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Comment by TomK32 | Hacker News Reader

Young women interested in programming rare enough, let her get some help, let her have all the praise, that's okay. In years to come she'll hopefully stick to the field and that's what is important. Not that she wrote 100% of her app.

What we must never forget, writing the code is just the small part, marketing and selling software is the bigger challenge. She's obviously good at that and will prevail no matter what the nit-pickers say.

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No, it's not ok, because as the original author highlights, such frauds diminish genuinely working women in tech (as is the author). For the same reason we don't give medals to the sportsmen that are caught cheating.

Yes, it is okay.

So she can plagiarise an app, call her critic a jobless harasser and get away with it all just because she is a woman?

If this is tolerated at large it will have a chilling effect on any young person (including young women) who looks and sees people like her because they will think they are too stupid for tech since they can't make an entire app in 2 months. It will also have a chilling effect on all men and women in tech. Men will be afraid of criticizing women and secretly doubting their competence and women will be coddled, depraved of criticism and doubted as being there for reason other than their own skill.

IMO it has already happened to a degree in USA. In Poland no one sane would doubt a woman in tech or be afraid of criticizing her but in USA it's getting very murky, especially after stuff like [0].

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14480868

Oh come on, call this plagiarism is over the top. She had help and didn't mention that everywhere. There's something on quora where she mentioned the guy she paid for some work. https://www.quora.com/How-much-did-it-cost-to-build-Crypto-P...

For me it's not about her being a woman, but about her being a young person. Give them a chance or have we (mid-thirties) already become so intolerant against teens?

"What we must never forget, writing the code is just the small part, marketing and selling software is the bigger challenge. She's obviously good at that and will prevail no matter what the nit-pickers say"

This is why we have shit software ecosystems - Take Microsoft as the biggest example of "its more important to sell stuff than get it right"

Not sure why you're talking to me about that. My last windows as the 98 one.

How do we help those that doesn't do frauds then?

Offer to review their code. Talented beginners tend to be unaware of the best/standard way to do things and are likely to produce code that works but is somehow strange. Point out how to do it differently when that happens, and make sure to explain the reasoning so they can avoid similar mistakes in the future. But don't give just negative feedback; also tell them when they have done particularly well, so they don't get discouraged. And sometimes just showing interest in what they are doing can be enough.

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