I don't think that your original point was at all what you later expressed here. You weren't talking about the 'shortage of female programmers,' you were loudly expressing your apparent shock over something irrelevant in a way I and many others consider rude. It is, quite simply, none of your business. If a person doesn't go out of her/his way to mention something to you, then you can safely conclude that s/he doesn't want it shouted in public. For whatever reason.

Had you skipped the first post and arrived at the second in response to your surprise, and then posted a discussion on why there might not be many women programmers and what could be done to change that, I expect the response you got would have been quite different.

If, as you say, you want the inspiration of female programmers, why don't you look at the stars instead of space? For example, you could think of Skud or Elaine Ashton (who seems to feel that Perl needs more women). Or, since you weren't limiting yourself to Perl, what about Evi Nemeth?

However, I think you do them a disservice when you treat them as being as odd as a three-legged talking cow. "if one can have a top-flight woman programmer then one can have" <something totally unrelated> is almost the same as saying "If a woman can do that, so could anyone."