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  • Misinformation-SuperhighwaymanDamienWise@aus.social
    Oct 8, 2026, 12:57 AM

    Vale Margaret Hamilton.
    She was a Software Engineer.
    She was the _first_ Software Engineer because she defined the term, Software Engineering:
    "When I first came up with the term, no one had heard of it before, at least in our world. It was an ongoing joke for a long time. They liked to kid me about my radical ideas. It was a memorable day when one of the most respected hardware gurus explained to everyone in a meeting that he agreed with me that the process of building software should also be considered an engineering discipline, just like with hardware. Not because of his acceptance of the new 'term' per se, but because we had earned his and the acceptance of the others in the room as being in an engineering field in its own right."

    Margaret Hamilton led the Software Engineering team at MIT that created the software that ran NASA's Apollo Guidance Computer. The photo of her standing next to a stack of source code printouts — that's her work, and she was essential to NASA's mission of landing people on the Moon for the first time ever and getting them back to Earth again safely.

    Margaret Hamilton, computing pioneer who led software development for the Apollo program, dies at 90
    news.mit.edu/2026/margaret-ham

    #MargaretHamilton #SoftwareEngineer #SoftwareEngineering #ComputerScience #NASA #MIT #Apollo #MoonLanding

    A B&W photo of a person standing next to a stack of printed paper as high as the top of their head. This is Margaret Hamilton, at work as a Software Engineer and the leader of a team of extremely specialised programmers who worked for NASA. The photo was taken in 1969, and it shows a physical form if her work since she joined the Apollo project in 1965 (she joined at the age of 29 by my calculation). My interpretation of the expression on her face is a mix of pride and mild amusement. She has glasses, long, straight hair, and neat office attire. Margaret Hamilton has her hands placed gently on the stack of printouts to keep it all balanced upright. The pages appear to be arranged in bundles, ranging from 8-10 centimetres thick, to 20cm thick or more. The resulting stack of printouts is physically impressive for being an unusual feat, and it represents something even more impressive: it's the printed form of the source-code she and the team she led wrote for the NASA Apollo project. Their software ran on the Apollo Guidance Computer that was that on board each Apollo command module and Apollo Lunar Module. The Apollo Guidance Computer onboard the Eagle was an essential flight instrument for Neil Armstrong when he piloted the craft to land on the surface of the moon.
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