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What you've outlined makes it sound like men were the first software architects, but women were still programmers. Translating a software design into code is d

What you've outlined makes it sound like men were the first software architects, but women were still programmers. Translating a software design into code is definitely still programming, don't you think?

yummyfajitas 17y ago
Writing flow charts is not software architecture, it's just programming in a high level language. Software architecture, as the title is now used, simply did not exist in that era. Programs were not complex enough for it to be relevant. The systems engineers were doing the job we now associate with programming: turning business/scientific problems into flow charts/other high level representations of algorithms which generate the solution. The programmers were merely doing the work of LabVIEW ( http://www.ni.com/labview/whatsnew/ http://www.ni.com/labview/whatsnew/ ) by hand. Do you consider LabVIEW to be a programmer?
- dgabriel 17y ago
  LabView is a code generation tool that replaces the work a programmer would have to do. Rational Rose has a tool that spits out Java code, but that doesn't mean there are no Java programmers. I'm not sure why you're trying to downplay the work these women did, but it's clear from the ENIAC histories and their biographies that they were far, far more than transcriptionists or "compilers". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Holberton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Holberton
  - yummyfajitas 17y ago
    I'm not trying to downplay it, I'm merely pointing out that "programmer" refers to a different job today than it did historically. See also this piece, which goes into more detail about the actual work done by programmers: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~nathanen/files/cbi-gender.pdf http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~nathanen/files/cbi-gender.pdf
    - dgabriel 17y ago
      After reading that, it still sounds like they were actually coding, and they also served as systems administrators. edit: sorry - admins, not engineers

yummyfajitas 17y ago

Writing flow charts is not software architecture, it's just programming in a high level language. Software architecture, as the title is now used, simply did not exist in that era. Programs were not complex enough for it to be relevant. The systems engineers were doing the job we now associate with programming: turning business/scientific problems into flow charts/other high level representations of algorithms which generate the solution. The programmers were merely doing the work of LabVIEW ( http://www.ni.com/labview/whatsnew/ http://www.ni.com/labview/whatsnew/ ) by hand. Do you consider LabVIEW to be a programmer?

dgabriel 17y ago
LabView is a code generation tool that replaces the work a programmer would have to do. Rational Rose has a tool that spits out Java code, but that doesn't mean there are no Java programmers. I'm not sure why you're trying to downplay the work these women did, but it's clear from the ENIAC histories and their biographies that they were far, far more than transcriptionists or "compilers". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Holberton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Holberton
- yummyfajitas 17y ago
  I'm not trying to downplay it, I'm merely pointing out that "programmer" refers to a different job today than it did historically. See also this piece, which goes into more detail about the actual work done by programmers: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~nathanen/files/cbi-gender.pdf http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~nathanen/files/cbi-gender.pdf
  - dgabriel 17y ago
    After reading that, it still sounds like they were actually coding, and they also served as systems administrators. edit: sorry - admins, not engineers