@Mara a 9 year old who understands pointers is a savant

@Mara That was just "I was an asshole to my 9yo daughter. Am I The Asshole?". Incredible.

Also yes please, princess programming sound amazing.

@Mara@hachyderm.io writing code in a summer dress is one of the best things about transitioning

@Mara There’s no way this post is real 😂

@Mara oooh I am on it!
Just need to upgrade my gopher dress to more fancy, and put tiaras on more gophers

@Mara i have worked with a nonzero number of developers who wear gothic lolita fashion and that's not even counting myself

@Mara Wait... there are people who don't program in princess dresses? :blobcateyes:

@Mara
Guess I may need to add some frilly dresses as an option for when I do something public related to coding to set the right example that yes, you can code like that and it is fine if that works.

@Mara
This can't be real, but who could make this up?

Maybe his daughter should start doing livecoding sessions. I'm sure we could all learn something from a self-taught 9/10 year old who is writing 'decently complex' games that don't crash in C++. The princess dress would be a nice bonus.

@Mara well now I have to

@Mara We all definitely should!

This parent is so toxic and condescending I can only hope this is fake for karma farming.

The best programmers are those who started out doing it for the fun of it. Like this kid. I remember learning how to program by writing a calculator in Visual C++ to help me pass my math class and learn programming in my teens.

We need more underrepresented groups in the field. I hope she keeps her fire.

@Mara "she seems to have understood pointers well"

Dude, I'm in my 50s and I'm still wrestling with pointers. Definitely man up, get that tutu at the ready, and wave that magic wand like you mean it.

@Mara let's do it!

@Mara on one hand it's Reddit so default fake.

But only on Reddit would someone be this oblivious, misogynistic, and downright awful but post because their head is so far up their ass they can't accept they fucked up.

Any other website we'd all laugh at the made up scenario and hyperbole.

@Mara "Her game was decently complex and everything she did worked and it didn't crash and she seemed to have understood pointers well"

The first three items there already mark that 9 year old as an above-average game developer. The fourth point marks her down as an utter genius. The style of the reddit post feels incredibly #thathappened, but on the off chance that it's genuine I really, truly hope that dad gets the scales lifted from his eyes and sees how amazing that all is.

@Mara UPDATE: Now she's learning Rust and wants me to buy a full-body fox costume for her to wear while she is programming. Should I be worried?

@Mara no way this is true lol

I'm doing my part at confusing everyone by programming & presenting slides on thigh highs, skirt, button-up shirt and a tie.

@Mara sounds like a wonderful guy

@Mara he sounds like a bad programmer and bad a father even entry level programmers know -tiara improves code performance

@Mara@hachyderm.io She probably kicked his ass at programming...

@Mara based, as is the daughter

@Mara Wow, external aproval inculturation so deep.

@Mara Holy shit the thought that anybody could be such a terrible parent makes me sad

@Mara I'm in!

@Mara Idk if this is even real. What 39 yo man calls their 9 yo "cringe"? Frankly, I have difficulty believing any personal anecdotes on reddit. I suspect a lot, if not all, are fiction designed for karma farming.

@Mara I am in fact always wearing princessy dresses and I'm a programmer - we already exist.

@Mara Thank good he understood he was TA. What a smart little child 💫

@Mara This seems like trolling to be honest.

@Mara this guy would've gone apeshit on seeing the demoscene, where half-drunk people would write self-modifying code just because they could while insisting their name was "trurl the constructor"

@Mara
>9-year-old daughter
>I noticed many issues like bad variable naming conventions, code duplication, using if condition, return instead of just returning the condition.

That’s gotta be a troll.

@Mara Don’t forget about programmer socks!

@Mara

@Mara To paraphrase an old tweet: “you’re not a coding ninja or superstar. You’re a sparkly code princess.”

I’ve already got that as my (internal-only) title, so now I just need the dress! :)

@Mara i wanna be a princess programmer too, stay silly girl

@Mara if I was told that guy would be in the audience I would 100% wear a princess dress to spite him. If his daughter was in the audience I would convince the entire list of speakers to wear princess dresses, inflatable dragon costumes, and suits of armor.

@Mara Oh my goodness, at least the OP added that they accepted they were indeed the asshole.

If this isn't some sort of weird joke, it's awful. I feel so sorry for the girl.

Total parenting fail and I'm sure she'll be better than him in no time. She'll also probably learn to support others because her own father let her down.

@Mara How terribly unsupportive of her parent!

Sounds like exactly the sort of thing which discourages women from programming... Combined with the stereotype that it's a masculine career...

@Mara She's better than me. I started programming in 1967 with Cobalt and went through several others before stopping with Fortran. I couldn't learn C or its later versions. I learned design and concept of it but could only read and understand code, not write it. Best of luck to her.

@Mara what a horrible person, programmer and parent. Total asshole.

His daughter on the other hand is an awesome programmer princess 👸 I would be so proud. At that age getting c++ where everyone else is using scratch. Wow 🤩

@Mara I don't understand the serious police trying to reign in on everything.

I have literally read a few profile descriptions on mastodon that say I am a serious programmer.

So what should we do about it...

@Mara If your nine year old understands pointers and you tell her that her code sucks, something is very wrong with you.

@Mara what a gigantic piece of shit of a parent!

@Mara this is either satire or the most blatant techbro idiocy I’ve seen in a while

@Mara how do you look at your daughter and say..."you're dumb and I'm too smart to help you" oh eff it HULK SMASH RAGE POST!

@Mara I agree. Can they be pink princess dresses and can everybody have a tiara? Footgear of choice, including ballet slippers, hobbit feet, motobike boots, and Uggs?

@Mara Oh…wow. He really is TA.

@Mara the parent is not only TA but one of the biggest A

@Mara I have written more than one program wearing a skirt or a dress, and yes: in my opinion coding IS a game!

@Mara @dseguy Princess elePHPant idea?

@Mara AITA? Yes. Yes you are. This person should not be in charge of any dev teams else they’ll crush the creative spirit

@Mara what is wrong with this guy? I would have been so excited if any of my kids took this much interest in coding.

@Mara yes. Programming is really like breathing if you are doing it right.

@Mara Wow. I feel sorry for his daughter, but also... all of his coworkers, ever 😬🤦‍♂️

@Mara man idek how low kind of intelligence you have to have to be this kind of guy.

@Mara i bet she didn't document her code either

@Mara

Credit where it's due, he did recognize being TA. That must be the first happy-ending AITA post I ever saw 😄

@Mara all business