Comment by sandrae | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sandrae | Hacker News Reader

I just finished the Javascript and JQuery course at codecademy.com three weeks ago and since then I take challenges at coderbyte.com to continue learning.

So I was very interested in your site and signed up. Here are some of my first observations and comparisons:

- codecademy.com lists lots of males and females from young to old, from different countries with all kind of professions on their Success Stories pages. I felt very welcome their site. The name of your site and the constant use of the word Kata indicate to me that your audience are young males. As a woman in my thirties I don't feel I fit on your site. It seems a bit to aggressive to me.

- The second Javascript problem description was not very good. The second problem basically says "Something is wrong - correct it". I like clearer instructions like "write a function to reverse a string".

- Compared to codecademy.com the site took longer to check my code.

- I have no problem giving my e-mail address to anybody that provides a service I want to try. I like to get the onboarding mails from codecademy.com and think they should send out more because they are motivating. So I think that it is good that you are asking for my e-mail address and I hope you make good use of it by sending me interesting stuff. If not, I just filter you with a click.

I'm going to spend some time on your site. If you want further feedback, just send me a message.

Just curious, why does the word kata turn you off because you are female?

As someone who has studied martial arts for five years, there have been plenty of female students and the vast majority of the people I study with are well into their 30s.

I don't think the word "kata" by itself is masculine or aggressive but the site is called codeWARs, and they call signing up "enlisting" so ..

So they better change their entire branding!

Seriously? You never noticed that the martial arts world is male dominated in a way that many women find off-putting? Sure, some women are okay with it, but that doesn't mean all women are (or should be).

Thanks for the feedback Sandrae, it's helpful to hear your perspective.

We have a lot of female users on Codewars and want to make sure everyone feels welcome. The term "Kata" are what we call our challenges, it just means "form" in Japanese - it's used in calligraphy and martial arts to describe a way to practice a pattern to excellence. As for our name, it does hint at competition, though is meant as a metaphorical war on mediocrity and the status quo.

Performance-wise our site isn't going to be as fast since we run the code on our own servers (opposed to in your browser), which has lot's of advantages for better challenges/more versatility, but makes speed a little more of an issue.

I hope you do give the site a shot, and if you have any more feedback please email me: nathan@codewars.com

Yeah, the word "war" hints at competition but it literally means violent conflict. I know of no association between "war" and a metaphor for self improvement. You should make that clearer if that is what you're going for. However, with "war", "kata" and "enlist" it seems pretty obvious you were going for a martial arts/warrior theme. It's kind of patronising to pretend that theme isn't there just because someone doesn't like it.

Just curious and trying to understand, but what about the word kata is masculine?

I'd like to know this as well. I know many female karate practitioners and not a single one ever proposed changing the traditional Japanese nomenclature because she didn't feel "welcome" or felt "excluded" or even "offended" by it.

Here's the official explanation of what the word means:

Kata (型 or 形 literally: "form") is a Japanese word describing detailed choreographed patterns of movements practised either solo or in pairs.

I think it's because we associate kata specifically with _martial_ arts in Western usage. The meaning takes on a militant tone when that context is the starting point.

I speak Japanese and 形 is just a normal word to me. I don't see it as militant at all. In fact, I find it offensive that someone is so culturally self-centered and solipsistic as to demand changes to language using a perfectly neutral word simply because they can't see past cultural/language differences. I guarantee you that if you brought up this issue with a Japanese person (from Japan), they'd have no idea what you're talking about - literally.

Stop demanding the whole world adjusts to you and your solipsistic ways and try to be more tolerant of cultural differences and diversity. If I was the creator of the website, I'd probably have told the OP to fuck off because I don't want shit-stirrers and culturally insensitive people on my website.

Well, but you are now saying, "ignore the past 60-odd years of appropriation of the culture, and buy into this new appropriation! It's all different! We're marketing authenticity now!"

This site's theme uses the gravity of the old "Oriental mystique" trope to seem a little more impressive - to make programming practice sound "exotic" or "badass". What the fuck does a ukiyo-e image have to do with programming? No Japanese site would choose this theme, in the same way that you have observed that no Japanese person would think of 形 as a militant word. The Western equivalent would be to plaster a Dutch Golden Age painting onto the background and substitute Dutch words like "drillen" and "uitoefening" for "kata". It would be ridiculous and nobody would take it seriously.

The problem is, we already have fine English words for what is being done: "exercise" and "practice". "kata" remains associated with McDojos that want to impress you - it's not a borrowed word that has entered everyday use. And we've grown into accepting that it exists in that context over time. But its usage can still be considered not just offensive but colonial, in any Western context. It's an outright theft of culture.

Sounds like you're the one who is "offended".

The site is called CodeWars, not CodeDances or CodeCaligraphy. Kata here is clearly associated with martial arts. Martial arts and war tend to be popular with men and less popular with women. Is that really a contentious point? Do you want a market survey to back that up? Or have you actually been to a karate class and opened your eyes? I trained kung fu for six years and have gone to taster sessions and occasional classes in karate, savate, jui jitsu, escrima, tai chi and aikido. Martial arts is more popular with men than with women. Everyone knows this except you, apparently.

Also, you put "welcome", "excluded" and "offended" in quotation marks. Sandrae did not say any of those words. Whoever you were quoting isn't really relevant to this discussion.

Kata is a choreography of martial arts movements. Often these movements involve an aggressor or a theoretical aggressor.

Also, after all the site is called Code Wars, perhaps she was influenced by that as well.

Do you think that Kata denotes "site full of young males" because you typically only hear males saying it? It's meaning is gender neutral.

I'll admit that until signing up for a martial arts class which had women in it, I'd only heard men use the word Kata.

How could they make the site less aggressive?

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