The Mother of Software Engineering

How can it be that I have been a software engineer for 20+ years and have not heard the name Margaret H. Hamilton? It's scandalous.

Margaret who? Great question. I am glad you asked.

Margaret Hamilton is the mother of Software Engineering.

Margaret Hamilton is cool. Old school cool. NASA in the 60's cool. First man on the moon cool. She is the kind of cool that isn't appreciated at the time, but rather one crafted by time and perspective.

Margaret is a treasure. And many of us don't even know her name.

So what did Margaret do?

For starters Margaret is credited with coining the term "software engineering". You know, the reason many of us hit keys on a keyboard all day and make a pretty good living doing so. But that is small potatoes compared to what else she did.

If you are like me you were in diapers during the Apollo 11 mission that landed the first man on the moon. Margaret? Yeah, she was writing code and leading the software team to make that happen. She did it at a time when the term "software engineering" didn't exist. She did it at a time when her colleagues were mostly, if not all, men. She did it while being a Mom. 

The first person to land on the moon may have been a man, but he did so using software written by a woman. Insert the proverbial, and probably outdated, Behind every great man ... cliche here.

While Neil was uttering "One small step for man...", Margaret should've Gronk'd her keyboard (if she had one) and gone all Braveheart by proclaiming, "One small step for woman ...". Maybe she did. She is that cool.

What is she doing now? Only running her own technology company in Cambridge, MA (where all the "smaht" people live) called Hamilton Technologies (htius.com). Even her company website is cool. Who needs Flash when static text will do. Her product? Software that writes software. Mic dropped ...

On the rare chance Margaret sees this post I would like to say, "Thanks Mom!" on behalf of software engineers everywhere.

So the next time you're at your desk having lunch thinking you're cool because you use chop sticks google Margaret Hamilton. You'll be glad you did.

Back to banging out some code ...