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Error messages in many languages explicitly do not include the user in their phrasing, saying things like 'missing bracket' or 'unknown variable', which leaves the user out of the equation. For a person with the lived experience of being told they don't belong in programming and being afraid of failure in the programming world (a common experience for women in computing), unclear or unhelpful error messages are more likely to have negative impacts.

So much this. GCC error messages keep triggering my unresolved mommy :marseyaoc: issues.

Instead of a short and concise error message that is quick and easy to parse, the compiler to should output an essay :marseykernelpanic: on how it feels, but it won't tell you what's wrong until you interrogate it enough :marseygossip: and correctly, and drink a calming herbal tea. :marseycoffee:

More readable error messages are not just helpful for those with less prior knowledge, clear error messages are a better experience and will help all users—even professional developers.

This is a feel-good recommendation. Error messages with more context or counter-examples will likely drive up compiler complexity and development effort. Keep in mind, the antecedent of this sentence is "error messages are not inclusive." I think is just some weak justification of the "PLs are exclusionary" header.

I had never realized before I started to work in localized PL design, that this does not include all people's experiences! In Arabic, digits are not 0-9 but 0..9.5 These numerals are not included in most programming languages, creating a situation in which none of the languages in the TIOBE top 10 6 can be used to calculate 1 + 1 (1+1) in Arabic (or in the dozens of other numerals around the world)

No consideration for why we have a lingua franca, or the benefits of having it.

We see this paper as an invitation to everyone in the programming languages field to deepen our collective understanding of the forces shaping our field

Chesterton's Fence. This paper is more an amalgamation of complaints than an exploration of the subject. At least, at the end they do remark that the paper is an aggregate of research directions and an index of (hopefully, more insightful) papers.

The current standards of evaluation in the PL community are set from a masculine perspective as well, valuing formalism and formal methods over user studies, quantitative over qualitative work, and the examining of technical aspects over context and people.

Bondage and discipline languages are more masculine. This means that Rust programmers are the manliest programmers :marseybuff: of us all

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Error messages in many languages explicitly do not include the user in their phrasing, saying things like 'missing bracket' or 'unknown variable', which leaves the user out of the equation.

Wouldn't this make error messages sound more accusatory?

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also what if the error appears in code you havent written? did she think about this for over 5 seconds :marseybruh2:

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what if the error appears in code you havent written?

:marseyme#:

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Message before: "Error: Missing bracket in line 765"

Improved feminist message: "You fricking waste of oxygen. You've missed a bracket somewhere like a r-slur. Frankly the best part of you rolled dowm your mother's leg"

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