#womenStartWithS who learn coding at 20s and from C++ programmer to innovative business startup

O K.
O K.
Sep 8, 2018 · 6 min read
This image is used for testing in image research. It’s used as meme of ”Party don’t start till I walk in!

Last year, I found a female programmer worth to follow in Twitter (aka stalk), whom I considered her “Great”. She is now a co-founder of a company, named Binomial, that makes for ground-breaking (in my opinion) algorithm, Basis, for image/texture compression in GPU level.

According to her tweets, she does not study Computer Science at first[002], she studied Maths and then switched. She started to learn coding since the second year of college, i.e. 5-6 years ago(around 2012/13? [003]). She said she sold clothes at the mall, while her co-worker Rich was a programmer in Valve. Then she worked as a graphics programmer in Unity and Oculus VR, using programming language C++. C++ is the popular programming language that people (me as well) considered as extremely to handle. But she could make it. She is amazing.

Basis — new image compression method

Actually, what she has done is beyond my thinking. Nowadays, computer image/texture compression is for smaller storage purpose. Image files are decompressed and decode on CPU. While in a game products/software, the demand of image processing is very high. Image processing occurs in every frame of the screen, and decoding by CPU is too slow that would be downgrade of playfulness due to dropping of frames, i.e. not a smooth display, especially in 3D games.

To solve that, or not solve that issue, the game developers decided to keep the image/texture files uncompressed and directly saved them in the game package in order to load faster during the gaming. But the drawback is, obviously, the game size is huge. I’ve heard that the download of a latest game in Steam could up to 90GB+. It requires long time, maybe two days if the network is not that fast, to download. Probably, you would lose the mood to play the game.

To solve that, Basis comes. It is a new image compression method optimized for GPU. It would probably be the new standard as well. GPU is the processing unit in the graphic display card of a computer, mainly for handling the images for displaying on screen. For particular Maths computations, such as matrix operations, GPU do much faster than the CPUs do, because GPUs support large amount of parallel computation. Compression and decompression are also benefit by that. Basis offers a way to decompress the compressed texture on the fly while gaming and the game files size got shrink.

In short, it sounds great. And from a podcast, their first customer is Netflix. [001]

Talks

She likes to share her views in talks or sharing occasions, to also build network. With her work experience and observation, she concludes that the game development industry is dominated by male, which is not healthy. (She had also pointed out female dominating charity NGOs is not healthy either)

For example, game development mainly focus masculine characters, only few feminine characters. (But I seldom see her mention those erotic 18+ games.)

Plus, she emphasizes the companies should be being inclusive and diversify. She believes the working space should include different types of people, any kinds of races, religion beliefs, genders, sexuality...etc. Hence, the minority can live better, like the others.

RT/Repost

At the earlier time when I started to follow her, her twitter account has around 13k followers.

She encourages people, especially those who are still new to their careers, to post their own technical articles. She has promised to RT/Repost their work. This is impressive. Though some may see this act is not big, it could really spread the messages, promote them to the others on the Internet.

She highly appreciates those women in technology. She thinks girls could do a lot more, a lot better, like her.

She sets rules for RT/Repost. She would like people to focus on tech aspect [004]:

I will not RT blog posts on soft skills or culture. Only tech. If you don’t have one, write me one now.

And she won’t accept girls say “my attempt to…”, because:

No self deprecation allowed — “my attempt at” implies it’s not good.

(the original tweet is no longer exist)

This is very true to a young people to build their own confidence. Being proud of the work created by themselves is essential.

There are times that those articles she RT I find them inspiring and to-the-ground. The articles are easy to read and help me to further understand the fundamental concept.

Moreover, she also calls those experienced experts to open their DM (Direct Message Inbox) function, accepting those newbies to ask them questions. It does attract many people follow her suits. Numerous people, hundreds if not thousands people in Gaming, Programming, Mathematics, Sciences, so on… have response to her and open the DM function leaving a brief introduction of the areas they are good at. This creates very helpful and harmonic atmosphere for the new comers to make progress and improve.

Also, she is enthusiastic to help the junior to seek job opportunities. She would say: “One should employ this developer/illustrator, s/he is good at x, y, z areas.” She would also help to clarify the job nature and details. Very nice.

Now, she gets more than 43k followers, and counting. She still keep on doing these.

Beyond tech

As she co-founded their technology startup, she has had to think about all the business matters. Earning large amount of money may not be her first priority. Instead, having a nice living style counts more on her.

She decided that Basis would soon be Open Source and charge reasonably to commercial customers.

In the journey of seeking customers, she also seek help from others on the Internet, and now she has consolidated her own experiences. She would recommend people to avoid toxic customers and be aware of those enthusiastic investors. Also, she sometimes raise discuss on how workflow can be refined, how to setup a comfortable routine.

She also like to do cooking soups and meals, knitting. She sometimes share the receipts she tried and photos of ingredients she bought and photos of the meals she cooked.

She also recruits recommendations about how to tackle anxiety, burn-out, PTSD from others. Very often people are willing to share their advice, which are helpful, feasible and really work.

What’ next

According to her tweets updates, their business has received first batch of money. She had enjoyed a holiday trip to get close to the nature. And last few months she has setup a PAX fund with her friends using their portion of savings, aiming to help the ones who could prove themselves are worth for it. She thinks it is pleasure to give away, if the money could really help someone.

She is called Stephanie Hurlburt, based in Seattle, one year elder than me. Go follow her.

Series of #womenStartWithS (S for superior, strong, sugoi, sophisticated)

Notes:

[cover photo] The image Stephanie likes very much for testing compression program https://twitter.com/sehurlburt/status/881573434131496961

[001] https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/044-stephanie-hurlburt-of-binomial

[002] https://twitter.com/sehurlburt/status/951179454524547072

[003] https://twitter.com/sehurlburt/status/862116836116119552

[004] https://twitter.com/sehurlburt/status/936530247092133890

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Postscript: about Twitter

I love using Twitter. I registered the a/c earlier than that at Facebook. I use it because not many Hongkongers use it. But time flies, you could find the local users one by one. There are several small groups, filled with humorous people, nice people.

I love using Twitter. You feel amazing that when you brainlessly asked some questions about tech, the original author of the software library or the social media team of big names would reply you directly, giving you some advises.

In fact, Twitter brings more. You are enabled to comment Donald Trump, block him, and be blocked, hurt each other. I most appreciate is to find some great people to follow besides those big names, like Elon Musk, Barack Obama…etc, but Tom Grundy, Agnes Chow, Frederick Fung XD ‏, Lam Suet the Cat, MTR Service Update, any other j-pics a/c…

O K.

Written by

O K.

There is no time to lose.|Chinese Tweets/Front-End/Anime

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