Today on HN I've learnt about KaTeX, a math typesetting system for the web[1]. As I looked into it, I was intrigued by the names of the two authors, which suggested they are females. That looked odd to me, as I thought typically this kind of project is made by men.

The last time I had this kind of surprise was with Audrey Tang, the developer of Pugs, an early Perl 6 implementation. Turned out she was not born female.

So, just by curiosity, I looked into the authors of this KaTeX thing. To my amusement, I guessed well : at least one of them is a trans[2].

There are certain kinds of IT projects in which women are formidably rare. I can't quite put my finger on what kind of projects I'm talking about, but let's just say it's a case of "I know it when I see it".

At some point we should consider admitting that there is something, I don't know what, that draws men towards this kind of projects much more than for women. And that this thing, whatever it is, may be a reason for the observed gender disparities in the tech industry.

1. https://github.com/Khan/KaTeX

2. https://sophiebits.com/2017/08/26/hi-im-trans.html