She wrote all this code by hand to take humanity to the Moon
Margaret Hamilton, NASA's lead developer for Apollo program, stands next to all the code she wrote by hand that took humanity to the moon in 1969
1342
Comments147View original on lemmy.world
She didn’t write all of that, she had a team of programmers working under her
She was the first software engineer who was hired for the project and did write a good chunk of the code. She was more than someone who simply delegates and leads. Hell, she is the one who coined the term software engineer. She played a hell of a role in the history of software development. Let's not try to diminish that.
He isn't trying to diminish but these misleading exaggerated titles are pretty annoying and confusing at times.
I agree that the title is misleading but simply saying she was the one directing the team without also mentioning that she absolutely did write a chunk of that is also misleading and diminishes her contribution to the code.
Similar to what happened with the first image of a black hole. The whole thing was somehow attributed to one lady in the press. Turns out, it was a whole team of scientists working together to achieve that.
Et al of the world, assemble!
The problem isn't that the whole thing was attributed to one lady. The problem was how quickly people were to discredit her and minimize her role, something that was guaranteed to never be a problem if she were a man.
Funny how the credibility of male scientists and engineers are never questioned in posts like these, and yet becomes a hot topic when that person happens to be a woman.
I haven't seen a comparable image for a guy or a girl prior to this one presenting a person as having written code when they actually just led the team that wrote the code.
I do recall Al Gore claiming that he "took the initiative in creating the Internet" when he was responsible for obtaining funding for Internet infrastructure and getting ripped pretty hard for that.
Yeah people come on this is like attributing all the code for open ai to the PM
No it isn't, unless you think PMs are programmers. She was the lead developer and created the foundation for the software, then drove the project home. She wasn't a non-technical person writing requirements for engineers to work on.
But from that to the title statement of "she wrote ALL the code" is a long stretch, which is where my analogy is coming from
Also the code is much shorter than that, the pile in this picture is just everything they had laying around at that time, so maybe different revisions or just copies. The code they used is like 1-2 of those in length.
To be fair though, i don’t think she took sole credit nor did the blackhole researcher. Others in the media, etc. did that
If I remember correctly, the black hole researcher wasn't the lead.
I wouldn't have minded working under her
Yeah, i bet she was a pretty good boss. Good mission, too.
I'd like to work under her.
Really like her white and gold dress
Oh no, not again
Beautifully, perfectly evil... Well, played, you devious swine!
Here we go
This is why I only look at raw bitmap values.
Camera raw data and white balance values or GTFO.
Yanny
This is a black-and-white photo which someone colorized. The real colors could be ANYTHING.
Came here looking for this. Thank you.
Man, I thought when we left Reddit shit was going to change?
First off, SHE didn't write all the code, she led a team (And probably wrote a decent chunk herself). It wasn't by hand it was on computers, no one writes computer code by hand, that's just blatantly a myth, even punch cards were normally done BY the computer, not "by hand".
Also something I've questioned before is if that's really "The source code" and not maybe 11 copies (There's 11 binders there) Though most reports from reputable sources say that's "Listings". AKA that's the logging, not the code itself. The code itself may be printed out but would be kept on Punch cards (Again printed by the computer, not by hand). And the final form was actually a rope. (no really)
The thing is the story of Margaret Hamilton (And in fact most programmers of the time) is incredible enough. But when you blatantly lie like this it actually diminishes her accomplishment because it's obviously false and people will tear it down or disbelieve it because it's blatant misinformation.
This is why I left Next Fucking Level, because it became misinformation and karma whoring. It became about the "Story" rather than the actual person/skill/talent/figure. But on Reddit the reason was because people wanted Karma. Shouldn't we have left the basement tier BS and lying behind as well?
I don't know how old you are but when I was first introduced to programming in the early 80s all "source code" (Mostly basic and thus interpreted where program is the source code) was referred to as "listings" (this was when the main source of games were monthly magazines where you typed in a listing from a magazine and saved it to tape E.G.. The "Program listings" (as the Smithsonian calls them) seem to be print outs of the programs for verification purposes.
The process of entering was indeed handwritten, on specially printed sheets of paper that was then handed to a punchcard operator to create the cards (again according to the Smithsonian), But the stack of paper is clearly not those sheets as it is form-feed printer paper.
It is completely accurate that Margaret Hamilton lead a team, so while there are inaccuracies I'd say this not as much of a lie as just a combination of confused concepts,
So I'm referring a number of articles that talk about it as "Listings" and "Log files". They come from relatively good sources (Smithsonian magazine) who are interviewing curators of of the Smithsonian who claim to have "Those listings" in the picture. They do however refer to it as "program listings" and then just "Listings" in the article. So who knows.
That being said I don't agree with your saying "Well she led a team"... yeah she led a team, that's like Elon Musk saying "I made a Tesla" when really he hired hundreds/thousands of people who made the Tesla. This is someone making an our right lie, there is no reason for it not to say "She and her team" or something along those lines.
So am I. I read that article as well and "Program listings" is IMHO definitive, a "program listing" is a list of the instructions in the program it is a term I used to use myself, it's just fallen out of fashion. In addition this article shows form feed paper with a snippet of the actual code, one line per instruction.
Also, it's nothing like Musk, maybe you don't work in the industry but a "Team lead" is a programmer, just with additional organisational responsibilities. If you read the rest of the article I linked there are those that consider her the first professional "Software Engineer", and mistaking a team lead for the only member of the team is a common mistake, especially when they were the first programmer hired for the Apollo mission, It's a mistake, I wouldn't classify it as a lie.
I don't know where you get "listing" = "logging". It's a term (apparently archaic, today I learnt I'm old) for the text of a program.
Going off a few sources, but the easiest is this which includes the curator of the collection which those listening are claimed to be under, and shows some of them.
The listings are the source code in printable form, what are you talking about? https://stackoverflow.com/questions/59678641/what-is-meant-by-listings-for-your-program
Stop spreading false information about things you know nothing about.
So random guy on Stack overflow, or the Smithsonian Magazine, interviewing the guy who handles those listings... but hey, maybe he's never looked at them because he's probably not a good curator.
Even your link mentions "All files". Ever think logs could be included in those files? Even Wikipedia mentions that "data" in a human readable form can be called a "listing".
So maybe chill out next time instead of jumping on your high horse to prove someone wrong. Words can mean more than one thing, and I'd say my source is probably a little better than Stack overflow.
Sorry I am just a programmer and have no idea what I am talking about, obviously. /s
Yeah the title is clickbait
Including comments on the code with expressions like "Crank the silly thing arround", "see if he's lying", "off to see the wizard" and a sub-routine called "burnbaby". More here: https://www.sciencealert.com/the-code-that-took-astronauts-to-the-moon-is-now-on-github
She's definitely a legend.
That is cool. There is really wild stuff in here, like in the landing guidance equations
If I was an Astronaut, I think I'd reconsider going up if someone told me there was even one "I Hope" in the math.
"Are you sure about that Margaret?"
"Who the fuck knows, Buzz, I'm doing my fucking best, okay?!"
Did you know that programs for the Apollo guidance computer were woven, by hand, in to Core Rope Memory modules?
Here's a really cool demonstration of using Core Rope to make a drum synthesizer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zytjONYkU94
This is wild. Already sent to a friend who's deep on old-school analog synths. Thanks!
i thought you were making some weird joke.... turns out to be the most incredibly interesting thing i have read maybe ever.
awesome!
TIL
This comment is completely underrated!
Twitter employee getting ready for a code review with Elon
Imagine having to look for the missing semicolon in there.
It's probably written in Fortran66 or similar. No semicolons, but so many line numbers...
It's written in assembly. You can check out the source code on GitHub.
For people unfamiliar with assembly, it's one step up from raw 1s and 0s. Just vaguely human readable abbreviations for given sets of 1s and 0s. There are no built in loops or if statements, you have to build all that shit yourself from scratch every time you want to use one. And there's exactly one built in variable you can use called the register
Admittedly, the last time I touched real Assembly was 20 years ago.
There's a couple Zachtronics games, TIS-100 and Shenzhen I/O, both that use a limited form of Assembly, that are probably filling in the gaps in my memory.
I soooo wish IBM had gone with the Motorola 68000 family instead of the Intel 8086 family of chips for the PC. It had a far, far nicer instruction set.
Oh that's so hardcore
edit: looking at the git repo, it looks like it was a team of seven, and she was the lead. So it isn't all her code. Still super impressive :)
The other big notable thing for assembly is that it isn't portable. Assembly is very different for every processor architecture, unlike something like C where you may have to make some adjustments between an x86 vs ARM proc, in assembly you're basically rewriting it from scratch
Also, this is an obscure assembly variant specifically for the computers in the Apollo mission. Not sure about the specifications on that, maybe there is a handbook, but I doubt it.
Rewriting the code to x86 or anything seems improbable since you'd pretty much have to guess what the instructions are actually doing.
Lol Fortran; it was written in Apollo Guidance Computer assembly; I frankly wouldn't be surprised if she knew Mel Kaye
The story of Mel, for the uninitiated
Assembly. Like most embedded systems (at least up until we had enough power to waste on higher languages)
And clickbait arrives on lemmy
This is why I wasn't subscribed to any of the default subreddits. Guess I'll need to do the same here.
This is the video of when she received the Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama: youtube.com/watch?v=X1PNp_YggAA
In this ceremony he gives the award to Margaret Hamilton and also Grace Hopper. Both well deserved!
She wrote code without stack overflow for her job, and the code worked as intended. That alone is worthy of respect.
I don't want to diminish her awesome in any way at all because she's a superstar.
However, while she didn't have stack overflow she did have direct access to the people that built the hardware and the interpreter.
I think the "by hand" part would be the biggest disadvantage - you can't just re-run something n times while inserting console.log('here') at different places to figure out what's going on.
The code is also remarkably far simpler than people expected. It's mostly pointing, timing and adjusting. User interaction was minimal and they weren't using unknown or hard to memorize apis from multiple different people and groups (All of which would be decided on long before this point. NASA doesn't fuck around with documentation. Look up their practices).
The feat of getting to the moon is incredible, the feat only 8 people wrote the code is amazing, the fact the computer would be unusable in the modern world and was outdated by the 80s really shows.
But the actual code isn't that complex (mostly because it couldn't be, and shouldn't be) and was written in assembly.
But it's still damn awesome, I wish they focused on that instead of the misinformation in the title.
Wouldn't it have worked better if she wrote it into the computer? 🤔
The title is a bit misleading, this is a printout of the code that she indeed wrote into the computer first.
She also had a team of engineers who I'm sure deserve at least some of the credit. This title is bunk.
If it was printed later or written on punch cards... how much code are we actually looking at?
Each punch card/ has 80 characters.
So way less than you'd imagine, but this is also late 60s machine code (even lower than assembly), and it was mathematically proven to be correct.
Still assembly. Nasa's Apollo Guidance Computer Assembly specifically. A punch card is to translate the code into 1s and 0s that, each line of which, constitutes an instruction that is fed to a punch card reader. However, that is not what this was made for. This code didn't went on to a punch card, it went to an instruction loom. The system's read-only memory consisted of a weave of ferromagnetic rings and copper wire that is called rope core memory. As in, Nasa paid people to carefully physically weave by hand the individual 1s and 0s.
Afaik, the loom thing was just for the computer on the Apollo itself, but I could be wrong.
Each punch card/ has 80 characters.
So way less than you'd imagine, but this is also late 60s machine code (even lower than assembly), and it was mathematically proven to be correct.
I know you're likely joking, but for those who don't know: back then, code was written onto and stored in paper punch cards.
Google did a cool tribute in 2019: g.co/Margaretbymoonlight
The making of is amazing too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oprumUQddk
These people should have millions of followers instead we follow kardashians. No wonder the world is going to end😥
She did computer stuff..... She's smart enough to not fuck with anything that has followers.
Also she's 80-something now
could still probably demo musk (and his mom)
Hate to tell you, but like most people who do computer stuff still use social media. I mean the linux kernel has it's own lemmy instance.
it does ?
I know of a
MastodonAkkoma instance but not Lemmy afaikhttps://social.kernel.org/
Amazing. Punch cards are before my time but did she have to plot out the code before creating punch cards? I'm wondering about the " by hand " part of it.
I was a CS major in late 70s and used punch cards for Fortran programs. I’m guessing “by hand” meant writing the code with pencil/pen on paper and then typing up the punch cards for each line of code.
As @[email protected] noted, this was woven into core rope memory, not punch cards.
Oh that sounds neat. I'll go look that up as i haven't heard of core rope.
Alright that was cool. Thanks for the link. I barely understood how it works but sort of got the concept. How far we have come. Wow.
There was a keyboard involved. They don't use a hole puncher lol.
I was just grasping at straws. Kinda wanted to know more as it sounds like a good story.
None of you better call yourselves nerds, THIS is a nerd.
She's amazing.
The "Women of NASA" Lego set includes a display of a minifig Margaret Hamilton based on this photo.
Also worth remembering: The Apollo guidance computer had less compute power than a USB charger. That thing sent us to the moon. https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a30916315/usb-c-charger-apollo-11-computer/
Money and pride. Back then America had something to prove, money was no object. Now it's all about how much it's going to cost.
You don't think we landed on the moon?...
We don't have a villainous empire like the soviets to beat there to prove we're better on the world stage. There was a lot of hand work and individual skill/knowledge that designed the rocket nozzles and those people either wrote it in notebooks or didn't write it at all so it was lost. That's what they mean when they say we lost the technology. Try asking your great grandparents for specific details about the career they had 50 years ago and see how far you get.
Not a whole lot of things cost a billion dollars to attempt again. We could put it all together again eventually but the amount of R&D needed to return to where we were just hasn't been worth the benefit. We have countless unmanned craft all over because getting scientific data doesn't require a dude to be there anymore.
Start with "Why should we go back?"
The fact is there's really not a reason. We've been there, done that. The cost to send people to the moon is astronomical (lol) but the value to civilization is minimal at this point.
Honestly, NASA spending more time exploring Mars has been more beneficial.. Just wish we found something more up there, but hopefully in time.
I wish we could go to the moon again too, I just don't see a purpose, and that's kind of why we did that, and stopped.
You're kind of missing the point. It costs us about 4 BILLION dollars to send a person to the moon. What do you expect to find on the moon worth that? we know what the moon looks like, if we want imagery, we can send satellites for a fraction of that price, and danger. We have rocks, we have materials from the moon that are still working on.
Do you think there's a lost city? A secret civilization? A massive moon base the Nazis put there?
It's a hunk of DEAD rock. And the idea of "lunar mining" and all sorts of sci-fi stuff probably is unfeasible at those prices.
Such a legend! Every time I see this post I'm stunned by the impact she made
I got a box to display right in css today. So I'm basically the same
Sensible shoes.
Just like my ex. Her hand also sent all humanity to the Moon.
Undisputed GOAT.
I'm eternally envious of the man who got to marry her
You’d see her a couple times a month haha. People with ambition like hers stay very very busy.
I’m eternally grateful for her contributions to humanity. That’s for sure.
Lol your not wrong, probably why every smart girl that I'm actually into doesn't want anything more then casual sex.
Feelsbadman
I ran into that problem when my ex and I split up.
Trust me, it isn’t a bad thing. If I had settled down with any of those girls I would have been miserable.
I didn’t know just how much another personality in your life can uplift and elevate yours or drag yours down to rot until I got with the one I’m with now.
So many things that I hated about myself disappeared when my ex and I went our separate ways. Her life improved immensely and she was doing everything she couldn’t motivate herself to do when she was with me. We didn’t hate each other, we just weren’t right for each other at all and it took way too long to see that. Hell I didn’t see it until after the fact.
It isn’t worth it if it isn’t the right one. You spend years that you can’t get back and that’s easy to do.
When the right one comes along she’ll want a whole lot more than casual sex, so don’t settle and just enjoy the casual sex in the meantime.
You’ll miss the old adventures one day, but not enough to ever go back to them WHEN you find the right one.
She’s out there.
She might not be the type who works for NASA. Margaret Hamilton’s husband was a NASA engineer.
Thank you man, you are right. I've just got to stay on my path, live my life and enjoy it. Me focusing on doing what I love will bring me more life satisfaction than chasing a relationship ever will.
Thank you.
You’re right, and when the right person comes along you’ll have your world in order because you had the time to get it there.
You’re welcome.
Isn't this Jack Black's mom?
That was Judith Love Cohen.
#burn baby burn
Love what they snuck in as comments too
Jesus. I think all the code I've written in the last decade could fit in two of those binders lol
That's kind of a good thing.
It becomes way easier to accomplish things when we can encapsulate what came before.
Absolute deity
Margaret is a legend.
Why didn't she write in on a computer?
Because she was writing it for a computer. It then had to be hand-woven into core rope memory for the computer to read.
And the horde of people they hired to weave the copper mesh should themselves be hailed as heroes. Some enthusiasts actually got a guidance unit back up after more than 50 years and it was perfectly capable of still preforming it's intended mission. As long as they give it the inputs it needs the machines left work about as well as they did originally.
A few historic nuggets: computers back in the day were people making computations by hand, eg, give that equation to the computer in cubicle 4, she's got time on her hands. And yes it would probably be a She because tons of women became computers during world war ii. Bletchley Park famously employed tons of women to help break Nazi/Japanese codes for example. Many Computers then went on to become accountants after the war because the skills carry over nicely, and the accounting industry today is still about 50% women largely in part to that legacy. (Although a much smaller % of women go on to become partners, but that's another story.) The first computers were specifically called digital computers to avoid being confused with people computers.
I used to collect mechanical calculators.
You couldn't calculate a re-entry vector with one but you could add a long list of numbers quickly and efficiently.
They were called comptometers.
The ads for them are fascinating:
https://www.jaapsch.net/mechcalc/comptometer_ads.htm
This one in particular... https://www.jaapsch.net/mechcalc/images/comptometer/ads/big/1910-07-02%20The%20Argus%20%28Melbourne%29.jpg
Pay seven pounds for some training and a guaranteed job as a skilled comptometer operator.
Man, just looked into that. Kilobytes per cubic foot feels like such a weird unit these days.
AGC was the name, it's assembly. So just a step up above bare machine code, and specific to the Apollo Guidance Computer.
The code is on GitHub. The launch program is named BURN_BABY_BURN--MASTER_IGNITION_ROUTINE.agc
Predominantly in assembly language. There is a GiHub repository of part of the code here
The code:
...im sorry but what does a historical anecdote about Czechoslovakia have to do with this post?
I think they want to put this into historical context, like when people point to the fact, that the University of Oxford was founded more than 400 years before the Aztec Empire.
Smurfette, merged wth Brainy Smurf.
The fact that this has been on the front page for a day tells me that lemmy is just a shittier version of reddit.
Woooooow... So good to finally learn it after seeing it reaching Reddit's main page some dozen or two times already. Wooooooooooooooow....
No need for that. Some people miss things, new people join, etc. It's way easier and simpler for you to just move on than it is to whine on every personal repost you've seen.
I was on Reddit for 10+ years and never saw this.
I also have never seen this, was on Reddit for 10 years as well
Complaining about reposting from an entirely different platform.
What are you even doing here?
Same stuff everyone else does. Checking whether it's a plausible Reddit alternative.
You? Seeking friends? Fame? Fortune?
It's not, head on back to Reddit where you belong.
I'll be the judge of it, thank you very much, Mr. "I'm as new 'round these parts as you are".
Was on Reddit for a very long time and never saw this. I'm glad it's here.
So? Go back there and enjoy the stream of reposts? No rocket physics here, chief...
Fuck off jerry. No one will ever love you
Sir, please step out of the gutter and cover yourself. You're old, naked and screaming profanities in the middle of a night. And it's raining.
But I like the rain and nudity.