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Remember the dawn of computing? There were no women! And no men. How did men do it without role models? I don't know. How did they discover America without

Remember the dawn of computing? There were no women! And no men. How did men do it without role models? I don't know. How did they discover America without role models? Or climb Everest? How do they do anything when everyone says it can't be done? Its a mystery. Especially if you pay no attention to biology.

krapp 14y ago
But at the dawn of computing it was all women. It was considered womens' work, akin to secretarial duties.
- GhotiFish 14y ago
  From what I've read, none of them were programming, the job was to transcribe programs for the computers. That's what they were advertising as a secretarial duty. That doesn't suggest attitudes have suddenly done this strange 180 in the past few decades. The job was just replaced by compilers.
  - KMinshew 14y ago
    You may want to revisit your history then - a woman wrote what is widely considered, by both men and women, to be the first computer program, an extremely complicated algorithm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace). During WWII, women were "recruited to do ballistics calculations and program computers. Around 1943-1945, these women "computers" used a Differential Analyzer in the basement of the Moore School of Electrical Engineering to speed up their calculations." In 1949, Grace Hopper was the first programmer of the Harvard Mark I, known as the "Mother of COBOL", and developed the first ever compiler for an electronic computer, known as A-0. In the late 1950s, orbital calculations for the United States' Explorer 1 satellite were solved by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's all-female "computers", many of whom were recruited out of high school. While attitudes may not have done a 180, your inference that early women computer scientists were "not programming" and only transcribing is factually incorrect.

krapp 14y ago

But at the dawn of computing it was all women. It was considered womens' work, akin to secretarial duties.

GhotiFish 14y ago
From what I've read, none of them were programming, the job was to transcribe programs for the computers. That's what they were advertising as a secretarial duty. That doesn't suggest attitudes have suddenly done this strange 180 in the past few decades. The job was just replaced by compilers.
- KMinshew 14y ago
  You may want to revisit your history then - a woman wrote what is widely considered, by both men and women, to be the first computer program, an extremely complicated algorithm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace). During WWII, women were "recruited to do ballistics calculations and program computers. Around 1943-1945, these women "computers" used a Differential Analyzer in the basement of the Moore School of Electrical Engineering to speed up their calculations." In 1949, Grace Hopper was the first programmer of the Harvard Mark I, known as the "Mother of COBOL", and developed the first ever compiler for an electronic computer, known as A-0. In the late 1950s, orbital calculations for the United States' Explorer 1 satellite were solved by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's all-female "computers", many of whom were recruited out of high school. While attitudes may not have done a 180, your inference that early women computer scientists were "not programming" and only transcribing is factually incorrect.