Yet another Hacker News

In Levy's "Hackers" there is a story about late night hacking on the TX-0 that fouled-up some weather simulation code an academic user of the computer was running. After hearing this oral history I believe Margaret was the programmer and the code was for Prof. Edward Lorenz.

bitwize 1 hour ago | parent

Allison Parrish talks about this in some depth. Turns out toxic masculinity was an integral part of the old-school "hacker" culture from the jump.

http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/programming-forgetting...

MarkusWandel 1 hour ago | parent

I had to go to an archive site to actually read it; the link says 403 forbidden. I don't really see this as toxic masculinity just because the officially sanctioned user was female. Just an honest mistake - they did test their mod, just not enough for all possible use cases of the computer.

MarkusWandel 1 hour ago | parent

https://archive.ph/IAFai for what it's worth.

kragen 1 hour ago | parent

That page is 403, but I was able to get it at https://web.archive.org/web/20161220114912/http://opentransc...

I don't think it justifies your claim; there's nothing in the historical sources about masculinity, just irresponsibility. It's probably true that women were not allowed to be as irresponsible as the guys who screwed up in this case, but that's not because of those guys' understanding of masculinity. It's because the sexist culture of the time afforded fewer opportunities to women, in particular, cutting them less slack for misbehavior. With a less sexist culture, we could have seen Margaret Hamilton's computational fluid dynamics project stymied by irresponsible monkeying by women instead of irresponsible monkeying by men. With a more sexist culture, we would have seen Margaret Hamilton unable to get her grievances redressed because she was a woman, and the midnight wiring club would have continued interfering with officially sanctioned users until one of them was a man.

customguy 2 hours ago | parent

According to Wikiquote, she coined the phrase "software engineering": https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton

> In the early days of this project, software was treated like an adopted child and not taken as seriously as other engineering disciplines, such as hardware engineering, and was thought of as art and magic, not science. I have always believed that art and science were involved in its creation, but at the time most people thought otherwise. Knowing this, I fought to legitimize software so that both software engineering and those who built it would receive the respect they deserved, so I began using the term “software engineering” to differentiate it from hardware and other forms of engineering. When I first started using these words, they were considered funny. It was a running joke for a long time. They liked to make fun of my radical ideas. Software eventually earned the same respect as any other discipline.

found another retelling: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/13/margaret-...

> During the early days of Apollo, software was not taken as seriously as other engineering disciplines. Though in fact we had a complex system of systems, we weren’t getting credit for what was a legitimate field. It was out of desperation I came up with the term, to say: “Hey, we’re engineering too.” It was an ongoing joke for a long time. Then one day in a meeting, one of the most respected hardware gurus explained to everyone that he agreed with me. The process of building software should also be considered an engineering discipline, just like with hardware. It was a memorable moment.

bitwize 1 hour ago | parent

I've talked a lot about PRIDE, Milt Bryce's information-systems methodology that was perhaps the first commercially available, rigorous methodology for developing software and the first serious attempt to transform information systems development in the commercial sector from an arcane art into a proven, repeatable science. It really has few forbears.

But... Margaret Hamilton was one of those forbears. She got the ideas out there; PRIDE just commercialized them and made them palatable to business IT shops.

markus_zhang 1 hour ago | parent

This definitely asks for a black ribbon on top of HN.

What a loss!

omnicognate 1 hour ago | parent

Good Lord yes

tarellel 1 hour ago | parent

Yes please, This is absolutely necessary

mrexroad 1 hour ago | parent

100%

Tangent: Her LEGO minifig next to the Apollo code is one of my, and my daughter’s, favorites.

abetusk 1 hour ago | parent

https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/women-of-nasa-21312

artisinal 11 minutes ago | parent

Direct image link for those that don't want to have to click multiple modals:

https://www.lego.com/cdn/cs/set/assets/blt75c3f3f6b4cb0e7c/2...

muunbo 1 hour ago | parent

Margaret Hamilton actually coined the term "software engineer" IIRC. Rest in peace

catskull 37 minutes ago | parent

She did! A few years ago I actually tracked down the source of that, which was an interview done for an obscure textbook and republished it on my blog if you are interested in learning more: https://catskull.net/interview-with-margaret-h-hamilton.html

srcreigh 11 minutes ago | parent

This is incredible, thanks a lot for making it available for us.

penskymaterial 17 minutes ago | parent

Little did she know, the term would be co-opted by guys changing the color of a button on a web site.

diskzero 1 hour ago | parent

I was able to meet her, and others who worked at the MIT Instrumentation/Draper Lab, as a start-up I was with received funding from a VC firm founded by other Draper Lab members from the Apollo era. I was totally out of my league talking with them. This was thirty years ago and I remember her talking about formalized control systems. It was fascinating but went totally over my head. My startup was a fairly silly multimedia CD-ROM company and I was just happy to be in the room.

jamiek88 1 hour ago | parent

The word legend is used too much. She absolutely qualifies.

verdverm 31 minutes ago | parent

congrats on being the 50M HN item, probably not legendary though

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50000000

metadaemon 53 minutes ago | parent

Weird, I was thinking about her monumental achievement just a few hours ago.

QuantumAtom 45 minutes ago | parent

May her memory be a blessing

throw_m239339 36 minutes ago | parent

RIP, what a fantastic person she was.

schaefer 26 minutes ago | parent

Is any of the original Apollo code available to read?

dudewhocodes 24 minutes ago | parent

https://github.com/chrislgarry/apollo-11

schaefer 21 minutes ago | parent

thank you!

xtajv 18 minutes ago | parent

Not a direct answer to your question per se, but I would wholeheartedly recommend Frank O'Brien's "The Apollo Guidance Computer: Architecture and Operation" (ISBN 978-1-4419-0876-6).

It reads like a lead engineer walking a new hire through the codebase.

dzonga 25 minutes ago | parent

her pic with the stack of printed code will always be iconic.

rest well pioneer.

jshier 10 minutes ago | parent

I don't usually correct this, but in her iconic photo she's standing next to printed output of an Apollo simulator run, not the actual source code for the AGC or lunar module. IIRC she was running the simulation side of the lab that produced the LEM guidance software at the time of Apollo 11, and became director of the lab in '71.

dzonga 4 minutes ago | parent

thanks for the correction. learnt something new.

Kim_Bruning 18 minutes ago | parent

timmg's video explaining how the AGC worked is one of the better ones I've seen, if you actually want to understand in detail.