A Case for Feminism in Programming Language Design by Felienne Hermans

About this episode

The episode discusses the impact of intersectional feminism on programming language design and the biases in academic research.

In the academic field of programming language research, there are a few prestigious conferences that you must present at to advance in your career. These conferences are rather selective about which presentations they'll accept. If your research work involves proving formal properties about a programming language, you'll have their ear. But if your work looks at, say, the human factors of language design, you might as well not bother applying — and thus, not bother pursuing that work in the first place. Why is the formalistic, systems-focused work elevated, and the human-focused work diminished? And what are the downstream consequences, the self-reinforcing feedback loops that come from this narrow focus? In this episode we discuss a paper by Felienne Hermans and Ari Schlesinger titled, A case for Feminism in Programming Language Design . It applies the lens of intersectional feminism to reveal a startling lack of "Yes, and…" in academic computer science, where valuable avenues of inquiry are closed off, careers are stifled, and people are unintentionally driven away from contributing to the field, simply because their passions and expertise don't conform to a…

People in this episode

Hosts: Ivan Reese, Jimmy Miller, Lu Wilson

Guest: Felienne Hermans

Topics covered

• feminism
• programming language design
• human factors
• academic conferences
• intersectionality
• computer science

Keywords

• programming languages
• feminism
• academic research
• human factors
• computer science
• intersectionality
• conferences

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