
Code Is Political - imartin2k
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/code-is-political
======
Kristine1975
I had hoped the article would talk about how code being used in the real world
has political ramifications (e.g. software used to spy on people). Instead I
get a potpourri from the interesting to the stupid:

\- قلب: The English language bias in computing is huge, and even though e.g.
Java allows for Unicode identifiers, its keywords are still in English.

Microsoft's Excel on the other hand has localized function names. Perhaps
because it's meant to be used by end users who would simply not accept English
names, whereas programmers are (for one reason or another) expected to know
English.

I really started to notice this when reading a review of the C++ library
boost.locale, where the reviewer criticized the library because it assumed
software would be either written in English and then translated into other
languages or translated into English and from there into other
languages[1][2].

Incidentally there seems to be a really active C++ community in Japan, with a
Japanese translation of Boost's documentation[3] to hardcore metaprogramming
libraries such as Sprout[4].

\- transCoder: Somewhat interesting as an art project. However conflating
binary-based computers and gender seems far-fetched. Furthermore, there are or
at least were analogue computers.

\- Feminist programming language: The linked blog post is very light on
content. And of course "Software engineering consists of one agent (the
programmer) giving commands, and another (the computer) ... obeying them";
after all it's about telling a machine what to do so I don't have to do it
myself.

\- 4chan: The less said about the misogynist, racist denizens of /g/, the
better.

[1]
[http://lists.boost.org/Archives/boost/2011/04/180223.php](http://lists.boost.org/Archives/boost/2011/04/180223.php)

[2] Rant in Japanese here:
[http://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.aspx?from=ja&to=en&a=h...](http://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.aspx?from=ja&to=en&a=http%3A%2F%2Fcpplover.blogspot.com%2F2011%2F04%2Fboostlocale.html)

[3] [http://boostjp.github.io/](http://boostjp.github.io/)

[4] [https://github.com/bolero-MURAKAMI/Sprout](https://github.com/bolero-
MURAKAMI/Sprout)

