What do programmers and computer scientists think about this woman's thesis on making a "Feminist Programming Language"?

I'm intrigued, but I don't think she appreciates the scope of this project or the amount of technical material that goes into designing a new programming language paradigm that will be taken seriously by anyone outside of the humanities. I think the biggest potential contribution of something like this is a very clear and precise statement of what feminist logic is, which is something that the rest of us can parse and respond to.  Right now ideas in the humanities are very hard to make precise, and that's tricky for us STEM types to deal with.  I think that having a bridge of this form would go a long way towards making it easier for everyone to engage in a dialogue with some real common ground. Edit: I want to address a misconception that I've seen in a couple of the answers here.  Formal logic is the basis of modern programming language theory due to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry%E2%80%93Howard_correspondence, and there is even some existing literature on programming using paraconsistent logics.  While it's not clear exactly what feminist logic will bring to the table, it certainly looks like Ms. Schlesinger has made an honest attempt to engage with modern programming language theory.

Obviously, ordering a computer to do things is demeaning and insulting to the computer. So a proper feminist programming language would let a programmer merely hint to the computer about what is required, and let the computer decide how it feels about what has to be done. And if it feels it doesn't want to do it because it has a headache tonight, the programmer can go watch a football game instead. Programming examples: Programmer:  Make me a sammich. Executed result:  Make your own damned sammich.

Rather than pass judgement, I'll just quote from http://www.hastac.org/blogs/ari-schlesinger/2013/11/26/feminism-and-programming-languages in http://www.hastac.org/users/ari-schlesinger's own words: I realized that to program in a feminist way, one would ideally want to use a feminist programming language. So what is a feminist programming language? Well I took a look at the major programming paradigms, the following are the four main groups a programming language can fall into: imperative, functional, object-oriented, and logic. I decided to explore feminist logic such that a feminist programming language could be derived. I am currently exploring feminist critiques of logic in hopes of outlining a working framework for the creation of a feminist programming language. And in response to a comment on that page asking "What does this mean?", Ms. Schlesinger responds (in part): A non-normative paradigm would be something that does not reinforce normative realizations of what a programming language is. That is to say, not whatever paradigms (OOP, functional, logic, etc) and programming languages you would consider standard (Java, C++, Ruby, Python, to list a few). The ideas is that the standard, normative, concepts reinforce the values and ideologies of societies standards. Currently, there exist projects built in response to normative programming languages and standard computer science, check out mezangelle for an example. In many ways this falls under the scope of critical code studies, as I am asking questions about the cultural, social impact of normal programming constructs. What is a feminist logic is a question I’ve spent the past six months thinking about and researching. There are not a lot of women in philosophy, and there are definitely not a lot of feminist philosophers, so I don’t have a good answer for this question. There is great scholarship talking about weather a feminist logic can build off of formal logic or if it has to reject the laws of identity and create something entirely new. There are solid arguments for both camps, personally I’m swayed by the constructive theories that would build onto formal logic through a feminist lens. There exist logics that handle contradiction as part of the system, namely paraconsistent logic. I think this type of logic represents the feminist idea that something can be and not be without being a contradiction, that is a system where the following statement is not explosive: (p && ¬p) == 1. I can't bring myself to explore "paraconsistent logic" especially since (p && ¬p) == 1 is valid (I assume she really meant ∀p∀q:(p∧¬p)⟹q∀p∀q:(p∧¬p)⟹q\forall p \forall q: (p \land \neg p) \implies q , but I'm just guessing).

I wonder if this was inspired from a group of people who wanted a woman command as a counterpart to Linux's http://linux.about.com/od/commands/l/blcmdl1_man.htm. This is really stupid. How can one spend time thinking of sexism and discrimination among languages ? Wars among languages are generally due to their features, not because they apparently are sexist. Also, how do they conclude that people like James Gosling or Bjarne Stroustrrup spent time in making the language sexist, of all things ?

Ehh…I’m kinda afraid to post my opinion here, in fear of being lynched by feminists for being patriarchal, but anyway.But I have no idea what she’s talking about.I haven’t seen in any of her blogs a concrete definition of the difference between patriarchal and feminist code. No hint at how the current code written.And not even a code example.Also Fuzzy = True | False | Null And :: Fuzzy -> Fuzzy -> Fuzzy And False _ = False And True k = k And Null False = False And Null _ = Null Not :: Fuzzy -> Fuzzy Not True = False Not False = True Not Null = Null There you go. Now (p&&!p) can be Null instead of True.Don’t get me wrong, I do understand the need of women in math and CS. I do understand the current gender bias.But please focus on the right problems when trying to fix that, or you’re just reinforcing the same stereotypes you’re trying to destroy.It might be interesting to know that an attempt has been made to create a feminist programming language (c+=) as a satirical joke - but it did reinforce the gender stereotypes about women.So if you’re trying to create such a programming language, please note you might (you will) aid the patriarchy with it.

I think she’s looking to create an issue where there’s no issue that can be created. Natural languages might be subject to “feminist” or “masculine”, but assembly? What’s the feminist equivalent of RAL?C++? What’s the feminist for sprintf()? S_write_neatly+f()?Or is she talking about creating a totally new logic? (It’s probably possible, but would human brains be able to follow it?)(The women at Linuxchix don’t seen to think there’s much wrong with current languages.)