Kathy Sierra

Kathy Sierra
Occupation(s)	Educator, game designer, author
Years active	1990s–present
Known for	Head First series, JavaRanch community

Kathy Sierra is a notable American educator in programming, a game designer, author, and the curator behind Intrinzen.

Education and career

Initially, Sierra pursued exercise physiology at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and spent ten years working within the fitness sector before transitioning into programming after completing courses at UCLA. She subsequently taught "new media interactivity" through UCLA Extension and managed the new media division at Mind over Macintosh, a Los Angeles-based training facility that supported digital integration in advertising and entertainment during the mid-1990s. Sierra held the position of lead programmer for the 1998 children's adventure title Terratopia (Virgin Sound & Vision) as well as for All Dogs Go to Heaven, a game tied to the film and distributed as a cereal premium by MGM. Additionally, she functioned as a master trainer at Sun Microsystems, where she trained Java instructors on emerging technologies and created certification assessments. In 1998, she established JavaRanch, an online community dedicated to Java programmers.

Together with Bert Bates, Sierra co-developed the Head First series, beginning with Head First Java in 2003. This series is distinguished by its visually rich and unconventional methodology for teaching programming concepts. Her publications received three nominations for Product Excellence Jolt Awards, winning in 2005 for Head First Design Patterns, and consistently ranked among Amazon.com's top 10 computer books from 2003 through 2005. In 2005, she introduced the term "The Kool-Aid Point" to describe the phenomenon where critics emerge simply because a subject gains popularity.

Her personal experience with epilepsy has fostered an interest in cognitive science, which has significantly influenced her approach to learning methodologies and user engagement.

After spending some time away from active public online presence, Sierra launched "Serious Pony" in 2013, a website dedicated to topics such as cognitive science, user experience (UX), learning theories, and game design. She maintained a Twitter account until 2014 but ultimately removed it due to harassment.

Harassment and withdrawal from online life

In 2007, Sierra became the target of severe online harassment following her advocacy for moderating internet comments—a stance that some perceived as restricting online freedom. Due to threatening blog posts and emails, including death threats, she canceled her scheduled participation at the O'Reilly ETech conference in San Diego in March of that year. Attackers circulated altered images depicting her alongside violent content, and hacker Andrew Auernheimer (known as weev) confessed to doxing her by publishing fabricated personal details online.

Consequently, Sierra stepped back from her technology career, significantly reducing public speaking engagements and blog activity. In her concluding blog entry, she conveyed her reluctance to remain involved in the blogosphere amid ongoing harassment, stating, "I had no desire then to find out what comes after doxxing, especially not with a family."

This episode ignited widespread discussion about ethical standards among bloggers. Several influential bloggers, including Robert Scoble of Scobleizer, temporarily halted their blogs in solidarity. Scoble emphasized the broader challenge of hostility directed at women in technology fields, pointing out that female technologists frequently endure sexist remarks far more than their male peers.

Selected publications

• Mike Meyers' Java 2 Certification Passport (McGraw-Hill Osborne, 2001)
• Sun Certified Programmer & Developer for Java 2 Study Guide (McGraw-Hill Osborne, 2002)
• Head First EJB (O'Reilly Publishing, 2003)
• Head First Servlets and JSP (O'Reilly Publishing, 2004)
• Head First Design Patterns (O'Reilly Publishing, 2004)
• SCJP Sun Certified Programmer for Java 5 Study Guide (McGraw-Hill Osborne, 2005)
• Head First Java (O'Reilly Publishing, 2005)
• OCP Java SE 6 Programmer Practice Exams (Exam 310-065) (McGraw-Hill Osborne, 2010)
• OCA/OCP Java SE 7 Programmer I & II Study Guide (Exams 1Z0-803 & 1Z0-804) (McGraw-Hill, 2014)
• Badass: Making Users Awesome (O'Reilly Media, 2015)
• OCA Java SE 8 Programmer I Exam Guide (Exams 1Z0-808) 1st Edition (McGraw-Hill, 2017)
• OCP Java SE 8 Programmer II Exam Guide (Exam 1Z0-809) 7th Edition (McGraw-Hill, 2018)

External links

• Kathy Sierra’s Creating Passionate Users blog
• JavaRanch, a community for Java developers
• Interview with Kathy Sierra on The Web 2.0 Show, hosted by Adam Stacoviak and Josh Owens
• Kathy Sierra interview on Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything podcast
• Badass — An Interview with Kathy Sierra featured on the Society for Technical Communication's "Notebook" blog