Ask HN: Female hacker-founder AMA

#1

Post by dzink » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 7:06 AM UTC

Tired of all the gender banter lately? Me too. Especially when every press outlet says we (female tech founders) are as rare as a mythical creature. So how about getting them answers straight from the source (female tech founders). If you belong to this group do a quick intro about yourself before answering questions. If you don't and want to learn more about the HN female tech entrepreneurs, feel free to ask as a reply.

My turn:

Name: Diana

Startup: http://DoerHub.com (dogfooding: http://www.doerhub.com/for/doerhub )

Role: Founder, wrote every non-open-source line of code (Rails, JS, D3, Neo4j, Node.js, MongoDB) on the site in a grad school dorm room.

In tech since: 1998 (Age 13). Haven't stopped since.

How did you start?: Started in rural Bulgaria and parents couldn't afford a computer so I volunteered at internet cafes to learn HTML and JS online after hours, then did graphics in flash, then Action Script, evolved to writing data mashups, custom JS libraries, rich visualizations for CNN during elections, CMS front-end architecture, full-stack web products from there.

Why did I start: had a pen-pal girl from Sweden who was a year older than me and had built her own website. Once I realized I can learn for free and the world could see my work I was addicted (lived in a censored country for a while so that mattered).

Proof of cred: http://www.linkedin.com/in/dianazink and http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/js/3.0/search/SearchProcessor.js and http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/js/3.0/search/customSrchProcessor.js used by CNN, NBA, and some other sites.

Has your gender made any of this hard?: I'm not muscular, so building online stuff is actually easier on me than the "reputable" jobs my grandfather said I should do instead.

Ask away.

Re: Ask HN: Female hacker-founder AMA

#2

Post by dmn757 » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 8:05 AM UTC

I'll go first.. Why in the world would you feel a need to make this post?

Re: Ask HN: Female hacker-founder AMA

#3

Post by minimaxir » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 8:08 AM UTC

This might be more successful on Reddit in the startups/entrepreneurship subreddits.

Re: Ask HN: Female hacker-founder AMA

#4

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 8:09 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Female hacker-founder AMA

#5

Post by chacham15 » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 8:14 AM UTC

What attracted you to computer science? Put another way, why do you think it is that when your penpal showed you the website she built your reaction was "cool" instead of "lame...." (especially in 98 when the web technologies were much more primitive)?

Re: Ask HN: Female hacker-founder AMA

#6

Post by WoodenChair » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 8:14 AM UTC

dmn757 wrote: post #2

I'll go first.. Why in the world would you feel a need to make this post?

I think she pretty clearly explained why she felt a need to make the post - she feels underrepresented and also wants to prove a stereotype wrong.

I'll go second... why in the world did you feel it necessary to mock her post?

Re: Ask HN: Female hacker-founder AMA

#7

Post by WoodenChair » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 8:15 AM UTC

chacham15 wrote: post #5

What attracted you to computer science? Put another way, why do you think it is that when your penpal showed you the website she built your reaction was "cool" instead of "lame...." (especially in 98 when the web technologies were much more primitive)?

The second thought is not really attached to the first question. Having a desire to make a website/making a website has little to do with computer science.

Re: Ask HN: Female hacker-founder AMA

#8

Post by dzink » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 8:22 AM UTC

chacham15 wrote: post #5

What attracted you to computer science? Put another way, why do you think it is that when your penpal showed you the website she built your reaction was "cool" instead of "lame...." (especially in 98 when the web technologies were much more primitive)?

I liked math and physics because they allowed me to predict or affect future events. I also loved design because it allowed me create things that might have never existed otherwise. CS was the perfect combination of both - you can create things, solve problems, and distribute them to the rest of the world for free (I couldn't afford to buy even books at that time). I started with HTML and flash because the computer my mother (a brick-and-mortar entrepreneur) eventually got was an IBM 486 machine with 20megs of space and only Flash 4 would fit on it for graphics.

Re: Ask HN: Female hacker-founder AMA

#9

Post by dzink » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 8:27 AM UTC

WoodenChair wrote: post #7

chacham15 wrote: post #5

What attracted you to computer science? Put another way, why do you think it is that when your penpal showed you the website she built your reaction was "cool" instead of "lame...." (especially in 98 when the web technologies were much more primitive)?

The second thought is not really attached to the first question. Having a desire to make a website/making a website has little to do with computer science.

The desire to learn CS came with the need to do more on the web - the more I tinkered the more I wanted to learn. I got Flash for design but then realized I could animate with code, so I started borrowing trigonometry books from my high-school math teacher in order to make flash animations that move by trig functions. After doing 4-5 years of self-learning how to do cooler, more fun things I wanted to get a degree in it because I thought it would accelerate my learning and reduce the friction of having to manually find materials and approaches for things I wanted to make.

Re: Ask HN: Female hacker-founder AMA

#10

Post by axaxs » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 8:32 AM UTC

This would likely be more apt for reddit, which does AMAs. I respect you, but this sets a rather polluted and boring precedent. Founders not from tech hub cities, founders over 40 years old, founders who grew up poor, founders who were born outside USA, etc etc. Everyone is unique in many ways, many more interesting than race or gender.