[arp242]

> At its simplest, the point is that much of programming language design is done with a masculine perspective that values technical excellence and very little feminine perspective that focuses more on social impact.

I guess my criticism of this is that it reduces both men and women to what amounts as little more than stereotypes, which leaves me rather uneasy.

I also find it somewhat of a distraction as to the actual issues. For example one of the topics is that all programming languages only accept Latin numerals (0-9) and often only support English in many keywords. It's not hard to see how this might exclude people, sure.

A counter-argument to this might be that having a single Lingua Franca enables a global community of people from very diverse backgrounds to communicate and work together. Just today I accepted two patches from someone from China. Thirty years ago even talking to someone from China would be a novelty, let alone casually cooperating. That's kind of amazing, no? If we'd both be stuck in our exclusive world of "English" and "Chinese" with out own languages and counting systems and whatnot, then that would have been a lot harder.

All things considered English probably isn't the best, fairest, or more equitable choice. But it is what it is, and it's by far the most practical choice today.

You can of course disagree with all of that, and that's fine. But reducing it to "technical excellence" vs "social impact" or "male perspective" vs. "female perspective" just seems reductive and a distraction.