I think it's an excellent example. She clearly has the programming ability. She's clearly incredibly intelligent. She's clearly taken seriously. That she also runs in higher profile (At least in the valley) social circles hardly discounts her accomplishments.
Using exec to access object fields? Really? There was also a fiasco a while back where she converted floats to strings in order to compute an average (!). She deleted that post, but if you google "leah culver star ratings" you'll find some discussion of it.
She's a great marketer, but I'd hardly say she has the programming ability.
She's a great marketer, but I'd hardly say she has the programming ability.
Truest words ever written. I can only respect people whose _work_ I admire, and who understand. What has she built? Leah hasn't contributed anything of value to the Internet, unless a few videos or popularity contests count.
Which I find quite interesting. I know plenty of men who are terrible engineers and post pretty bad stuff on their blog, but none get the kinds of evisceration that you are referring to - mentioned over and over again in blogs, forums, etc.
The 'Internet' was/is ruthless in laughing at her and putting her down, in a way that I just don't see happening to guys. Could be just that its more apparent with the fewer # of women - people are more likely to remember these faux pas. Would be interesting to hear of specific technical instances of the same occurring with guys.
I know plenty of men who are terrible engineers and post pretty bad stuff on their blog, but none get the kinds of evisceration that you are referring to - mentioned over and over again in blogs, forums, etc.
Most of those terrible engineers have not been featured in Wired and Technology Review. If Leah Culver were a man, no one would criticize her because no one ever would have heard of her. Do you really think anyone would have cared about her facebook/twitter clone if she weren't pretty?
Would be interesting to hear of specific technical instances of the same occurring with guys.
ESR wrote some crappy code a while back. Comments:
John Graham Cummings: "It's amusing to actually look at the source code of this...Reading it, it looks like a total hack job by a poor programmer..."
Other HN readers:
"He's [esr] certainly a talented self-publicist, but I'd go no further than that. He's the Michael Moore of software. Or the Paris Hilton."
"He's more Nichole Richie. He doesn't rise to the level of Paris, who was surprised by jail, but never surprised by wealth."
"Truth is, he is loud, but... he's not very good at writing software."
Woah! Are you sure that pownce got attention solely because of "Leah's looks"? or do you think its more likely that its because it was founded by Kevin Rose, who has had much bigger press (cover on Business week, TR is peanuts in comparison) and web exposure (like running one of the most popular sites on the Internet)?
(Will grant that ESR is a pretty good example, for Atwood I dont see the attacks reaching as low a level)
I certainly applaud you for thinking that who she associates with is irrelevant, but I'm telling you that there are many people less enlightened. I've probably heard as much gossip about her personal life as discussion of her technical chops, and I see that as good evidence that women in tech generally are not "taken quite seriously all on their own". No one cares who any guy in the tech industry is dating.
