I have only just subscribed to this list before you sent this message, but I believe that the use of "he" as a neutral pronoun makes women subconsciously feel like they are not really welcome in the community.
Participation of women in computer science is problematically low across the globe, and I do think that small things like using "he" to refer to a group including women hurts this cause. I think you'll find you get used to they/them/their surprisingly quickly, and in a great number of (scientific/industry) communities it is now accepted as the gender-neutral pronoun. Cheers, Bram On Tue, 30 Jan 2018, at 4:06 AM, Mario Xerxes Castelán Castro wrote: > On 27/01/18 23:04, Cris Perdue wrote: > > Well no. If a person has neither special preparation nor interest, I would > > not wish to bother them. > > If you are willing to take a request from me, please do not use “they” > as singular. In English, “he” is the canonical generic singular. > Although “they” has some historical precedent (so does “thou”, but > people rarely use it nonetheless) as a singular, in our time it is part > of the ultraliberals' attempt to redefine the language for their > political agenda. > > > On the other hand, I do believe that it is possible for a sufficiently > > well-engineered proof assistant to become useful to students with much less > > special preparation than is required today, but the possibilities and > > tradeoffs would be a complex discussion. > > If you want to share the difficulties you had while trying to learn HOL > Light I will be glad to write documentation for the counterpart in HOL4 > if required. That being said, I believe that HOL4 (HOL Light is very > similar) is already close to being as simple as possible to learn. The > difficulty resides mostly in the prerequisite of knowing formal logic, > mathematics and some computer programming, but I believe this is > inherent to computer-verified proofs. > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most > engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot > _______________________________________________ > hol-info mailing list > hol-info@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hol-info > Email had 1 attachment: > + signature.asc > 1k (application/pgp-signature) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ hol-info mailing list hol-info@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hol-info
