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

[shawnhooper@fosstodon.org]

@ottaross @mhoye Papercuts though. Ouch.

[ottaross@mastodon.social]

@shawnhooper @mhoye workplace safety hazard

[mhoye@cosocial.ca]

@shawnhooper @ottaross ... and we've been shipping with papercuts ever since.

[mark@mastodon.fixermark.com]

@mhoye Oh, that Hamilton! Sorry, I had musicals on the brain.

Speaking of... She deserves a musical.

[emma@orbital.horse]

@mark @mhoye now I'm earwormed.

[jd@ottawa.place]

@ottaross @shawnhooper @mhoye
I notice the handy plug on the wall in case they need to, you know, unplug it/wait 30 seconds/ plug it back in.

[sarajw@front-end.social]

@mhoye didn't know that either.

Honestly man the more I learn about women in computing in history, the madder I am about the state of tech today.

[hypostase@bsd.network]

@mhoye
I did not know that. On the other hand, in her time engineer was probably appropriate, and her code will have been written in a context that was taking responsibility for actual lives, unlike so many who call themselves by that title today.

[lerxst@az.social]

@mark @mhoye OMG! What a great idea! Why didn't I put this together before? I need to write a libretto.

[tezoatlipoca@mas.to]

@sarajw @mhoye

Yeah. Grace Hopper, the women of Bletchley Park, the "hidden figures" of NASA like Katherine Johnson who did the math to put Glenn in orbit and Dorothy Vaughn who ran the computers (the movie is ok, but total white savior bullshit).

I want to see more women in charge of tech. I want more badass tech-sisters running things.

[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"