A picture of Margaret Hamilton, programmer for the Apollo space program, standing next to not one single microsoft error message or bluetooth problem.

[sarajw@front-end.social]

@tezoatlipoca @mhoye I'd be happy if they weren't even badass, but you know, ran this stuff like they're not trying to emulate comic book bad guys, like the current oligarchical tech leaders seem to be.

[lerxst@az.social]

@sarajw @mhoye I'm old enough to remember when I got into this field when there were more women in it. Back then, it was a way to make a decent living, but not a path to riches.

That changed with the internet boom and I ran into fewer women developers and sysadmins. Once it got out of its "clerical" status and into a path to riches, the demographics shifted. My first dev job iin 1990 was 40% women devs to 60%.

I've worked in places since then with NO women devs. Those all sucked, BTW.

[beadsland@beige.party]

@mhoye

Yeah, and ever since then whole generations of programming boys have been cosplaying as her, despite most of them having not anywhere near half the responsibility.

[sarajw@front-end.social]

@tezoatlipoca @mhoye saying that Grace Hopper was indeed badass and had a sharp wit: https://front-end.social/@sarajw/113165853835788408

[lerxst@az.social]

@mhoye Yup, she's (not as) widely recognized (as I thought, apparently) as the founder of software engineering.

[sarajw@front-end.social]

@lerxst @mhoye mmhmmm. Amazing how the women got pushed out, I guess because it was seen as something that the clever men should do and be well paid for...

[sarajw@front-end.social]

@lerxst @mhoye the way I see it, it *should* be an ideal job for a parent (whether male, female, NB), with good opportunities to work async, part time, from home.

Sadly structural stuff, mandatory meetings, the so many "ritual" meetings make the async part-timeness more difficult.

[lerxst@az.social]

@sarajw @mhoye So many meetings could be literally two Slack or even IRC messages per person.

[janxdevil@sfba.social]

@sarajw @mhoye On that note, I recently learned about how the original group of ENIAC programmers were all women. One of them is credited with having invented the debugger breakpoint.

[ryanprior@mastodon.social]

@mhoye I read that she also coined the term "test harness"

[benjamingeer@piaille.fr]

@mhoye On the other hand, Michael Collins did have to turn something off and on again to fix a problem

[swiftone@mastodon.online]

@mhoye I use the first pic to teach the difference between the purpose of a caption and alt text, with a guerilla casual mention of how much we owe Hamilton and similar minimized women.

[hyc@mastodon.social]

@janxdevil @sarajw @mhoye yep. Kay McNulty was one of them, from just a bit up the road from my house. https://www.womensmuseumofireland.ie/exhibits/kay-mcnulty

[sarajw@front-end.social]

@spacehobo is it just going to make me more mad or give me something constructive to do about it?

Otherwise nowadays I can only cope with fiction, novels, I need the escapism...

@lerxst @mhoye

[hyc@mastodon.social]

@janxdevil @sarajw @mhoye they have a monument dedicated to her at her birthplace now. I like to visit it every year...

[sarajw@front-end.social]

@spacehobo @lerxst @mhoye thank you either way, I'd like to know but it might make me feel very frustrated about what could have been..

[mralancooper@hachyderm.io]

@mhoye

In 2017 Margaret Hamilton was inducted into the Computer History Museum's Hall of Fellows. On that occasion I was privileged to accompany her on a private, docent-guided tour of the Museum's public display.

She looked about the same as she does in these pictures from the 1960s, albeit a little grayer; a bright, diminutive grandma.

But she was very humble and human. At one point we rounded a corner into the Apollo section. Prominently in the front of the exhibit was a reproduction of your left-hand photo. Upon seeing it, Margaret stopped and exclaimed, "Oh my gosh! Is that me?"

[craignicol@glasgow.social]

@sarajw @mhoye she coined the term to remind everyone that the software running the show was just as important as the engineering that went into the rest of the mission.

[sarajw@front-end.social]

@craignicol @mhoye absolutely!

[hyc@mastodon.social]

@janxdevil @sarajw @mhoye I don't recall any of these women being mentioned in my courses at UMich. But I knew Grace Hopper coined "computer bug" (but it was an actual bug, a moth, that fried itself on a circuit). Probably just picked up in outside reading. I learned about Kay from reading about ENIAC, because the EECS department had a slice of it (1/10th) on display. I learned about Margaret because... a colleague of mine at the UM Computing Center looked like her. https://websites.umich.edu/~umvm/MIDAC/midac_eniac.html