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 i

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.