Margaret H. Hamilton, a profoundly influential computer scientist best known for leading the software engineering team at MIT’s Instrumentation Lab during NASA’s Apollo program, died at age 90.
Further details, her specific team had 100 software engineers on it, and the broader apollo computer system team that she helped manage had 400 software engineers.
That stack is literally the culmination of hundreds of developers’ work over a period of 8 years. She absolutely should get credit for herding all of those cats and being the one making all the big decisions, but it’s insulting to the hundreds of engineers, many of whom were also women, to claim she did that all herself.
Further details, her specific team had 100 software engineers on it, and the broader apollo computer system team that she helped manage had 400 software engineers.
That stack is literally the culmination of hundreds of developers’ work over a period of 8 years. She absolutely should get credit for herding all of those cats and being the one making all the big decisions, but it’s insulting to the hundreds of engineers, many of whom were also women, to claim she did that all herself.