
She gave up the book deals, speaking engagements, and even fled her home. So, she logged off and didn’t return to the web until two months ago. Not only did Sierra find herself a target for identity theft, but all the people who had threatened to brutally rape and kill her now knew where she lived.

He also made false statements about her being a battered wife and a former prostitute. Andrew "weev" Auernheimer, a well-known provocateur, hacker, and anti-Semite, circulated her home address and Social Security number online. Mostly, it's just gotten worse."īut disappear is exactly what she did next. Sierra went public about the threats, writing on her blog, "It’s better to talk about it than to just disappear." She had enraged scores of men for supporting a call to moderate reader comments, which is of course common practice now. People posted photoshopped images of her with a pair of panties choking her, or a noose near her head. "I hope someone slits your throat," wrote one person. Hundreds of commenters on her blog made rape and death threats. In March of that year, some visitors to Sierra’s blog called "open season" on the now 57-year-old.

Her writing focused on design and coding and included very little that could be considered controversial. Her blog was on Technorati’s top 100, a list that included other blogging pioneers, such as Robert Scoble, Michael Arrington, and Om Malik.
#32 LIVES SIERRA SOFTWARE#
Her books on software design were top sellers on Amazon. She taught the Java programming language at Sun Microsystems. In 2007, Sierra was one of the most visible women in tech.
