[Techtalk] Programming languages for women

[James]

I think what jennyw was more trying to say was communities that were
more open and supportive, not necessarily that the language was actually
written for women.  Am I right, jennyw?

But it would be an *interesting* psychology/computer research hybrid
experiment to find what in programming men and women find easier to use
or more difficult to understand.  

I find that as a guy, I'm very... Procedural.  I need to be able to see
a clear set of steps.  Is this common to all programmers, just male ones
or am I totally bizarre? :)

- James

> -----Original Message-----
> From: techtalk-admin at linuxchix.org 
> [mailto:techtalk-admin at linuxchix.org] On Behalf Of Amanda5
> Sent: Sunday, March 03, 2002 9:02 PM
> To: jennyw; TechTalk
> Subject: Re: [Techtalk] Programming languages for women
> 
> 
> 
> At 11:52 AM 3/3/2002 -0800, jennyw wrote:
> >On the topic of getting more women involved in open source, 
> are there 
> >languages that are more woman-friendly than others?
> 
> IMHO Wrong Question: Imperative programming languages (ALGOL, Basic, 
> Pascal, C, C++, Java, Ada, Fortran etc) are not intended for males or 
> females they are intended for expressing arithmetic 
> algorithms on machines. 
> Programming languages have no inclusive notion of gender.  
> Programming 
> languages provide a way to express an algorithm on a target CPU. 
> Programming languages are machine oriented.  Programming 
> languages have 
> mathematical underpinnings. The best programmers have broad 
> as well as deep 
> knowledge in math as well as theoretics in computer  science such as 
> automata, grammar and computability. One such person was 
> Admiral Grace 
> Murray Hopper.  Here is an interesting quote about a 
> distinguished woman 
> pioneer in the field.  "Probably no one did more to change 
> the conservative 
> culture of the 1950's programmers than Grace Hopper." Cambell 
> and Aspray, 
> "Computer, A History of the Information Machine," 1996.   
> Grace Hopper (a 
> woman of distinction) was one of the first to build the types 
> of compilers 
> we use today. If you read her papers there is no discussion 
> about building 
> male or female oriented languages.  Her discussion is about 
> supporting, 
> from arithmetic to business oriented algorithms that can be 
> compiled and 
> run on  the first CPUs.  There are other non-imperative 
> languages that 
> attempt to express subject orientations like AI in LISP and 
> declarative 
> mathematical proofs in PROLOG and calculus in REDUCE. IMHO  
> programming 
> languages tend to be subject and CPU oriented not male or 
> female oriented.
> 
> What features would you have in a woman friendly language?  
> What algorithms 
> or declaratives would you try to express or program in a 
> woman friendly 
> language?
> 
> 
> >   Since the number of
> >women are in decline in programming, this may need to 
> include current 
> >non-programmers and beginning programmers.
> 
> I'm not sure why the numbers have declined. Today women have so many 
> choices its not clear to me why other women have made the 
> choices they have 
> made. IMHO our lack of supporting the math and sciences in elementary 
> schools has more to do with the issue than anything else.
> 
> >Technical issues aren't the only
> >consideration, though.
> >Programming languages tend to have cultures
> >associated with them. The culture of C++ programmers I experienced 
> >wasn't particular woman-friendly (actually, it was kind of 
> >woman-hostile -- lots of boys with big egos and rampant sexism).
> 
> I'm going to have to disagree with you on that one.  Actually 
> if there is 
> such a culture as C++ it is not really C++ it is Object Oriented 
> Programming or OOP.  OOP folks have philosophical ways of 
> thinking about 
> expressing algorithms differently as do database people as do 
> AI folks as 
> do graphics folks as do web folks.  I think you might be more 
> influenced by 
> your negative relationship with the guys on-line as an 
> on-line culture than 
> a language culture such as C++. It is very true that on-line 
> males tend to 
> behave like children hanging out under a dim street light in the back 
> alleys of the Internet. They have tormentive manners that 
> would buy them a 
> spanking from their moms if they were found out. I lurked 
> from the shadows 
> of that group for a while and found them to be not worth my 
> time. The group 
> of on-line boy C++ programmers are but one group. Over a 
> period of time the 
> good "guys" leave because they do not want to put up with the 
> nonsense any 
> more than you do. Have you tried University based groups? 
> There are also 
> professional groups like ACM and IEEE. AND there is this 
> friendly group 8-)
> 
> 
> >My limited experience with the SmallTalk community was positive, but 
> >unfortunately it's not a particularly popular language these 
> days, and 
> >might not be a good choice for open source projects. I don't 
> know about 
> >Python, Perl, and PHP.
> 
> With Open Source there appears to be a developing culture 
> regarding the 
> philosophy of  access/use and the costs of software with 
> developing rank 
> and file purposes.
> 
> 
> >There was a recent discussion on comp.lang.ruby about including more 
> >women, and Ruby seems like a pretty clean language that seems to be 
> >gaining popularity, and there is significant SmallTalk crossover. On 
> >the other hand, there were also comments about there being a 
> particular 
> >shortage of women in the Ruby community, even compared with the 
> >computing community at large.
> Don't know anything about Ruby. Never heard of it.
> 
> Amanda5
> 
> 
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