Being a teacher is a labor of love. There’s nothing wrong with a student coming in with any attitude.

This attitude justifying gatekeeping reminds me of Stack Overflow - mods tired of seeing the same wrong questions asked. But it’s a Q&A site and the purpose is for people to get answers to their questions.

> There’s nothing wrong with a student coming in with any attitude.

A student can definitely have an attitude that prevents them from learning effectively though. If anyone wants to see the use of correct terminology as "gatekeeping" then they are of course free to do so but the obstacles to learning the subject that such a mindset creates are then a logical consequence of their actions and entirely their own fault.

Yes, that goes for teachers. Not normal working programmers who choose to discuss FP in the terminology which has been commonplace for decades. They are under no such obligation.

A Q&A website needs both people who ask questions, and people who answer them. Perhaps the latter even more than the former. You can ask a question on stackexchange and have it answered by Peter Shor. Not having the platform inundadated by dumb repetitive questions and homework problems is the compromise you need to retain such talented people on your platform.

If you want an example of what happens to a Q&A site without any gatekeeping, look at Quora.

I would say the person you're responding to didn't come in "guns blazing". They seemed legitimately eager to learn, and expressed gratitude that the person that wrote the blog post used language they could understand.

Now, I would say you showing up and openly disparaging both the blog and the person you responded to qualifies as "guns blazing".

They said "It's like when the medieval Catholic Church refused to print a bible in anything but Latin so that they'd remain the sole authority on its content." and concluded with "shame on those who maintain this status quo." That's pretty "guns blazing" in my book.

> "It's like when the medieval Catholic Church refused to print a bible in anything but Latin so that they'd remain the sole authority on its content."

The debate is about using language as a gatekeeping mechanism. The analogy is spot on...

> "shame on those who maintain this status quo."

A person shows up eager to learn, expresses gratitude, feels scorned at all of the language-based gatekeeping that goes into this topic. You don't think it's fair to feel frustrated with the people doing the gatekeeping? (I don't think _you_ will, but only because I think you're one of the gatekeepers the original poster is (fairly) shaming).

> A person shows up eager to learn, expresses gratitude, feels scorned at all of the language-based gatekeeping that goes into this topic.

They expressed gratitude for those who told them easy falsehoods and scorn for those who told them harder truths, characterizing such honesty as "gatekeeping". That's not the action of someone eager to learn, it's someone who's eager to avoid learning, like those politicians who, rather than put in the effort to understand the economic implications of their policy, go shopping around economists until they find one who gives them the answer they want.

> scorn for those who told them harder truths

Can you paste me in your post where you did this? (Note: you can't). I'll even paste your response, so you can remember better:

>> Wait, a functor is just a pure unary function?

> No.

>> And an endofunctor is just one of those where the argument type and return type are the same?

> Yes - "endo" means that in general. E.g. endomorphism.

>> Sometimes it makes me mad that so much confusion (and as another commenter put it, gatekeeping) has been sown in FP circles through the invention of pointlessly-obfuscated terminology for everything (and through - among many in those circles - a lack of interest in connecting the very simple dots that would allow masses of people to understand these concepts). It's like when the medieval Catholic Church refused to print a bible in anything but Latin so that they'd remain the sole authority on its content.

>> Kudos to the OP for cutting through some of that, but shame on those who maintain this status quo.

>> Edit: assuming it really is that simple. Some in the comments have suggested parts of the OP were wrong, so I'm curious to see discussion.

> The precise terminology is vital; it's how we avoid these errors when talking about this very abstract stuff. Given that the OP is very wrong, precisely because of the kind of attitude you've taken here, I hope you'll take this opportunity to reconsider your views.

Where in this block did you give them "harder truths"? I see "No", "Yes", and then saying "reconsider your views". Again, the purpose of your post clearly wasn't to help, provide value, enable, but instead to disparage. Or, you know, gatekeep.

You'll notice that the post you quote was a reply to their post, where, as I said:

> They said "It's like when the medieval Catholic Church refused to print a bible in anything but Latin so that they'd remain the sole authority on its content." and concluded with "shame on those who maintain this status quo."

And as I said before that:

> someone who comes in with guns blazing doesn't get to complain about being met with hostility

It's not "gatekeeping" when there's no effort to engage productively in the first place.

Ah, so, the answer to my question:

> Can you paste me in your post where you did this?

Is "No but..."

So we're just saying things for the sake of it now, I guess.

> Is "No but..."

I don't care to show you where I did something I never claimed to have done in the first place.

> So we're just saying things for the sake of it now, I guess.

As far as I can tell that's what you've been doing the whole time. It's the height of hypocrisy for you to complain that "the purpose of your post clearly wasn't to help, provide value, enable, but instead to disparage."

:)