r/programming • u/mareek • 5d ago

Margaret Hamilton, computing pioneer who led software development for the Apollo program, dies at 90

https://news.mit.edu/2026/margaret-hamilton-computing-pioneer-dies-1007
3.8k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

117 comments sorted by

643

u/sunnyata 4d ago

Invented the term Software Engineering and people took it as a joke at first.

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u/Nine99 4d ago

Invented the term Software Engineering

We don't know that.

At the earliest, Hamilton joined the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory in 1965: "In 1965, she learned of the Apollo program."

She then used the phrase after working there for a while:

Many requirements for the flight software were “thrown over the wall” from mission application experts to software engineering experts. ‘Io some mission experts, software “magically” appeared within the on-board flight computer, integrated and ready to go. As time went on, what had begun originally as mission requirements for the flight software became more and more understood by everyone in the form of the more application-oriented parts of the flight software, itself, that realized the mission requirements; and the mission expertise moved on from mission experts to software engineering experts. Requirements engineers and software engineers necessarily became interchangeable, as did their life-cycle phases—suggesting that a system is a system, no matter from which discipline things had originated. From this perspective, system design issues became one and the same as software engineering design issues. Yet, the systems-software part of the flight software was in a world all of its own!

“What is the difference,” I asked, “between what they are doing and what we are doing?” Knowing this, and the lack of understanding by many of what it took to create real world software-based systems and the part our software played within these systems, I wanted to give our software “legitimacy” so that it (and those building it) would be given its due respect; and, as a result I began to call what we were doing “software engineering” to distinguish it from other kinds of engineering; yet, treat each type of engineering as part of the overall systems engineering process.

  • Lawrence Snyder & Ray Henry - Fluency With Information Technology (Seventh Edition), ISBN: 9780134448725

The phrase was used in the June 1965 issue of Computers and Automation (p44).

We also have this description of the use of the phrase in 1965:

Perhaps what is lacking in programming is maturity, the kind of thing to which J. Presper Eckert was referring in his talk at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in 1965. Programming, he implied, would be manageable when we could refer to it as "software engineering." Such a name would constitute recognition - that, as a discipline, programming had come as far as the older, maturer engineering professions. Two main categories of events must occur before "software engineering" becomes an apposite descriptor. One of these events is anticipated by the growing number of universities with "computer science" programs. The second is the "discovery" that computer programming projects can be managed.

  • R.M. Gordon - Review of 'The Management of Computer Programming Projects' by C.P. Lecht, in Datamation 14(4) (April 1968) (p200)

And of course, by August 9th, 1966 we have Anthony Oettinger using the phrase in a letter to the whole ACM membership (probably more than 10,000 people):

A concern with the science of computing and information processing, while undeniably of the utmost importance and an historic root of our organization is, alone, too exclusive. While much of what we do is or has ills roots in not only computer and information science but also many other older and better defined sciences, even more is not at all scientific but of a professional and engineering nature. We must recognize ourselves—not necessarily all of us, and not necessarily any one of us all the time—as members of an engineering profession, be it hardware engineering or software engineering, a profession without artificial and irrelevant boundaries like that between "scientific" and "business" applications.

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u/Sharlinator 4d ago

Unfortunately software engineering, outside specific subfields like aerospace, still has little to do with actual engineering. And even less so now that it’s become software vibing in many places.

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u/mareek 4d ago

Most of "traditional" engineering is not rocket science. I've worked in multiple industrial companies with traditional engineer and their jobs has a lot in common with ours.

Hillel Wayne wrote an interesting article about the subject :

I just asked them point blank. “Do you consider software engineering actually engineering?”
Of the 17 crossovers I talked to, 15 said yes.

https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/are-we-really-engineers/

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u/mtranda 4d ago

Even rocket science isn't "rocket science". Keep in mind that everything we do is built upon abstractions created by others. The people building rockets aren't inventing the rocket from scratch and in some cases they even use off-the-shelf parts (as long as their rating matches the engineers' calculations).

Yes, it's incredibly complex and they really need to know their shit, but they're also working with abstractions at this point and CAD software is incredibly helpful in simulating and performing calculations.

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u/debugggingg 4d ago

It's just space grade plumbing

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u/ofthedestroyer 4d ago

and plumbing is just water legos, innit?

5

u/flukus 4d ago

water legos

Can someone make this a thing?

1

u/dwhite21787 4d ago

Check out PEX

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u/CherryLongjump1989 4d ago

CAD software

Who made the CAD software?

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u/mtranda 4d ago

Why, software ENGINEERS, of course.

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u/wosmo 4d ago edited 4d ago

Although I'd argue that when she invented the term, it really was rocket science.

I still love that they had a routine named BURN, BABY, BURN.

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u/hardware2win 4d ago

Bullshit

Engineering is the practice of systematically applying natural science and mathematics to design and improve systems, devices, or processes that solve problems under constraints. It is typically motivated by satisfying human needs, resulting in creations such as bridges, engines, smartphones, pacemakers, the internet, spacecraft, and washing machines.

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u/hobbykitjr 4d ago

we joked around decades ago about the difference between the software engineers and the programmers.....

'the white board in the office'

yes some low level programmers were just translating instructions into code.

but to design and 'engineer' a system is engineering

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u/I_dont_like_tomatoes 4d ago

A mentor figure of mine said there are coders and engineers. Coder work to get the program to run engineers work to solve the problem.

Or something like that, he is just a huge advocate to understand the issue before working on the solution

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u/nvn911 4d ago

Yeah there's like none of that happening in entire teams right now 🤣

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u/Sharlinator 4d ago edited 4d ago

And how many software devs systematically apply natural sciences and mathematics? How many have ever made any sort of quantitative calculations or measurements to figure out hardware requirements or conversely what’s possible given hardware specs? (To be clear, Margaret Hamilton’s team absolutely did do that.)

As they say, anyone can design a bridge. But a civil engineer worth their salt knows how to design just barely a bridge.  Something that supports a given load times a safety factor, neither less or more. Most SWEs (outside aerodpace, gamedev, etc) have no idea how to reason about the performance of their application before it’s in actual use.

And don’t even get me started about how cargo culty SWE is, with a new trendy buzzword every year or two, like "object-oriented" or "cloud computing" or "microservices".

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u/CherryLongjump1989 4d ago

All of the ones who use computers.

So damn stupid that other engineers will use CAD software, made by software engineers, and then claim that this is actual engineering, but that they have a claim to the math being done by the CAD software whereas the software engineers who actually made the software, don't.

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u/romple 4d ago

I work on high performance signal processing systems. I use way more math to apply other math than I'm really comfortable with. (Meanwhile the mechanical guys draw pretty pictures and let their cad stuff crunch numbers for them)

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u/CherryLongjump1989 4d ago

There's probably more math involved in drawing the characters I'm typing on my screen than what a typical mechanical engineer uses in a month.

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u/hardware2win 4d ago edited 4d ago

Math in programming is everywhere.

Let alone when you work at bigger scale with reliability requirements, queues, throughtput, latencies, retries, sagas, state machines, messaging, census algorithms, cryptography, database theory, peformance measurements and experiments, etc

Software Engineering isnt only about down to the bit calculations.

Ive worked across high and low lvl as software engineer (eng. degree in cs(informatics))

Engineering is the practice of systematically applying natural science and mathematics to design and improve systems, devices, or processes that solve problems under constraints. It is typically motivated by satisfying human needs, resulting in creations such as bridges, engines, smartphones, pacemakers, the internet, spacecraft, and washing machines.

Because of bilion moving parts outside their control that affect the perf?

Compilers, runtimes, GCs, dependencies (libs), OSes, underlying hardware which often is hidden/changing, 3rd services, global networking, firmware, drivers, other software running on this instance, etc?

1

u/hobbykitjr 4d ago

yeah for my computer science degree i had to not only pass Calc 1 & 2 and other math classes... I had to get a C or better.

Math and CS department was 1 department.

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u/Ratstail91 4d ago

Go program a nontrivial game.

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u/mediocrobot 4d ago

Your mistake is limiting the scope of mathematics to calculus. Software engineering is more frequently an exercise in discrete math.

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u/TheFaithfulStone 3d ago

While I agree with “it takes an engineer to design a bridge that only barely doesn’t fall down” - I think maybe you’re underselling software engineering a touch.

That said: not all _programming_ is software engineering.

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u/thesituation531 4d ago

But what is "actual engineering" if not building (maybe designing) systems and mechanisms?

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u/NewPhoneNewSubs 4d ago

In Canada, "engineer" is a professionally governed field and software devs are generally not members.

Engineers use established practices and methods and are legally accountable for their work. Software developers fuck around and find out. Some have methodologies that they adhere to, but if I say "TDD' here I'll get a thousand different opinions about what that is and if it's useful same for any other such idea. We also say "oopsie" and fix in prod when things go wrong.

Do we have stuff in common? Sure. But so does a GC.

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u/KevinCarbonara 4d ago

> Engineers use established practices and methods and are legally accountable for their work.

No. *Professional Engineers*, a legally protected title, *can* be legally accountable for their work. And even then, software engineers can still be PEng licensed, so you're still wrong.

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u/Winter_Present_4185 4d ago edited 4d ago

There are clearly differences between software and actual engineering in todays society.

First, for most actual engineering disciplines, you tend to need a formal engineering education where as for software you don't. As an example, you typically wouldn't find someone who majored in English getting a job as a chemical engineer. But interestingly enough, one of my best friends majored in English and was able to get a job as a software developer at a FAANG. I also know many developers who are self taught without any formal education at all. This is quite rare in actual engineering jobs but common in software.

Second, in reguards to the PE licensure, I think it's quite obvious that it's easier for an actual engineering degree holder to obtain a PE license as compared to a computer science degree holder. To be clear, I'm not saying you can't get PE licensure with a CS degree, because you certainly can (in some circumstances). But it's much much much harder. It's like passing the Bar exam without a degree in law. Overall, this is another distinction between software and actual engineering in that both may be able to get a PE, but it's clearly easier for one and harder for the other.

Third, when most people hear that someone is an engineer, they tend to believe that person is well educated. But there are many software engineers who never took a basic calculus or chemistry course where as this is uncommon for actual engineers. I personally think it feeds people's ego to be labeled as an "engineer" due to societal stigma of being known as "smart" which is why there is debate wars about the term software developer or software engineer.

Fourth, the term "software developer" is equal to the term "software engineer", but the term "electrical engineer" isn't equal to the term "electrical developer". That hints at another societal distinction between the two.

To summarize, I'm not trying to say that we can't classify software developers as engineers. I'm trying to say that there are clear and obvious differences between the two which leaves room for debate on if software is an engineering field.

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u/Own_Back_2038 4d ago

Do you really think taking a calculus course makes someone smart?

I know plenty of SWE and adjacent engineers who have deep knowledge about all kinds of things

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u/Winter_Present_4185 4d ago

No. I was editing my comment and then had to stop so I think the substance of what I was trying to convey got lossed. I've since updated it.

My comment isn't to say that we can't classify software developers as engineers. My comment is trying to show that there are societial differences between the two. Education being the main one.

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u/barianter 2d ago

There is frankly nothing we learned in electrical engineering that could not simply be learned without going to university.

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u/Winter_Present_4185 2d ago edited 2d ago

Isn't that true for any topic? I never claimed university buildings have magical powers. My reasoning comes down to three points:

(a) It generally takes longer to learn advanced undergraduate electrical engineering concepts than advanced undergraduate computer science concepts, mainly because electrical engineering tends to have more depth, while computer science tends to have more breadth.

Put another way, in a computer science curriculum, a database or networking elective might require relatively little knowledge from the core computer science classes you took beforehand. This tends not to be the case with electrical engineering electives, which build much more heavily on concepts learned in earlier classes.

This difference in depth vs breadth is one reason we've seen so many "coding bootcamps" but virtually no "electrical engineering bootcamps." It's also why computer science programs typically offer more electives than electrical engineering programs.

And it's why I think it's reasonable to assume that, if you're starting from zero, it will take you longer to self learn most advanced undergraduate electrical engineering topics than computer science topics.

(b) Studies have consistently shown that math and physics are among the subjects university students find most difficult. Electrical engineering programs simply tend to require more courses in these areas than computer science programs.

And going back to the depth vs breadth argument, these subjects aren't just requirements you can get through and forget about. They're more foundational to what comes later in an electrical engineering curriculum, at least more so than in computer science.

So again, I think it's reasonable to conclude that self learning undergraduate electrical engineering is generally harder than self learning undergraduate computer science.

(c) Many electrical engineering jobs effectively require you to have that very expensive piece of paper we call a diploma. Software development jobs, on the other hand, are generally much more open to people without formal degrees.

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u/KevinCarbonara 4d ago

There are clearly differences between software and actual engineering in todays society.

If you actually believe this, you do not know what engineering is.

First, for most actual engineering disciplines, you tend to need a formal engineering education where as for software you don't.

This is a blatant lie. You will find self-trained people in all disciplines.

As an example, you typically wouldn't find someone who majored in English getting a job as a chemical engineer.

I lived in a city with a semiconductor plant, and as a result, I happen to know multiple English majors who became chemical engineers. Again - you are objectively wrong.

Second, in reguards to the PE licensure, I think it's quite obvious that it's easier for an actual engineering degree holder to obtain a PE license

Software engineers do usually hold engineering degrees. The reason PEng licenses aren't more common in software is because there's no demand for it. That has nothing to do with the discipline and everything to do with the corporations who employ us.

I'm not saying you can't get PE licensure with a CS degree, because you certainly can (in some circumstances).

Not "in some circumstances". ABET currently recognizes software engineers as engineers, and accredits programs accordingly. NCEES, IEEE, NSPE, and TBPELS offer licensure for software engineering. This is not a technicality. These are the very organizations that define the concept of licensure and accreditation for engineering.

Third, when most people hear that someone is an engineer, they tend to believe that person is well educated. But there are many software engineers who never took a basic calculus or chemistry course

I don't know anyone who got a CS degree who didn't take Calculus. It's something we use daily. You're just lying at this point. I can tell from this conversation alone that I am much more fully educated than you, so this really isn't a road you want to go down.

Fourth, the term "software developer" is equal to the term "software engineer", but the term "electrical engineer" isn't equal to the term "electrical developer".

This argument is so asinine and downright stupid that there's no point even trying to address it.

You are wrong. You are objectively wrong. You are definitionally wrong. You are certifiably wrong. And it's obvious that you persist in your wrongness through the sheer force of stupidity and jealousy.

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u/Winter_Present_4185 4d ago edited 4d ago

I lived in a city with a semiconductor plant, and as a result, I happen to know multiple English majors who became chemical engineers. Again - you are objectively wrong.

You realise what the word "objectively" means? Because it's quite ironic you use a personal anecdote yet claim I'm objectively wrong. Please don't stoop to the "I'm holier than thou" attacks. This is just a conversation and for better or for worse, we're equals who are having it.

Software engineers do usually hold engineering degrees. The reason PEng licenses aren't more common in software is because there's no demand for it.

Not in the US at least. The most common degree to get into software is a CS degree.

In addition, the way with the least amount of friction to get your PE license was (and still is) that you graduate from an EAC ABET accredited program and then you're immediately eligible to take the EIT exam.

The problem was that many schools only had their CS program CAC ABET certified because it's easier classes (and good graduation numbers make more tuition money). A handful of colleges did convert, got CIP codes for the aptly named "computer science engineering" program (CPE). But again most didn't, which is why you had low enrollment numbers.

That has nothing to do with the discipline and everything to do with the corporations who employ us.

The degree you get in one discipline is called "computer science" while in the other discipline is called "electrical engineering". The corporations are the one that recognized "engineer" is not a protected title and chose to meritlessly label everyone as an engineer (even garbage men are now called sanitation engineers in my city).

Not "in some circumstances". [ABET currently recognizes software engineers as engineer (https://se.iastate.edu/program/abet-accreditation/)

No.. that program is one of the few I mentioned above. In order to be EAC ABET certified, one of the requirements is that your degree program must end in "engineering", because it means you went through the federal educational requirements to get a engineering CIP code for the program.

I don't know anyone who got a CS degree who didn't take Calculus.

You missed my point. You don't need a CS degree, or any degree for that matter for a corporation to wave their magic want over your head and title you as "a software engineer".

Said another way, there are magnitude of orders more software engineers who don't have degrees than there are electrical engineers who don't have degrees. So due to the law of averages, it stands to reason that the average software engineer is less educated than the average electrical engineer. That's just how the math works out. Don't shoot the messenger.

I can tell from this conversation alone that I am much more fully educated than you, so this really isn't a road you want to go down.

Please don't beat me up tuff guy! PhD in EE from Princeton, MS in CS from Rutgers, BS EE from Rutgers. I think I'm fairly intelligent. But to each their own.

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u/KevinCarbonara 4d ago

PhD in EE from Princeton, MS in CS from Rutgers, BS EE from Rutgers.

And yet you spell "realize" with an s. No one's falling for this. The things you're saying are objectively wrong, and anyone with experience in the industry knows it.

0

u/Winter_Present_4185 4d ago

"When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser"- Socrates

I don't use autocorrect on my phone so I do apologize. However feel free to browse my profile and you'll see I'm a verified alum at Princeton U.

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u/coderemover 4d ago edited 4d ago

Your confusion seems to stem from the fact that you appear to be incorrectly calling a software engineer anyone who does coding or testing or generally works in IT. Well, in that case, you’re right - many software developers, especially web developers, are not software engineers. But the same applies to other disciplines - most electricians are not electrical engineers either. Most repairmen in your car shop are not mechanical engineers either. Most specialists who service industrial machines are not engineers, they are all technicians.

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u/coderemover 4d ago edited 4d ago

Computer Science / Computer Engineering are formal engineering degrees in many countries. It’s not related so much to whether it’s software or not, but more to the kind of school you get your education from. You just need to graduate from an accredited school, and you get your engineering title, which you are then allowed to use as a prefix before your name.

I work at big-tech SV company and I can assure you that the vast majority of people in software engineering positions do hold a professional engineering degree either in computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, telecommunications / automation or similar. Many are actually PhDs. Not everybody but the vast majority are at least BS, and almost if not all people in senior positions.

It’s also not like in the other industries you don’t have “engineers” without degrees. My father worked as a mechanical engineer of industrial HVAC systems and he often had to sign off work done by people without formal degree eg apprentices. Also you actually don’t really need an engineering degree to design or service industrial or medical machines, anyone with a proper skill can. Plenty of people are servicing those machines who are not PEngs. Design can be done by anyone actually. Certification cannot.

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u/Winter_Present_4185 2d ago

... do hold a professional engineering degree either in computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering

One of these (the one I'm arguing about) is not named the same. It is not an engineering degree, but it tends to be the one most software "engineers" get. I hope you see the irony that I'm trying to point out.

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u/coderemover 2d ago

Computer Science is recognized as professional engineering degree in most of European Union.

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u/Winter_Present_4185 2d ago edited 2d ago

I didn't know the answer, so I spent $2 and had asked ChatGPT Pro to research it.

Only 34% of all universities in the EU offer a computer science program that can either be accredited as a professional engineering or offer a computer science engineering degree, or offer steps to get graduates to be a PE. If you want, I can list universities, their website link where they say it, and such. But figured that is too much information for a reddit reply.

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u/NewPhoneNewSubs 4d ago

The vast majority of software developers in Canada are not PEng. They're the exception proving the rule. Not the exception invalidating a formal logic proof.

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u/KevinCarbonara 4d ago

The vast majority of civil and mechanical engineers in Canada are also not PEng. We should be asking if civil engineering is real engineering.

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u/coderemover 4d ago edited 4d ago

Not true; if you graduated from Software Engineering department and got a degree you can very easily get licensed and legally use the title engineer in Canada - it’s a formality. It has nothing to do with software. It’s about the degree you have to hold plus some small amount of industrial experience. And it’s a good thing - you cannot call yourself an engineer after taking a bootcamp or just working at a company.

Your post reads as if Software Engineering was not recognized as an engineering discipline in Canada, but that’s simply misleading.

Also those rules apply equally to other engineering disciplines. You cannot use title “mechanical engineer” just because you were hired at that position.

Btw in Poland your also not allowed to title yourself an engineer if you don’t hold at least a BS degree in engineering. But no one checks that and no one cares.

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u/NewPhoneNewSubs 4d ago

You start with "not true" but then basically validate my point. The vast majority of software developers in Canada are not legally allowed to call themselves engineers. Including people with BSc or higher education.

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u/coderemover 4d ago edited 4d ago

Because they don’t need it. Most people don’t give a damn about the title they have. But they could get that title any time they wanted.

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u/NMe84 4d ago

So much gatekeeping in this comment.

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u/daisy0808 4d ago

Engineers are the worst for invalidating the work of other engineers. 

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u/romple 4d ago

I work at a company with all sorts of engineers, software, electrical, computer, mechanical, acoustic, ocean, etc... we're all there to solve problems together and make things do something. Never understood the need to feel like more of an engineer than some other discipline.

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u/coderemover 4d ago

I also didn’t, but go to electrical engineering subreddit and you will quickly feel a weird kind of elitism there especially whenever computer engineering or software engineering is mentioned. Maybe it’s just gatekeeping and they don’t want software engineers to switch to electrical engineering (which is not very hard for anyone who graduated from a computer engineering faculty)?

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u/barianter 2d ago

Maybe software engineering is just too complicated for them.

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u/Incorrect_Oymoron 4d ago

Add Doctors and Lawers on the list. All these groups with their "Licenses" and "Regulatory Bodies"

We shouldn't need a license to call ourselves a doctor/engineer!

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u/Leverkaas2516 4d ago edited 4d ago

It's a simple statement of fact, not gatekeeping. Any software engineer knows this. It's nothing like most domains that routinely require a licensed professional engineer.

The activity is similar, but the level of responsibility to the public is much different.

Edit to add: What other kind of engineer can ship a major change one day that breaks the flagship product of a major corporation the next? Been there, done that. How many other kinds of engineers, when you stand and look at their finished product and ask "are there any errors" they will say with a straight face, "oh, yes, hundreds of them." (We'll just wait for customers to report them and fix them in the next release). How many other engineering disciplines normally ship products with the disclaimer: "this product may not actually work, and if it doesn't, we take no responsibility ". (This is so common it's got boilerplate language that's used in virtually every software license)

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u/tofif33 4d ago

Let’s ignore all devices in hospitals and milions other fields where an error can cost human lives i guess

Problem is that a lot of code monkeys think they are software engineers

Ah why do i even engage with these comments..

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u/coderemover 4d ago edited 4d ago

For many other engineering disciplines you don’t need to be licensed. For most part you don’t need to be licensed to design electronics, except some areas like power or aviation and even that I’m unsure of. But the very same thing applies to software.

Btw: my dad worked as a mechanical engineer and was responsible for supervising many industrial installations and buildings created in Poland. The number of issues / problems / errors found is surprisingly very similar to software engineering. Not a single site or design where he could just say “LGTM” on the first day.

Also physical things break all the time as well. We’re not that much different really.

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u/Thog78 4d ago

"Unfortunately civil engineering, outside specific subfields like skyscrapers, still has little to do with actual engineering. And even less so now that civil engineers delegate building to workers instead of applying the mortar and tightening the screws themselves."

Fuck that civil-vibing construction-slope! It was better before, grass in mud is all we ever needed!

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u/AeroRL 4d ago

This guy is an idiot. How did so many people upvote this

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u/tofif33 4d ago

Ah yes, the “actual engineering” lol

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u/KevinCarbonara 4d ago

This is a blatant lie that people make up because they're jealous of software engineers

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u/abdex 4d ago

There's a famous story where her daughter crashed a flight computer by punching in a code that an astronaut was never supposed to enter, a code that reset it to think it was still on the launch pad. She wanted to add a recovery procedure but was told a highly-trained astronaut would never make such a mistake. Sure enough, during Apollo 8 (the first one to ever leave low Earth orbit), Jim Lovell accidentally hit that code, the computer lost its location, and he had to retell it where they were manually by lining up stars. That skill became even more critical during Apollo 13 when he had to do it again.

Here is Margaret telling the story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvutliS-KXk

Nearly all the giants of the Apollo program have passed away now. So sad.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/programming-ModTeam 3d ago

No content written mostly by an LLM. If you don't want to write it, we don't want to read it.

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u/trogdor-burninates 4d ago

Truly one of the greatest pioneers. We are standing on the shoulders of this giant.

Astronauts literally trusted her with their lives and they even acknowledged this fact.

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u/jerquee 4d ago

I think they didn't trust the (electronic) computers very much during her era. They certainly did not rely on them during the moon landing (they had manual fallbacks and used some of them)

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u/Ziggamorph 4d ago

They (the astronauts) didn't trust them at first, but it soon became clear that it would be impossible to go to the moon without depending on them. Yes, they had manual overrides but they couldn't use all of them at once. If the computer completely failed they would not have been able to successfully land and return.

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u/backfire10z 4d ago

Oye, she’s just big-boned

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u/TheMuttOfMainStreet 4d ago

Lived just long enough to see the field of software engineering fucking implode 

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u/emperorOfTheUniverse 4d ago

My first thought, as a dev reading this, was 'lucky bitch'.

There will be no historical headlines about any of us pointing our AI agent at a PR for review, that was written by some other AI, that was going off some jira ticket written by AI at the button pushing of some PM. Fuck this career.

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u/varinator 4d ago

The OG, the first software engineer.

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u/nerdKween 4d ago

Ada Lovelace walked so she could fly.

Pun intended. What a massive loss.

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u/cuddlegoop 4d ago

I don't think it's possible to overstate how important Margaret Hamilton has been to the course of human history. She will be remembered for a very, very, very long time.

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u/Ok_Flamingo7430 19h ago

Yes it is 

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u/nothing_pt 4d ago edited 4d ago

Great photo of her pic

Edit: And Lego has also this set

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u/doned_mest_up 4d ago

There aren’t too many pictures of programmers that certify as bad ass, and this is the most baddest ass of them all.

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u/retardrabbit 4d ago

What's she standing next to? The codebase in hard copy? Project specs?

7

u/GregsWorld 3d ago

Yes, print out of the code for the Apollo guidance computer

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u/frausting 4d ago

That’s immediately what came to mind for me too!

1

u/teknikly-correct 3d ago

came here to see that photo, thank you!

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u/Bicurico 4d ago

My deepest respect for her and my condolences.

It saddens me that it seems that people value more "celebrities" who added little to nothing to mankind more than people like Margaret Hamilton who contributed significantly to science and technology.

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u/bongeaux 4d ago

There is a TV program called Moon Machines where they have an entire episode (3) about the navigation computer and interview Margaret Hamilton. The whole series is outstanding but that episode really cemented her in my mind as an amazing contributor to the field of software engineering. Highly recommended.

3

u/mareek 4d ago

John F. Kennedy, Wernher von Braun, Gene Kranz, Jim Lovell, Gus Grissom... the cast is incredible !

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u/Shoddy_One4465 4d ago

Through bytes and through bugs She guided us to the Moon Her light guides us still

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u/Shienvien 4d ago

She was a legend. May she be remembered for many generations to come.

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u/charliedarwin96 3d ago

RIP to an absolute legend. Godspeed, soldier!

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u/Iwannabeaviking 4d ago

Why didn’t she get the IEEE award? Or medal of freedom?

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u/mareek 4d ago

She did get the medal of freedom in 2016.

As for why she didn't get any IEEE award, the main reason is probably misogyny since the IEEE didn't know that women existed in the 20th century

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u/coderemover 4d ago

Being married to the actual leader, is not enough for IEEE awards, for a good reason.

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u/kachori8342 1d ago

Such a legend.

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u/coderemover 4d ago edited 4d ago

She didn’t really lead software development for that program during the time most of the critical code was written and her role in it was marginal.

https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/s/WErbNL56l7

> Okay, so, she didn’t do it alone, she lead the team responsible at least? Well… kind of… not quite. As per this org chart from early 1969 Hamilton was only the assistant director of the Command Module team, not the LM team, which was a separate team, each of which was about ~40 people. As well, the Source Code for Apollo 11 itself lists Hamilton as the programming leader for the command module.

> So, it’s inaccurate to say that she was in charge of both the LM and CM team. At least when discussing Apollo 11 and prior. Both assistant directors worked under Dan Lickly, who Margaret Hamilton married later that year. She then became his replacement in 1970, which is after Apollo 11.

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u/HolidayBalance4608 4d ago

Downvoted for 100% verifiable facts. Peak reddit.

3

u/R_Sholes 4d ago edited 4d ago

No, he's downvoted for selectively quoting a post to knock down a strawman nobody presented, and tacking his own arbitrary value judgments on top.

Linked source speaks specifically about the myth about "that paper stack on the photo is written entirely by her, by hand" and a few other misconceptions.

It says nothing about "most of the critical code" - which code is that? - or "her role was marginal". These are not "verifiable facts" in the linked post, these are either the guy's hurt ego, or the usual Redditor's confusion between being contrarian and being smart.

Same as yours peak Reddit fart-smelling comment about this being peak reddit.

Meanwhile, if you click through to "verify facts", you get to see parts the guy didn't think warranted quoting like:

She was not the first programmer hired for the Apollo project and was not made a director of anything in 1965. She was possibly the first female programmer hired, and joined NASA initially in 1965, at a lower level. She was made head of the command module software team in either ’67 or ’68, I can’t quite determine precisely.

I'm sure there was no intent to mislead with the choice of the quote to imply that she was "only assistant director" and didn't lead anything, when, if you click through and read the context and the org chart, the point of the quote is that she was not initially leading both teams, and that as assistant director she was leading only the Command Module team.

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u/ViolinistTemporary 4d ago

Reddit and simping.

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u/GlenoJacks 4d ago

Your brain is cooked.

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u/nickcash 4d ago

dude's programing skills haven't amounted to anything more than a vibecoded vampire survivors clone. of course he feels threatened by a woman who was able to do it better than him sixty years ago