<story><title>Profile of Margaret Hamilton, programmer of the Apollo software</title><url>http://www.wired.com/2015/10/margaret-hamilton-nasa-apollo/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>nickpsecurity</author><text>Many programmers talk about Ada Lovelace, who was certainly awesome, but should be talking about Margaret Hamilton. Before anyone heard of Dijkstra&amp;#x27;s work, Hamilton was straight up inventing everything from real, software engineering to properly handling fault-tolerance and human interfaces. Here&amp;#x27;s what she was doing (see Apollo Beginnings rather than USL):&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;htius.com&amp;#x2F;Articles&amp;#x2F;r12ham.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;htius.com&amp;#x2F;Articles&amp;#x2F;r12ham.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Her Wikipedia page gives her due credit and shows just how much she and her team pulled off:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Margaret_Hamilton_%28scientist%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Margaret_Hamilton_%28scientist...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also note the size of that printout of her program. Try to think about how many people make one like that which doesn&amp;#x27;t fail in the field even when parts of its environment and hardware are failing. Also while using low-level code with little to no tool support on 60&amp;#x27;s era, embedded hardware rather than a JVM, etc. Margaret Hamilton was the first in the field of high-assurance programming that I&amp;#x27;ve seen. A lot of firsts.&lt;p&gt;So, I give her credit where possible. The industry should even more as she wasn&amp;#x27;t a theoretical programmer like Ada Lovelace: she engineered actual software, co-invented many of the best practices for it, deployed them successfully in production, and then made a tool that automated much of that from requirement specs to correct code.&lt;p&gt;While programmers and industry ignore her, at least NASA gave her positive mention as the founder of software engineering and ultra-reliable software along with the biggest check they ever cut to an innovator:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nasa.gov&amp;#x2F;home&amp;#x2F;hqnews&amp;#x2F;2003&amp;#x2F;sep&amp;#x2F;HQ_03281_Hamilton_Honor.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nasa.gov&amp;#x2F;home&amp;#x2F;hqnews&amp;#x2F;2003&amp;#x2F;sep&amp;#x2F;HQ_03281_Hamilton_...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Where would our systems and tools be if more attention was put into her methods, even just principles, than informal use of C? ;)</text></comment>
<story><title>Profile of Margaret Hamilton, programmer of the Apollo software</title><url>http://www.wired.com/2015/10/margaret-hamilton-nasa-apollo/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>lumberjack</author><text>Only tangentially related but it seems to me that if you want to work on cool software that does something novel and exciting it seems like it&amp;#x27;s better to graduate with a degree in math or physics.&lt;p&gt;Also interesting if you visit her company&amp;#x27;s website: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.htius.com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.htius.com&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a view into a software industry that is virtually never reported on in the news, at least not on HN. The client list is impressive. It&amp;#x27;s not really clear what they actually do? Seems to me like they maintain a developing environment and sell support contracts for it?</text></comment>