Imagine a programmer who, when she studies Haskell, discovers that the way it resembles category theory provides really effective mental affordances to her memory. She feels that Haskell's formalism makes it easier for her to have a clear mental model. When she writes and reads Haskell, she can predict what that code does to data and her predictions are largely correct. She feels confident in her understanding. This means that if she has a business goal she needs to fulfil, she's confident she can estimate that task, communicate about with stakeholders its complexity. and execute it.
Imagine that this programmer, when she starts to study PHP, does not find similar affordances. She finds it difficult to build a conceptual structure of it in her head. She finds that she forgets things or overlooks things when she tries to write PHP. If she tries to predict how a piece of code she writes in it behaves, she frequently is wrong. She feels very nervous about it. Consequently, when asked to plan adding a feature to a PHP task, she doesn't feel she's got a good enough grasp of her tools to answer. She worries about the risk to the business of her blowing past estimates and leaving making errors in production.
She tells someone "I don't think I'm smart enough to write PHP".
1) Is this statement a lie? 2) Is this statement elitist? 3) Is she a person who could exist?
What if her positive feelings about Haskell lead her to evangelise it in a way that ignores the fact that another person's brain might work in a different way to hers. She claims to this other person that Haskell is easy.
4) Does that statement make her elitist?
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My answers: No, No, Yes, Kinda yea.
If I tell someone “I’m not smart enough to use php”, I’m admitting a weakness. I genuinely don’t have the mental capacity to keep details straight when using it. If I tried to use php for at a job, I’d move at such low velocity that I’d get PIP’d.
Or like saying “I can’t write code without automated tests.” there are genuinely people who, if they try to write code without tests get stuck for hours and don’t know how to move forward.
I’d think someone this is the same sentiment. I’m willing to believe that the Haskell community is elitist in other ways. But how is “I’m not smart enough to X.” An expression of that?