VLM made a mistake. They were told, rather gently, of their mistake. "My mistake, edited" would have been fine. Instead they doubled down that they were totally right and fine and cool with blazing past ample evidence of the author's gender in pursuit of "Male as Default".
I do disagree with the interpretation, that doubling down, would have been changing the focus of the article analysis yet again, to something even more gender oriented and even less article oriented such as "the most important topic to discuss right now is if vcrash is male or female? Because that's apparently important somehow other than to vcrash's partner?"
flyingbrotus's reply about the RODBC package was awesome because it was on the topic of the discussion and relates directly to the article and busting thru the vertical learning curve of R.
I may very well be an idiot; I'm OK with that.
However, being an idiot would (appear to) have nothing to do with "That's a good article; also, here's another strategy that's worked slightly better". If that specific individual claim about the article were dumb, discussion of my idiocy would be completely on topic.
On the other hand, grammar errors and irrelevant research errors may very well indicate I'm an idiot, but it has nothing to do with the topic. That's why I was pretty cool with it. I'm never going to be hired as a proofreader by anyone not totally desperate and I'm cool with that.
Fomite puts one space after each period. That is wrong, and henceforth we will solely discuss that yawn inducing aspects of that topic. Or maybe not. I'd rather talk about the article, or learning R, or teaching R, or teaching people, or teaching siblings...
The author is a heck of a good writer about a topic I like, and also is female, and we can each be interested in one of those topics, its a big internet and we'll all fit in somehow with plenty of space.
Have a pleasant day, and I hope you enjoyed the article.
You might not have belittled her because she's a woman, but simply assuming "Programming article = male by default" is in and of itself harmful.