قلب

"What are the ideological biases of an 'if' statement? Ramsey Nasser's قلب (pronounced alb) is an experimental Arabic programming language that engages code as a form of poetic expression. قلب critiques the way in which English is embedded in computational systems and how knowledge of the language has become a precondition for learning how to program (and a barrier to entry for those who do not have anglophone backgrounds). With قلب Nasser speculates about the possibilities of a programming system that resists the dominance of what Rita Raley has critiqued as 'global English.' It is a Lisp-like programming syntax that uses Arabic keywords instead of English and reads from right to left. Nasser’s work reconnects computer science to its early and often forgotten roots in the history of Arabic mathematics and art. Despite the claims of neutrality and mathematical objectivity in computation, قلب expresses how culture and ideology are deeply embedded in software at all levels." -- from Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 3