[amtab]

I don't think that the Hacker School rules have a goal of lowering standards, but rather of preventing the one-upmanship which is so common among (usually male) programmers. To someone who may be feeling overwhelmed by the learning curve inherent with transitioning from small academic or recreational coding projects to real-world environments such dynamics could be very demoralizing. Anecdotally, men who stay in tech tend to have a high tolerance for it, but it's secondary to the actual practice of coding and people who are feeling less confident don't need to worry about competing in these games. Of course if someone is working on a real-world codebase they have to know what they're doing, but learning from peers does not need to alienate anyone, at least in principle.