this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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Margaret Hamilton, NASA's lead developer for Apollo program, stands next to all the code she wrote by hand that took humanity to the moon in 1969

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[–] [email protected] 182 points 1 year ago (8 children)

She didn’t write all of that, she had a team of programmers working under her

[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 year ago (1 children)

She was the first software engineer who was hired for the project and did write a good chunk of the code. She was more than someone who simply delegates and leads. Hell, she is the one who coined the term software engineer. She played a hell of a role in the history of software development. Let's not try to diminish that.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

He isn't trying to diminish but these misleading exaggerated titles are pretty annoying and confusing at times.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I agree that the title is misleading but simply saying she was the one directing the team without also mentioning that she absolutely did write a chunk of that is also misleading and diminishes her contribution to the code.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Similar to what happened with the first image of a black hole. The whole thing was somehow attributed to one lady in the press. Turns out, it was a whole team of scientists working together to achieve that.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Et al of the world, assemble!

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The problem isn't that the whole thing was attributed to one lady. The problem was how quickly people were to discredit her and minimize her role, something that was guaranteed to never be a problem if she were a man.

Funny how the credibility of male scientists and engineers are never questioned in posts like these, and yet becomes a hot topic when that person happens to be a woman.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Funny how the credibility of male scientists and engineers are never questioned in posts like these

I haven't seen a comparable image for a guy or a girl prior to this one presenting a person as having written code when they actually just led the team that wrote the code.

I do recall Al Gore claiming that he "took the initiative in creating the Internet" when he was responsible for obtaining funding for Internet infrastructure and getting ripped pretty hard for that.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah people come on this is like attributing all the code for open ai to the PM

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No it isn't, unless you think PMs are programmers. She was the lead developer and created the foundation for the software, then drove the project home. She wasn't a non-technical person writing requirements for engineers to work on.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

But from that to the title statement of "she wrote ALL the code" is a long stretch, which is where my analogy is coming from

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Also the code is much shorter than that, the pile in this picture is just everything they had laying around at that time, so maybe different revisions or just copies. The code they used is like 1-2 of those in length.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I wouldn't have minded working under her

[–] winterayars 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah, i bet she was a pretty good boss. Good mission, too.