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
And clickbait arrives on lemmy
this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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Man, I thought when we left Reddit shit was going to change?
First off, SHE didn't write all the code, she led a team (And probably wrote a decent chunk herself). It wasn't by hand it was on computers, no one writes computer code by hand, that's just blatantly a myth, even punch cards were normally done BY the computer, not "by hand".
Also something I've questioned before is if that's really "The source code" and not maybe 11 copies (There's 11 binders there) Though most reports from reputable sources say that's "Listings". AKA that's the logging, not the code itself. The code itself may be printed out but would be kept on Punch cards (Again printed by the computer, not by hand). And the final form was actually a rope. (no really)
The thing is the story of Margaret Hamilton (And in fact most programmers of the time) is incredible enough. But when you blatantly lie like this it actually diminishes her accomplishment because it's obviously false and people will tear it down or disbelieve it because it's blatant misinformation.
This is why I left Next Fucking Level, because it became misinformation and karma whoring. It became about the "Story" rather than the actual person/skill/talent/figure. But on Reddit the reason was because people wanted Karma. Shouldn't we have left the basement tier BS and lying behind as well?
I don't know how old you are but when I was first introduced to programming in the early 80s all "source code" (Mostly basic and thus interpreted where program is the source code) was referred to as "listings" (this was when the main source of games were monthly magazines where you typed in a listing from a magazine and saved it to tape E.G.. The "Program listings" (as the Smithsonian calls them) seem to be print outs of the programs for verification purposes.
The process of entering was indeed handwritten, on specially printed sheets of paper that was then handed to a punchcard operator to create the cards (again according to the Smithsonian), But the stack of paper is clearly not those sheets as it is form-feed printer paper.
It is completely accurate that Margaret Hamilton lead a team, so while there are inaccuracies I'd say this not as much of a lie as just a combination of confused concepts,
So I'm referring a number of articles that talk about it as "Listings" and "Log files". They come from relatively good sources (Smithsonian magazine) who are interviewing curators of of the Smithsonian who claim to have "Those listings" in the picture. They do however refer to it as "program listings" and then just "Listings" in the article. So who knows.
That being said I don't agree with your saying "Well she led a team"... yeah she led a team, that's like Elon Musk saying "I made a Tesla" when really he hired hundreds/thousands of people who made the Tesla. This is someone making an our right lie, there is no reason for it not to say "She and her team" or something along those lines.
So I’m referring a number of articles that talk about it as “Listings”
So am I. I read that article as well and "Program listings" is IMHO definitive, a "program listing" is a list of the instructions in the program it is a term I used to use myself, it's just fallen out of fashion. In addition this article shows form feed paper with a snippet of the actual code, one line per instruction.
Also, it's nothing like Musk, maybe you don't work in the industry but a "Team lead" is a programmer, just with additional organisational responsibilities. If you read the rest of the article I linked there are those that consider her the first professional "Software Engineer", and mistaking a team lead for the only member of the team is a common mistake, especially when they were the first programmer hired for the Apollo mission, It's a mistake, I wouldn't classify it as a lie.
None of you better call yourselves nerds, THIS is a nerd.
Absolute deity
Imagine having to look for the missing semicolon in there.
It's probably written in Fortran66 or similar. No semicolons, but so many line numbers...
It's written in assembly. You can check out the source code on GitHub.
For people unfamiliar with assembly, it's one step up from raw 1s and 0s. Just vaguely human readable abbreviations for given sets of 1s and 0s. There are no built in loops or if statements, you have to build all that shit yourself from scratch every time you want to use one. And there's exactly one built in variable you can use called the register
Oh that's so hardcore
edit: looking at the git repo, it looks like it was a team of seven, and she was the lead. So it isn't all her code. Still super impressive :)
The other big notable thing for assembly is that it isn't portable. Assembly is very different for every processor architecture, unlike something like C where you may have to make some adjustments between an x86 vs ARM proc, in assembly you're basically rewriting it from scratch
Undisputed GOAT.
Margaret is a legend.
TIL
She invented the term "software engineering"
Wouldn't it have worked better if she wrote it into the computer? 🤔
The title is a bit misleading, this is a printout of the code that she indeed wrote into the computer first.
She also had a team of engineers who I'm sure deserve at least some of the credit. This title is bunk.
These people should have millions of followers instead we follow kardashians. No wonder the world is going to end😥
She did computer stuff..... She's smart enough to not fuck with anything that has followers.
Hate to tell you, but like most people who do computer stuff still use social media. I mean the linux kernel has it's own lemmy instance.
She didn’t write all of that, she had a team of programmers working under her
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.
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.
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.