[acangiano]

Role models are hugely important. I never found Joan Rivers particularly funny, but I noticed on Twitter how her passing truly upset many female comedians. It turns out that funny or not, she was a pioneer as a female comedian and in turn managed to inspire a whole new generation of female comedians who felt, as you aptly put it, a sense of possibility.

That's why if we want to be successful in diversifying the world of programming we need Tim Cook to come out, we need successful women and minorities to be vocal about their passion and work in our field (much more so than the usual narrative of "tech discriminating against X").