My approach to being a self-taught programmer was to find out who was smart and who would be helpful, and these were - these are both men and women. And without learning from my co-workers, I never could've gone on in the profession as long as I did.

The questions I am often asked about my career tend to concentrate not on how one learns to code but how a woman does.

Computer programming has always been a self-taught, maverick occupation.

Writing is a very isolating occupation.

I started my career as a liberal arts major from Berkeley, wrote about enterprise IT for a few years, then followed my passion for the digital narrative into graduate school as well (also at Berkeley, the Oxford of the West or, perhaps, the Harvard - sorry Stanford!). My first project out of grad school was 'Wired' magazine.

We are happy to get great technology from anywhere, and we have eyes and ears that are checking out companies all over.

The point is technology and innovation have advanced far past what DCGS is capable of doing. It's not an agile enough tool to be able to incorporate and integrate the most advanced technology that is on the shelf today that can be bought by our forces that frankly our war-fighting units want.

California is not just the Golden State. We are also the Internet State.