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“ Our goal is to illustrate opportunities for more inclusive practices that will introduce greater diversity to the design of programming languages and the demo

“ 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.
  - n4r9 1y ago
    Not the same person but there's no spellchecker for me when I type in the reply box. I'm on Firefox and Windows 11. Screenshot: https://v1.imgpaste.net/images/public/1564a772-9648-4540-88d3-ffb51fbfa4d4-hnmis.jpg https://v1.imgpaste.net/images/public/1564a772-9648-4540-88d...
n4r9 1y ago
My guess: a diverse set of backgrounds promotes features that are intuitive and convenient for a broader class of users.
- hard_times 1y ago
  examples of such features being?
  - exe34 1y ago
    ascii vs utf
  - n4r9 1y ago
    Several are given in the linked article, like built-in support for ~non-Roman~[edit: non-Western] numeral characters, and nomenclature that works well with screen readers. A diverse staff may also help to promote language (e.g. keywords or in documentation) that's broadly understood across different cultures.
    - AStonesThrow 1y ago
      But why for (I = I; I <= XIV; I++) { printf("Pope Leo %d is best Pope Leo!\n", I); } Interestingly, the authors use circumlocutions to avoid naming the Arabic numerals for what they are, while the ones used in their example are known as Eastern Arabic Numerals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals_(disambiguation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals_(disambiguatio...
      - n4r9 1y ago
        Hah, thanks for the correction.
      - whatevertrevor 1y ago
        They clarified in the footnote that this is to prevent confusion as many readers may not know that Arabic numerals are the widely used ones. It is indeed confusing that what the world uses as numerical lingua-franca are Arabic numerals, and what are used in Arabic script (and India sometimes) are called Eastern Arabic Numerals.
deleted 1y ago
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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.
- n4r9 1y ago
  Not the same person but there's no spellchecker for me when I type in the reply box. I'm on Firefox and Windows 11. Screenshot: https://v1.imgpaste.net/images/public/1564a772-9648-4540-88d3-ffb51fbfa4d4-hnmis.jpg https://v1.imgpaste.net/images/public/1564a772-9648-4540-88d...

n4r9 1y ago

My guess: a diverse set of backgrounds promotes features that are intuitive and convenient for a broader class of users.

hard_times 1y ago
examples of such features being?
- exe34 1y ago
  ascii vs utf
- n4r9 1y ago
  Several are given in the linked article, like built-in support for ~non-Roman~[edit: non-Western] numeral characters, and nomenclature that works well with screen readers. A diverse staff may also help to promote language (e.g. keywords or in documentation) that's broadly understood across different cultures.
  - AStonesThrow 1y ago
    But why for (I = I; I <= XIV; I++) { printf("Pope Leo %d is best Pope Leo!\n", I); } Interestingly, the authors use circumlocutions to avoid naming the Arabic numerals for what they are, while the ones used in their example are known as Eastern Arabic Numerals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals_(disambiguation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals_(disambiguatio...
    - n4r9 1y ago
      Hah, thanks for the correction.
    - whatevertrevor 1y ago
      They clarified in the footnote that this is to prevent confusion as many readers may not know that Arabic numerals are the widely used ones. It is indeed confusing that what the world uses as numerical lingua-franca are Arabic numerals, and what are used in Arabic script (and India sometimes) are called Eastern Arabic Numerals.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]