The series, which began with Head First Java in 2003,[4] takes an unorthodox, visually intensive approach to the process of teaching programming.

[7] After years of being mostly absent from the open internet, in July 2013 she started the site "Serious Pony" including a blog,[8] together with a Twitter account, although as of October 2014 the latter had been deleted due to ongoing harassment.

[10] In March 2007, Sierra abruptly canceled her appearance at the O'Reilly ETech conference in San Diego due to threatening blog posts and emails, including death threats.

The hacker and self-professed "Internet troll" Andrew Auernheimer, known as weev, told the New York Times that he was responsible for posting false information about Sierra online, along with her address and Social Security number, a form of harassment known as doxing.

[11] One of the larger issues Scoble felt was highlighted by the incident was online hostility to women: "It's this culture of attacking women that has especially got to stop," Scoble said "[W]henever I post a video of a female technologist there invariably are snide remarks about body parts and other things that simply wouldn't happen if the interviewee were a man.