Interview With Awesome Female Coder, Corrinne Yu, 3D Engine Lead, XBOX HALO | Hacker News Reader

Interview With Awesome Female Coder, Corrinne Yu, 3D Engine Lead, XBOX HALO

techzinglive.com

15 pointsjv222218 comments

Hmm, so why point out gender, especially when combined with superlatives? Kind of undercuts the effect.

I've worked with Corrinne in the past, and I for one do actually think she is awesome. She's one of those engineers that lives and breathes her work. We'd be eating lunch and then out of nowhere she'd exclaim things like, "HEY GUYS check out the REFRACTIONS in this CUP OF ICE it's so BEAUTIFULLY RENDERED!!" and then she'd go back to her desk and try to hack it together.

In the world of coders (where males far out-number females) I think it is a very interesting fact that the lead developer of the halo 3D engine is female.

It's not something you see every day. That's why I put it in the title. I thought the point of creating a title was to highlight the interesting aspects of a story?

You put her name in the title. That should be enough.

Only if we assume all readers are familiar with European-style names. And even then it's rather rare.

There is absolutely nothing interesting about a developer being female. Nothing.

Quite frankly, it confuses and disappoints me that anyone would think that gender matters enough to call attention to it. We're not in the 1950s, let's stop with the notion that it is a big deal when a woman does something that mostly men have done before.

Even from a mere statistical point of view it's interesting.

Take bayesian spam analysis for example. When we examine the corpus, the words that we find "interesting" are the ones that appear "less" in the data-set.

Just because I say something's interesting it doesn't mean I'm being sexist - perhaps it's just interesting.

Ok, let's reverse this. Is there any profession or hobby that you would find interesting if a male excelled and generally kicked ass at it?

Interestingly, my first parsing of "Awesome Female Coder" not that she's an awesome coder who is female, but rather than she's an awesome female who is a coder. Which may perhaps also be true, of course, but it sounds as if you're saying that there are aspects of her femaleness that are awesome.

"Awesome Male Coder" makes me think of Chuck Norris typing machine code by roundhouse kicking his keyboard…

"Ok, let's reverse this. Is there any profession or hobby that you would find interesting if a male excelled and generally kicked ass at it?"

Cheerleading.

Quilting.

I've been a professional developer for more than five years now, and I've only worked with about THREE female developers. Three out of probably more than 100. It's notable, get over it.

Yes. Intentional or not, "Awesome Female Coder" kind of implies that female coders are not expected to be awesome, which, ironically, is probably exactly the opposite of what the OP is trying to communicate.

No one is Awesome by default. We all suck when we start out. No one is "expected" to be awesome - be they male or female. So I don't see how "Awesome Female Coder" implies that females are not expected to be awesome.

They meant "are expected not to be".

Yes, no one is awesome by default, but it implies that females are less likely to be awesome. Unless, of course, when you describe a male hacker you also call him an "Awesome Male Coder".

It has to do with the significance of adjective ordering in English.

"Awesome female coder" implies "awesome among the set of female coders". Conversely, "female awesome coder" would better imply "female among the set of awesome coders".

It's not absolute -- both could charitably be read either way -- but the ordering chosen lends itself more to the less flattering interpretation.

Without the useless link page: http://www.kotaku.com.au/2008/08/microsoft_confirms_corrinne...

And remind me again why there's a Wikipedia page on her?

because she's an awesome female coder.

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