zebras are a different species. =) <br/>I agree with you that something that the gender doesn't usually do make things more interesting: "female peacock wins courting championship" or "father bear raising 3 cubs discovered". <br/>But we've had female programmers since the 20's (Jean Bartik et al): if we had 80 years of male cub-rearing bears, 80 years of flashy female peahens, and even 80 years of zebras racing in the Kentucky, should headlines still "celebrate" what is a repeatedly confirmed fact of life?<br/>
Perhaps a better written title could be "Russian programmer Julia Jomantaite wrote tetris in SED" or simply "tetris written in SED". If people don't find SED tetris terribly exciting, why should people be excited suddenly when it's a girl?
if we had 80 years of male cub-rearing bears, 80 years of flashy female peahens, and even 80 years of zebras racing in the Kentucky, should headlines still "celebrate" what is a repeatedly confirmed fact of life?
a confirmed fact of life that happens infrequently is still something of interest (eg conjoined twins, a shark attack, a winning lottery ticket, etc.). and yes, female programmers have been around as long as male programmers, but that has no bearing on the disproportion of males to females in the programmer community (which is why the fact that the hacker is female is interesting).
If people don't find SED tetris terribly exciting, why should people be excited suddenly when it's a girl?
they shouldn't, but if people were interested originally, then hearing a female wrote it (an uncommon thing) would probably make them more "excited". (sorry, couldn't resist)
