Code doesn't care and that can be awesome

The more experienced a math teacher I was, the more I was comfortable in exploring my flaws and inherent bias built up over the years. (more on those for a different post). As a relatively new coder I love the power of code and teaching code...especially as I observed power dynamics from the students side. My best coding students were generally young ladies but didn't feel like they belonged as coders, even though the results showed otherwise. They perceived that the boys were better since they were more confident...but the code didn't care. It just executed and gave the result. Instantly showing whether the goal was achieved or not. The code didn't care about the attributes of the person creating it. This is why we need to teach coding at an earlier age and to all groups of people. Code doesn't judge or stereotype, it just runs and works or doesn't.

Code doesn't care...

how long you have been coding.

about your race.

whether you had breakfast this morning.

if your preferred pronoun is he, she, or they.

how emphatically you give your answer.

your body language.

your tone.

how concise your response is.

your prior knowledge.

if you copied your code from Stack Overflow.

if you asked for help previously.

how long you have been writing it.

how many times you ran the code before.

how many times it failed before.

whether your response is elegant.

if you used the latest framework.

how popular you perceive you are.

if you own your computer.

the type of computer it is run on.