Women are important in the history of coding. Recently, fewer are starting down this path. Besides teaching at Front Range Community College, my goal is to help more women become better coders. This does not decrease the opportunities for others to do well, with the development of artificial intelligence, the need for better coders and software developers is so important. To understand how important women in coding, it is important to go through some history.
Ada Lovelace
Charles Babbage created a mechanical computer, considered the first “modern” computer. But without someone to program the instrument, it would be a “boat anchor.” Ada Lovelace described the basics of programming design. A lot of her work was lost until Alan Turing started using Ada’s material in his research and designs. You might enjoy an interesting story about how they worked together: The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage – Wikipedia. See the following video to learn more about her life:
BBC created a video about the life of Ada Lovelace and the vision she had for computing. See (6) BBC DOCUMENTARY : Calculating Ada – The Countess of Computing 2015 – YouTube.
Joan Clarke
Some people claim that Joan Clarke was just a mathematician. Her work with Alan Turing helped break Germany’s Enigma Code. Joan Clarke, woman who cracked Enigma cyphers with Alan Turing – BBC News. Alan Turing depending on her expertise for a lot of his developments.
Admiral Grace Hopper
Responsible for the invention of Cobol and many of the aspects of modern compilers. See Grace Hopper – Computer Coder, Education & Achievements for a good overvierw of her career.
Hidden Figures
Much of the computer work for NASA started as women doing hand calculations for calculating best launch and re-entry trajectories. The first IBM computer was delivered, the head of this group ensured that the women were trained to be programmers and continued to do the calculations doing the work on the new NASA computers.
Margaret Hamilton
The Saturn V programming was exceptional. It flew men to the moon safely without any control of the people on the command module. When the Saturn V started orbiting the moon, the pilots were given control. The lunar lander also had control so the pilot could choose a safe place to land. The development of these computers was broken into two teams, hardware and software. Margaret Hamilton led the software development team. An excellent TED talk on her work explains the quality of the work.
Modern Opportunities
There are so many opportunities for good engineers. See some stories of modern men and women developing software together. Watch CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap (2015) Online for Free | The Roku Channel | Roku