tl;dr: "the same way as any 25 year old guy would have done, by having a good idea and the skill necessary to implement it"<p>Kind of depressing to think that this is "news", as if the idea of judging a programmer by their programming, and not by their gender, is a radical new idea...
I took my 13 y/o daughter to a non-competitive Windows Phone / Windows 8 one day hackathon a few months ago, thinking she would just enjoy seeing it and maybe play with a dev environment. She wound up building and presenting a minimal Windows Phone app. Now she's got the bug and wants to do more.
Lots of discussion last time this was posted: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5634600" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5634600</a>
My Big Question about women in technical fields is more about why, in general, I see so few women who are genuinely curious about the world in which they live. I have <i>never</i> heard a woman posit aloud how they put the graphics on the field of a football game, or how Facebook knows that they might know someone, or, fuck, how a microwave works.<p>This young girl was simply curious and inquisitive. It wasn't about brains or interest in technology; it was about asking questions and wondering.<p>So again I ask: why are so few women and girls inquisitive about their world?
I'm much more impressed about the age than the gender. The title of the article makes it sound that by virtue of being female she overcame a handicap. Kind of silly to think like that nowadays don't you think?<p>But good on her for being young and accomplished.