[nicholasjbs]

As the post mentions, we stopped using the word "love" for both reasons -- gender was part of but not the entire reason we switched.

In fact, the alum we quote as an example of the trouble with the word love is male:

We used to say applicants must "love" programming, but we've learned that was a mistake. While it sounds good, it doesn't actually describe what we care about, and it was dissuading qualified people from applying.

In fact, many of our best students have said they almost didn't apply because they worried they didn't love programming enough. Hacker School alum David Peter expressed this fear perfectly:

  One of the questions in the interview was, "Do you love programming?"
  I said   yes, because I loved it more than most people I knew.
  But was it love? I enjoyed writing and drawing equally, if not more.
  After Hacker School, I'm revisiting these hobbies. Programming wasn't my first love."*