I'm a bit fed up with the whole gatekeeping deal.

On one side, there's people that consider others shouldn't be allowed to do something based on meaningless labels.

On the other side, "gatekeeping" gets thrown around a lot to dismiss discussions that should allow nuance.

I consider gatekeeping as a form of discrimination.

As all discrimination, it's focused against a group of individuals that are perceived as inherently less valuable based on arbitrary criteria conveniently defined by the discriminatory group.

In this case, that criteria is associated with an institutionalized certification system, e.g., college degrees.

The system assumes that those who didn't obtain the appropriate certificate are inherently unfit for some activity, e.g., developing software.

What's missing is of course the recognition that there are multiple factors, including sociological and economical ones, why someone might fail to get that certification, only a few of which are actually correlated with a lack of fitness at that particular skill.

Sadly, sometimes is impossible to conduct a proper evaluation in all the depth we would like, and we resort to certificates as, at least, an evidence in favour of certain skills.

But lack of certification alone doesn't imply lack of skills. That's a logical fallacy.

What's happening with the discussion online is that "gatekeeping" is being used sometimes to label uncomfortable truths, both unconsciously and maliciously.

And this is where the discussion becomes dangerous especially for beginners, who suffer the most from gatekeeping.

When I say that understanding the math foundations is important to build effective machine learning systems, or that understanding the software engineering foundations is important to build effective software applications, that's not gatekeeping, that's honest, helpful advice.

I'm not saying you have to show me a PhD or a college degree. That's just a label.

But I do expect you to put the effort to learn and understand those foundations, by whatever means are available to you, be it formal education or not.

To ask less only puts you at disadvantage.

Learning any valuable skill takes effort. There are no easy paths, no secret formulas. And it's gonna be harder for some than for others, for plenty of different reasons.

Anyone that tells you otherwise is either being naive, or worse, a hypocrite.

The good news is that every skill can be learned if you're willing to put enough effort.

Anyone who tells you you're too young, too old, too black, too gay, too woman, too immigrant, to have a shot at it, well, that's just being an asshole.

Let's focus on giving value to others and making their paths easier, not by sugar-coating the real effort that things take, or focusing on meta-discussions like gatekeeping, but by actually building stuff that helps them, and giving sound, actionable advice.