@ -67,28 +67,29 @@ wrap up the comparison between these two approaches
A lesson can be learned: sometimes code is about performance, sometimes is about flexibility, sometimes is about accessibility, but rarely about everything at the same time. Programming means to balance between these different aspects depending on the situation. Keeping it in mind when writing code documentation gives to the writer space to adjust tone, intensity and approach based on who is going to read these docs.
A lesson can be learned: sometimes code is about performance, sometimes is about flexibility, sometimes is about accessibility, but rarely about everything at the same time. Programming means to balance between these different aspects depending on the situation. Keeping it in mind when writing code documentation gives to the writer space to adjust tone, intensity and approach based on who is going to read these docs.
2 problems of language:
It's not only a matter of contents and approach to technicalities, but also the very language with which they are formulated and exposed.
It's not only a matter of contents and approach to technicalities, but also the very language with which they are formulated and exposed.
Historically, technical manuals and software specifications have been addressed to a very specific public of male engineers. A really particular public, probably originated by the overlapping of cost and accessibility of higher education in USA, together with a patriarchal and segregated society model. The places where software was developed, universities and IT companies, were frequented only by whealthy white dudes.
Historically, technical manuals and software specifications have been addressed to a very specific public, populated mainly by male engineers.
This really particular monoculture probably comes as a result of several overlapping factors: the prohibitive costs of higher education, the availability of foundings in really specific parts of the western world due to military research, a patriarchal society that didn't foster women in technical sectors, and a racist and segregative model that systematically forced minorities and people of color to subaltern and menial tasks.
The places where software was developed, universities, research labs and IT companies, were mostly frequented by white dudes.
Ellen Ullman is a programmer and writer, one of the few women working as developer in the Silicon Valley during the 80s and 90s. The combination of coming from the humanities, being a self-taught programmer, and especially being a woman made her the archetypical outsider in the IT industry. At the same time, this very position granted her a unique ethnographic perspective, capable of looking critically at this environment, both from the inside and from the outside.
[example]
In some passages she reports how the presence of other female figures is distributed in the IT sector: while visiting conventions, women are to be found at computer trainers and technical writing conferences, some in the application development field, _"high-level, low status, relatively-low payments"_ . Closer to the machine: the desert. In the _low valley of programming_ not a female person in sight, for these are gathering of young men. (2016)
Many episodes in her writings describe interactions with coworkers where she is directly attacked because being a woman daring to enter the technical zone of engineering. Or a client harassing her while she was working to fix his database. Or the segregation of female workers belonging to a foreign minority hired for cheap to do data entry, mechanical work in the room next to the mainframe's one where all the other guys were gathered.
This gendered segregation of developers reflected also in the pages of code documentation. This gendered language comes with an embedded and gendered separation of roles. Consider the excerpt from the GNU `gettext`: _"In this manual, we use he when speaking of the programmer or maintainer, she when speaking of the translator, and they when speaking of the installers or end users of the translated program."_
mainly address male reader and gendered roles
see gettext, karayanni, read the feminist manual
This gendered language comes with an embedded and gendered separation of roles. Consider the excerpt from the GNU `gettext`: _"In this manual, we use he when speaking of the programmer or maintainer, she when speaking of the translator, and they when speaking of the installers or end users of the translated program."_
As Mara Karayanni argues in _Read The Feminist Manual_, published with Psaroskala Zine, the stubborness against gender neutral language in technical writing is but a pretext for refusing to waiver the priviledge of the male programmer.
As Mara Karayanni argues in _Read The Feminist Manual_, published under Psaroskala Zine, the stubborness against gender neutral language in technical writing is but a pretext for refusing to waiver the priviledge of the male programmer.
@ -35,7 +35,7 @@ But it wouldn't be fair to think that programmers simply don't care. Sometimes i
if you cite Haraway better explain why it's important for you etc
if you cite Haraway better explain why it's important for you etc
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Ellen Ullman is a programmer and writer, one of the few women working as developer in the Silicon Valley during the 80s and 90s. The combination of coming from the humanities, being a self-taught programmer, and especially being a woman made her the archetypical outsider in the IT industry. At the same time, this very position granted her a unique ethnographic perspective, capable of looking critically at this environment, both from the inside and from the outside. In more than one passage for example, she laments the general lack of literacy between many of her coworkers.
Here code documentation could work as a backdoor: hacking its way to people that have never been exposed to certain topics. A way to offer an entry points to other worlds, and ground political choices into technical details.
Here code documentation could work as a backdoor: hacking its way to people that have never been exposed to certain topics. A way to offer an entry points to other worlds, and ground political choices into technical details.
