[Techtalk] Programming languages for women

[Amanda5]

Ah, ... In the kitchen women follow recipes or shall I say cooking programs.
Women write cooking programs or shall I say recipes.
They put them in their recipe box on the shelf or should I say
in the object repository.  Mom's make lists of data then create plans
to execute that takes them around town to obtain the dry cleaning,
groceries and pet supplies.  I think it is innate in general that all humans
program or shall I say plan and execute.

amanda5


At 09:05 PM 3/3/2002 -0500, James wrote:
>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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