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Wait, she not only created the first word processor but also the first airline reservation system? I agree with the comment from the article, why isn't she famo

by mark-r 8y ago

Wait, she not only created the first word processor but also the first airline reservation system? I agree with the comment from the article, why isn't she famous?

h0l0cube 8y ago
I thought that maybe it wasn't voted so highly because it had already been posted, and it had, but it didn't rate highly then, either. I think we all have a pretty good idea why she's isn't famous, and it has nothing to do with a lack of merit.
- setr 8y ago
  If you're trying to imply it about her being a woman, the article itself isn't helping your point: “Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing” (2016), “she remains a relatively unknown and underappreciated figure, with nowhere near the stature of other women who played significant roles in computer science and the computer industry and have since been recognized by historians.” That is, even amongst women of significance, she never achieved any real recognition.
  - h0l0cube 8y ago
    It doesn't explain why here, today, as more informed people, her achievements didn't seem to resonate with the HN community.
    - setr 8y ago
      Gender isn't really sufficiently explaining anything, really. At least not in this case. The more precise question including gender is: Why does HN (and programmers in general) care about Ada but not Evelyn? At least one possible, and better, answer might be: she didn't actually create things programmers cared about (Word vs Vim? Vim is by far the fan-favorite tool, for people who care about such things), and the only people who would care about who created what software, outside of historians.. is (hobbyist/hacker) programmers. And airplane reservation systems.. not only is that not something you'd expect the HN to like, it's something you could expect them to hate dealing with (and more particularly, writing). Ada on the other hand computed in general, and we already know that programmers like computing. The interest in one producer versus another seems far better explained by, well, the subject of their production; regardless of its notability.
makomk 8y ago
She created the first computerized stand-alone word processor, but the tech inside was less important than what it could do for businesses - and from what I can tell it wasn't significantly more capable than IBM's older electromechanical MT/ST system, which also had the advantage of having IBM's name and financial resources behind it. It was also made obsolete a few years later by display-based interactive systems that resemble what we think of as word processing today.

by mark-r 8y ago

Wait, she not only created the first word processor but also the first airline reservation system? I agree with the comment from the article, why isn't she famous?

h0l0cube 8y ago

I thought that maybe it wasn't voted so highly because it had already been posted, and it had, but it didn't rate highly then, either. I think we all have a pretty good idea why she's isn't famous, and it has nothing to do with a lack of merit.

setr 8y ago
If you're trying to imply it about her being a woman, the article itself isn't helping your point: “Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing” (2016), “she remains a relatively unknown and underappreciated figure, with nowhere near the stature of other women who played significant roles in computer science and the computer industry and have since been recognized by historians.” That is, even amongst women of significance, she never achieved any real recognition.
- h0l0cube 8y ago
  It doesn't explain why here, today, as more informed people, her achievements didn't seem to resonate with the HN community.
  - setr 8y ago
    Gender isn't really sufficiently explaining anything, really. At least not in this case. The more precise question including gender is: Why does HN (and programmers in general) care about Ada but not Evelyn? At least one possible, and better, answer might be: she didn't actually create things programmers cared about (Word vs Vim? Vim is by far the fan-favorite tool, for people who care about such things), and the only people who would care about who created what software, outside of historians.. is (hobbyist/hacker) programmers. And airplane reservation systems.. not only is that not something you'd expect the HN to like, it's something you could expect them to hate dealing with (and more particularly, writing). Ada on the other hand computed in general, and we already know that programmers like computing. The interest in one producer versus another seems far better explained by, well, the subject of their production; regardless of its notability.

makomk 8y ago

She created the first computerized stand-alone word processor, but the tech inside was less important than what it could do for businesses - and from what I can tell it wasn't significantly more capable than IBM's older electromechanical MT/ST system, which also had the advantage of having IBM's name and financial resources behind it. It was also made obsolete a few years later by display-based interactive systems that resemble what we think of as word processing today.