Although baptism probably has its roots in the Mikva, which is a ritual cleansing, that’s not really the significance within Christianity. Baptism is not a washing away of sins, or impurity, but is rather a symbolic death and resurrection. The Apostle Paul, an early codifier of Christian doctrine whose letters became part of the Christian Bible wrote as follows in Romans chapter 6

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

This has the same end effect- the removal of sin and purification, but the conception is totally different.

It started as a joke about trans/cross dressing coders claiming that their feminine knee high socks were “programming socks” to assist in coding when found by roommates and then somehow it became the idea that all of this stuff was necessary for programming