that… I don’t know why your comment is flagged but I can tell you that your first sentence is written in a way that already makes it difficult to understand what you want to express. It also feels a bit snarky to me.
  - LiKao 1y ago
    Both is true depending on who you ask. That distinction between "men care about objects while women care about people" can be researched at early childhood. There are very vocal feminists who claim this is a direct sign of strong socialization beginning at early childhood and who claim this effect would completely disappear once we stop socializing gender roles in our society this way. There are also very vocal feminists who claim that these are two different gendered perspectives and we should have both perspectives. Yes, this might seem contradictory at first, but it really isn't as much. Feminism advocates for both woman who have grown up under the current socialization as well as new born children, and tries to find ways to do a more fair socialization.
- Gud 1y ago
  No, it is not, and I am wondering where you are getting this definition from? Feminism is an ideology for the advancement of the female sex. Particularly where they have been oppressed by the men.
1718627440 1y ago
> HTML, which is executable however, is not seen as a programming language in regular PL discourse HTML is executable? > UML is not executable, so could easily be disregarded as a programming language, but is not Who claims, that UML is a programming language? Is there a program that is written in "UML"? It is more a language in the same sense as a "design language" of a building.
Bjartr 1y ago
Had a chat with Claude over this paper and it did ultimately help me understand it better. So in case it helps others, I'm going to share the bits I think are important from that. (Just wanted to disclose my use of AI) To start with, this is a paper on programming language research first and programming languages themselves second (by way of how that research influences them). I think some readers might be put off by the feminist framing and miss that these are ideas many on HN have expressed before. For example, the paper makes the point that PL research tends towards mathematical formalism over human experience. This sounds like an odd thing to say at first, but consider the well established meme on HN: "What is a monad? Monads are monoids in the category of endofunctors" as though that were a helpful answer. That meme is saying the same thing. That focusing exclusively on the mathematically pure concept is actually an obstacle to understanding which limits the usefulness in practice of PLs, independent of a PL's capabilities. It's an interesting framing to be sure, and perhaps the observed values and behaviors of the PL research community is deeply influenced by a masculine framing. However, I do wonder how much of it at least originated from the domain itself. The hardware limitations of early computing made strict formalism essential - unless you got your formalism correct, your intent couldn't be mapped to execution on silicon. Mathematical rigor wasn't just preferred, it was often the only path to creating anything that actually worked. Even today those formalisms remain the fundamental building blocks that enable the higher levels of expressiveness we enjoy. Fields of research, science in general really, have momentum. Strict formalism and a willingness to deal with, or even value, high complexity was what it once took to make meaningful headway in the field of programming languages. Today, perhaps, that is less true, but those that succeeded in the past will continue to shape the field for some time. I do think this is ultimately a problem for the field. There are aspects of PL research and design that that certainly do require formalism and are inherently complex in a way that requires a certain approach. But that doesn't mean the field needs to remain forever closed to discussions and research around how the decisions that are made impact the world at large and the people in it.
- roarcher 1y ago
  The problem with this paper is its framing as a feminist issue. Claiming that programming language research is overly formal and rigorous is one thing. Claiming that this is a problem for women because they can't handle mathematical rigor as well as men is a baffling position for a feminist to take.
1718627440 1y ago
> Let’s consider a definition in a simple grammar: digit : 0..9. [...] In Arabic, digits are not 0-9 but 0..9. Aren't those just different glyphs? This can be even seen by the fact that HN converts them both to the same symbols. The mapping from characters to glyphs isn't defined by a programming language, it is defined by a font.
baggy_trough 1y ago
Stopped reading as soon as I saw a positive reference to "Glaciers, gender and science", one of the most batshit insane things I have ever read.

22 points by smitty1e 1y ago

imgreen 1y ago

[flagged]

kbelder 1y ago
>Assembly - Kathleen Booth (female, 1947, though varies by architecture) Funny that the only female on that list designed the most hardcore masculine language.
- aaron695 1y ago
  [dead]
- n4r9 1y ago
  In response to the (dead) sibling comment: > Automatic Digital Calculators follows the Booths' groundbreaking 1947 work, Coding for A.R.C., which proposed an assembly code which could be converted into an executable machine code by an "assembler" utility programme. Between 1947 and 1953 they built three machines utilizing this language: the Automatic Relay Calculator, Simple Electronic Computer, and All-purpose Electric (X) Computer. https://www.peterharrington.co.uk/automatic-digital-calculators-172689.html https://www.peterharrington.co.uk/automatic-digital-calculat...
aaaja 1y ago
[flagged]
- unconed 1y ago
  Notice how many of these were created after 2000, when efforts to get women into IT were already in full swing (certainly at my university). Women have had two decades now to demonstrate that it was the fault of gatekeeping that certain parts of programming remain almost exclusively male (with the giant asterisk of MtF-trans being an oddly prevalent archetype, and thus, really a false signal). It's sad, but the feminist perspective is to start from the assumption that sexism is the cause, and work backwards from that. As someone else pointed out: there is no substitute for just doing the work, especially in a field where all you need to do is show up and publish. The barriers couldn't be lower, compared to virtually every other field, but that objective measure is irrelevant because the motivation is to validate a subjective feeling of collectivized mistreatment. The implication is that we are sorely missing out on some unique insights and contributions, and yet, everyone would welcome those insights, if they were there. If you go look, you can find endless casual declarations about how women are better at communicating, empathizing, judgement and taste... but if there is even a single thing that it would appear men are always going to be better at, then that's treated as a Problem to be solved by complaining about it. This mainly serves to attract attention and resources so they can turn complaining into their job, or at least, a lucrative source of leads and income.
  - hulitu 1y ago
    > Notice how many of these were created after 2000, when efforts to get women into IT were already in full swing (certainly at my university). Let me guess: Western Europe or US ?
    - PeterStuer 1y ago
      Not Europe as there it was already in full swing since the 1980's.
  - wpietri 1y ago
    The feminist perspective is rooted in the massive amount of sexism and misogyny that necessitated the development of a feminist perspective. If you'd like to know about CS in specific, here's a good paper from one of the few women who made it through to be a CS professor: https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7040 https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7040 I happened to meet her at the 20 year anniversary of the paper and asked her if she was planning an update. As I recall it, she said that not much had changed, so she didn't see the point.
    - imtringued 1y ago
      I don't really see this as a productive perspective. AS the paper says, there is no overt sexism and misogyny. Computer science lacks social appreciation in general. All you need to do to experience this is be a male software developer in Germany. Germany is a horrible country to be a software developer in. The silicon valley types and maybe the new yorkers have a strong prestigious tech culture, but go away from these tech hubs and you will encounter that software development is pretty much low status work. The envy comes from cherry picking the most successful men working in the most successful locations. A lot of men get into software because they play a lot of video games and want to make their own video games. They don't get paid very much, because they trade passion for less money. These days men get harassed for playing video games. They get harassed for their primary motivation to sit in front of the computer. The paper also goes into the fact that men are pressured to perform and be successful. They don't have the luxury to sit things out because things are biased against them. If there is bias, then they are expected to overcome it through their own strength and to not rely on others. Take parts like this "Singly, these behaviors probably have little effect. But when they occur again and again, they give a powerful message to women: they are not as worthwhile as men nor are they expected to participate fully in class, in college, or in life at large" This seems incredibly outdated. These days things are swinging the exact opposite. Men are not considered as worthwhile as women, nor are they attending college and life at large as much as women, but here is the thing. Men are supposed to figure it out and face adversity themselves, whereas women often simply ask for help and support and they can often count on it. This means the pressure to perform simply isn't as high. Calling this "a bias" is essentially the same as begging for handcuffs and forced labor. The rat race must develop to a higher level.
- xigoi 1y ago
  So women are not designing programming languages, but somehow it’s men’s fault?
  - wpietri 1y ago
    If you substitute, say, "being president" for "designing programming languages", then the answer is a pretty obvious yes. After the US revolution, some places in the US allowed voting for men and women of all races. White men quickly adjusted things so that only white men could vote, deploying violence where necessary, and building a system that excluded other people from the economic resources, education, and social power necessary to change things. It is only in recent decades we have started to undo that, and by no significant measure have we succeeded. And it's not just "being president"; it's provably true about many, many areas. Some men set things up to exclude women, and then the rest of the men went along with it. One of the ways we go along with it is by accepting a disproportionate share of the power and not using it to fix the system that gave it to us. Is "designing programming languages" one of those areas? I don't know enough about the topic to say. But I've talked enough women in software generally to know those same patterns apply to software development, an so I'd be surprised to find that "designing programming languages" is somehow an amazing egalitarian exception to the industry norm.
    - worthless-trash 1y ago
      No, you can't do this bait and switch, answer the question.
      - wpietri 1y ago
        In the last paragraph, I did specifically answer the question. I even started that paragraph with the question so that people wouldn't miss it. But I'm not obliged to directly answer questions with wrong assumptions. If you think people are, tell me whether you've finally stopped beating your wife.
        worthless-trash 1y ago

iliti22 1y ago

[flagged]

LoganDark 1y ago
There are plenty of females (both trans and not) that program for fun.
- imgreen 1y ago
  What's the difference between "trans" females and "not" when we're discussing programming for fun based on gender?
  - LoganDark 1y ago
    Not every trans person transitions during childhood, and someone AMAB may pick up a programming hobby pre-transition due to social factors that could have been different were they AFAB.
- arresin 1y ago
  99% of the time when I see a female name on GitHub it is “Alyx” or some other clearly male perspective influenced choice and I know immediately.
  - LoganDark 1y ago
    Are you saying certain female names seem to you more common for transgender individuals?

wpietri 1y ago

[flagged]

subarctic 1y ago
Haha I thought you meant Poe's law until i clicked the link

andsoitis 1y ago

"For as long as I1 can remember, I have been in love with pro- gramming. As a pre-teen, I excitedly taught myself program- ming with BASIC books from the local library, and as a late teenager, I joined my high school’s computer club, and my high school capstone project was a rudimentary machine learning algorithm. In university, I chose compiler courses as electives, and my final MSc project included the develop- ment of a small programming language for SAT solving. It seemed a logical next step, when given the opportunity, to pursue a PhD in the direction of programming languages (PL). I am, for all intents and purposes, a very normal pro- gramming languages person, with one notable exception: I am female." but then: "Feminism Can Help Question Values and Priorities of Programming Languages. As I was trying to under- stand my mismatch with the PL community, I started to see that the current state of the art in PL research and de- sign prioritizes machines over people, there is a focus on programming languages that are easy to read for the ma- chine, rather than easy for people. The current standards of evaluation in the PL community are set from a masculine perspective as well, valuing formalism and formal methods over user studies, quantitative over qualitative work, and the examining of technical aspects over context and people" So they loved something as a kid growing up but now think it was dehumanizing ("prioritizing machines over people")? "Feminism in PL introduces interesting and exciting challenges that will require the deliberate work of examining different perspectives; seeking out users from a variety of different backgrounds and identities, and carefully investigating our programming languages and systems from diverse perspec- tives." I don't know that you can rely on feminism to drive inclusion of diverse perspectives at large. There are many backgrounds and identities that I do not expect feminism to bring to the fore for consideration and inclusion in PL design. I might be wrong on this, so would love a concrete example that draws that throughline.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
msgodel 1y ago
[flagged]
- exe34 1y ago
  Could you give some examples?

tines 1y ago

> Error messages are another PL design feature shaped by peoples’ standpoint, by their lived experiences and values. For many programming language designers, error messages are an afterthought. Other aspects of design will likely over- power the careful crafting of error messages, such as an op- timized compiler or an elegant syntax. Many language de- signers, explicitly or implicitly, take the stance that ‘users will just have to deal with error messages when they oc- cur’. Error messages in many languages explicitly do not include the user in their phrasing, saying things like ‘miss- ing bracket’ or ‘unknown variable’, which leaves the user out of the equation. For a person with the lived experience of being told they don’t belong in programming and being afraid of failure in the programming world (a common expe- rience for women in computing), unclear or unhelpful error messages are more likely to have negative impacts. More readable error messages are not just helpful for those with less prior knowledge, clear error messages are a better ex- perience and will help all users—even professional develop- ers. A recent study on error messages in Elm showed that their well-phrased error messages were the most-named positive experience of professionals working with the language [citation]. The author must consider the audience is either stupid or childish. An intelligent adult deserves respect and should not be talked about in this way, implying that they are emotionally unequipped to handle a straightforward computer error message.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
James_K 1y ago
Talked about in what way? The text you quote says that error messages "may have negative impacts" on people, which seems undeniably true.
- 1718627440 1y ago
  Nice sounding "non-negative" error messages also have a negative impact on people, in that they can't fix the problem, because the message isn't precise enough.
  - 1y ago

MichealCodes 1y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper

IAmBroom 1y ago
[dead]

dismalaf 1y ago

Instead of writing that more programming languages should have a female perspective why doesn't the author simply write a programming language? Edit - apparently I can't read (bad habit of skimming long articles and reading the body of the more interesting headers). She did make one - designed to teach children Python. I still think it would be more interesting to write a general purpose language with the values in the essay.

James_K 1y ago
She has. It says it in the paper which you chose not to read.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- drivingmenuts 1y ago
  OK, but if the end goal is to teach Python, isn't the language just Python? I'm not sure I get the point of learning one language to learn another language (unless the point if just to start learning a plethora of languages). At any rate, I wish she'd included some sort of docs to read thru, rather than having to sit thru a bunch of busywork tutorials. I'd like to get an overview of what Hedy is about.
arp242 1y ago
She did: https://www.hedy.org https://www.hedy.org (have not yet read the article beyond the first few paragraphs, where this is mentioned).

moi2388 1y ago

“ Our goal is to illustrate opportunities for more inclusive practices that will introduce greater diversity to the design of programming languages and the demographic makeup of the programming language community.” Why would I care at all who wrote a programming language, and if the people writing them are diverse? I care about the language features and nothing else.

DaSHacka 1y ago
Meritocracy beliefs have been considered "white supremicist rhetoric" in many programming circles for some time now. Honestly I still don't get it, I guess its just one of those first-world problems people invent to occupy their time with outrage. But there is infact a large captive population of SWE's invested in these topics.
- wpietri 1y ago
  It's because claims of true merit have for a long time been used as the justification for the exclusion of people systems have been rigged to exclude. Just to pick the most obvious example, the US's slave states systematically kept black people uneducated and beaten down, and then used their condition to justify their ongoing subjugation. For example, from the Texas declaration of Secession talks about the how the Northerners had "an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color-- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law." In their view, the southern aristocracy were the obvious and true holders of merit, and the system that put them on top was just proof of their merit. Or you could look at how women were systematically excluded for generations from education and economic resources, and then their condition was used at the justification for not letting them vote.
- os2warpman 1y ago
  >Meritocracy beliefs have been considered "white supremicist rhetoric" in many programming circles for some time now. I've read this before and when I asked for examples, all of the examples given involved either people who were kicked out of open source projects for being huge dickheads or companies who held recruiting events at historically black colleges and universities being called woke. Do you have any examples of meritocracy beliefs being considered "white supremacist rhetoric"? BTW you spelled supremacist wrong. I'm curious about what browser/operating system combination did not highlight the misspelling.

miav 1y ago

Guys, the author presents an overall reasonable argument and I think it's more useful to engage with it in good faith than going "so it's all my fault just because I'm a man?" - no one's implying that. At its simplest, the point is that much of programming language design is done with a masculine perspective that values technical excellence and very little feminine perspective that focuses more on social impact. Most, including myself, have a knee-jerk reaction to dismiss this argument since at first glance it appears to trade off something known useful for something that's usually little else than a buzzword, but upon further reflection the argument is sensible. The theme of forsaking technological perfectionism in favor of reaching whatever end goal you have set is widely circulated on this forum and generally agreed with. Those of us that work as software engineers know that impact of your work is always valued more than the implementation or technical details. It's thus reasonable that when building programming languages, the needs and experience of the users should be considered. Not override everything else, but be factored into the equation. I know if I were to write a programming language I'd probably focus on pushing the boundaries of what's technologically possible, because I find it fun and interesting. But I would have to agree that even if I did succeed in doing so, the actual impact of my work would probably be lower than that of Hedy - the author's language. Hedy is not novel technologically, but the fact that it makes it meaningfully easier to learn programming for significant numbers of people is real, undeniable impact. Lastly, I want to note that the author's argument for underrepresentation of women in PL cannot be reduced to "those nasty men are keeping us out". Humans are tribal and any group of humans is bound to form complex social structures. Those are going to affect different people in different ways, linked paper investigates the effect on those structures on specifically women because the topic is close to the author. Whether you care about low numbers of women in PL design or not, the dynamics that have led to that being the case are worth investigating and are quite interesting on their own.

aaaja 1y ago
The bulk of low-effort hostile responses to her article in male-dominated spaces like HN really just illustrate her point over and over again. It is satisfying to read the engaging and curious reflections, like your own. Let us hope for more of these.
1y ago

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

raffael_de 1y ago

> For example, western PL designers might disregard cultural aspects of non-Western languages, like non-English numerals There is a reason why even in native Arabic¹ or Thai² communication Western "Arabic" numerals are used ... deliberately. Also I didn't find any suggestions or criticism actually regarding the _design_ of programming languages (from a feminist perspective); after all the title suggests that this is what the paper is about. There is only a single irrelevant reference to Python - I mean, practically thinking: what should be changed about Python to make it more "feminist"? Java, JavaScript, Rust, C++ aren't mentioned even once ... wouldn't it make sense to make the point clear by providing concrete examples of what is not satisfying about the status quo? Or is it maybe that there is no point to the question to begin with? 1: https://www.aljazeera.net/ebusiness/2025/6/5/countries-largest-sheep https://www.aljazeera.net/ebusiness/2025/6/5/countries-large... 2: https://www.thairath.co.th/news/crime/2862747 https://www.thairath.co.th/news/crime/2862747

1718627440 1y ago

Not an advocate, but isn't a core idea of feminism, that claims, that men think technically, in terms of power, while women think about social stuff, child-care, etc., are just roles and made up? How can than be claimed under the banner of feminism, that something isn't feminine (e.g. not social, to much technical) enough? Isn't that the "misogynous" kind of thinking, that feminism is supposed to fight? (Edit: Anyone cares to elaborate why this was flagged?)

pchangr 1y ago
Feminism, in my understanding, advocates for gender equality. It doesn’t deny differences among genders but addresses the flaws in the system that unfairly punish or prioritizes one gender over other. And achieving gender equality sometimes requires gender specific accommodations. I.E. Feminism would promote gender specific accommodations so that it becomes equally accessible for all genders. Having said that… I don’t know why your comment is flagged but I can tell you that your first sentence is written in a way that already makes it difficult to understand what you want to express. It also feels a bit snarky to me.
- LiKao 1y ago
  Both is true depending on who you ask. That distinction between "men care about objects while women care about people" can be researched at early childhood. There are very vocal feminists who claim this is a direct sign of strong socialization beginning at early childhood and who claim this effect would completely disappear once we stop socializing gender roles in our society this way. There are also very vocal feminists who claim that these are two different gendered perspectives and we should have both perspectives. Yes, this might seem contradictory at first, but it really isn't as much. Feminism advocates for both woman who have grown up under the current socialization as well as new born children, and tries to find ways to do a more fair socialization.
Gud 1y ago
No, it is not, and I am wondering where you are getting this definition from? Feminism is an ideology for the advancement of the female sex. Particularly where they have been oppressed by the men.

1718627440 1y ago

> HTML, which is executable however, is not seen as a programming language in regular PL discourse HTML is executable? > UML is not executable, so could easily be disregarded as a programming language, but is not Who claims, that UML is a programming language? Is there a program that is written in "UML"? It is more a language in the same sense as a "design language" of a building.

Bjartr 1y ago

Had a chat with Claude over this paper and it did ultimately help me understand it better. So in case it helps others, I'm going to share the bits I think are important from that. (Just wanted to disclose my use of AI) To start with, this is a paper on programming language research first and programming languages themselves second (by way of how that research influences them). I think some readers might be put off by the feminist framing and miss that these are ideas many on HN have expressed before. For example, the paper makes the point that PL research tends towards mathematical formalism over human experience. This sounds like an odd thing to say at first, but consider the well established meme on HN: "What is a monad? Monads are monoids in the category of endofunctors" as though that were a helpful answer. That meme is saying the same thing. That focusing exclusively on the mathematically pure concept is actually an obstacle to understanding which limits the usefulness in practice of PLs, independent of a PL's capabilities. It's an interesting framing to be sure, and perhaps the observed values and behaviors of the PL research community is deeply influenced by a masculine framing. However, I do wonder how much of it at least originated from the domain itself. The hardware limitations of early computing made strict formalism essential - unless you got your formalism correct, your intent couldn't be mapped to execution on silicon. Mathematical rigor wasn't just preferred, it was often the only path to creating anything that actually worked. Even today those formalisms remain the fundamental building blocks that enable the higher levels of expressiveness we enjoy. Fields of research, science in general really, have momentum. Strict formalism and a willingness to deal with, or even value, high complexity was what it once took to make meaningful headway in the field of programming languages. Today, perhaps, that is less true, but those that succeeded in the past will continue to shape the field for some time. I do think this is ultimately a problem for the field. There are aspects of PL research and design that that certainly do require formalism and are inherently complex in a way that requires a certain approach. But that doesn't mean the field needs to remain forever closed to discussions and research around how the decisions that are made impact the world at large and the people in it.

roarcher 1y ago
The problem with this paper is its framing as a feminist issue. Claiming that programming language research is overly formal and rigorous is one thing. Claiming that this is a problem for women because they can't handle mathematical rigor as well as men is a baffling position for a feminist to take.

1718627440 1y ago

> Let’s consider a definition in a simple grammar: digit : 0..9. [...] In Arabic, digits are not 0-9 but 0..9. Aren't those just different glyphs? This can be even seen by the fact that HN converts them both to the same symbols. The mapping from characters to glyphs isn't defined by a programming language, it is defined by a font.

baggy_trough 1y ago

Stopped reading as soon as I saw a positive reference to "Glaciers, gender and science", one of the most batshit insane things I have ever read.