[oakenshield]

Marissa Mayer is hardly the best role model out there for computer scientists, in the classical sense of the word "scientist". There's a very clear distinction between programmer, hacker, and scientist which the author may not be aware of (or has completely forgot to mention).

IMO, role models for female computer scientists would be Grace Hopper [1], in whose name there is now a scholarship for graduate students, or someone like Barbara Liskov [2], who won the Turing award recently. Though perhaps less popular than Marissa Mayer, I feel these are the role models that should be better known among young women about to choose a career path.

/pedantry

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_hopper [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Liskov