Felienne Hermans, professor of computer science pedagogy at the VU, and a creator of a programming language herself (www.hedy.org) will visit us on Friday 11 October. The lecture given by her will take place in person, everyone is kindly invited (no registration necessary).
Programming was once a female only field, all “computers” were women, many of color. However, that situation was short-lived, and today we live in a world in which almost all mainstream programming languages are created by men, many of a western background.
In this talk, Felienne Hermans discusses the history of programming languages and gender.
She will reflect upon how programming language construction came to be so male dominated, and how with that also an overwhelming masculine discourse was formed. Drawing on work from feminism and Science and Technology Studies (STS), Hermans explores what the impact of the masculine discourse is for the design of programming languages. She closes the talk with a sketch of what a different world for programming languages could look like, both in the context of her own Hedy language, and beyond.
Biography:
Felienne Hermans is a professor of Computer Science Education at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She also works as a high-school CS teacher one day a week at Lyceum Kralingen in the Codasium program.
Felienne is the creator of the Hedy programming language, a gradual and multi-lingual programming language designed for teaching. She is the author of “The Programmer’s Brain“, a book that helps programmers understand how their brain works and how to use it more effectively. In 2021, Felienne was awarded the Dutch Prize for ICT research. She also has a weekly column on BNR, a Dutch radio station.
Hosts: Iris van Rooij and Olivia Guest, Department of Cogntive Science & AI