I recently published a post on imposter syndrome, it has had a far greater response than I anticipated and its reception has prompted me to think further about the subject. I honestly had no idea that my feelings regarding self-doubt and anxiety of ability were so widespread in the developer community, I have found the replies incredibly reassuring and uplifting. There was a broad scope of replies by a number of devs, ranging from undergrads like me, to senior developers and even the founder of DEV. All in all a very positive experience drawn from quite a negative concern that I've been plagued with for some time.

Despite this however, I can't help but wonder if such an emotion appearing to be so prevalent amongst many clearly talented developers is perhaps indicative of problems in the developer community at large. Obviously impostor syndrome is a complex feeling and I'm not suggesting that elitism is the primary cause at all, just considering it as a factor in cultivating an imaginary standard that a lot of devs hold themselves to. I wonder how many aspiring devs have been put off programming/development because of these fears. Also, it should be noted that I'm certainly not talking about DEV 😄, I don't think I've seen single toxic comment in my time here, I think it's a wider issue.

During my albeit short 3 year(ish) tenure as programmer I have come across a fair bit of elitism and gatekeeping in various communities, both online and in the real world. We've all seen the overly snarky and arrogant Stack Overflow answer to an innocuous/reasonable question. We've all either been witness to or baited into engaging in the infinitely tedious "my language is better than your language" non-debate. We've all probably been sneered at for our hardware or software platform of choice at some point or another. I can see how to a newcomer getting into programming that the process could seem overly difficult and the online community overly abrasive.

I've definitely encountered this to a certain extent in education and the real world as well, though I doubt its something that would fly in a work environment. Which brings me to my next order of business, discussion! To those more experienced (or jaded 😝) than myself, is this something that is mostly limited to an online space, or is it something that happens every so often in the professional realm? To those less experienced or of similar experience to myself, have you ever been put off from programming/developing for a time because of this? Bonus points for funniest/most nonsensical examples of elitism/gatekeeping over something really petty 😆.