I'd say the attempts to diminish her coding abilities were driven more by the affiliation with MS than with her ethnicity or religion. But that may just be speculation on my part.
That's the weird thing. What she did was genuinely impressive, but only because of her age. For an experienced adult to do the same thing would be a mark against them, because it conveys they're probably a dud doing something distasteful in the hope of polishing a lackluster résumé.
