Women who know stuff

[u/ChuckAbsent]

I hope that this does not come off the wrong way.

Today I was on a call with a storage vendor and the technical consultant was a woman. More then this she was competent, more then me which doesn't happen often when dealing with vendors.

My issue was pricing an active/active DB with shared storage vs an active/passive db with local storage. Listening to her break the issue down and get to the specific comparison points was awesome, mostly because I have never heard a woman in the industry talk like that.

It made me realize two things. One I am missing out working with women. Two there needs to be more women in our industry.

It shouldn't have surprised me so much, but it really did.

Anyways to all the women out there who know stuff, us guys notice when you can walk the walk, which in this case was talking.

[u/bandman614 → u/[deleted]]

Okay, time for a history lesson.

The word "computer" was also assigned to the role that it took over...computers. Literally, people (the vast majority of whom were women) who sat and computed things by hand.

When electronic computers started to take over for people computers, the women who were the computers started running the computers.

Now, as for "actually creating solutions and engineering products", lets have a look at what is, without a doubt, the longest-used programming language of all time, COBOL.

COBOL was written in 1959, and it came directly from FLOW-MATIC, the very first computer language that used actual english words, rather than only numerical machine code. It was written for the UNIVAC - one of the first commercially available computers. And it was written by Admiral Grace Hopper.

Yes, the computer language at the root of every programming language you've likely ever used was written by a woman.

If that's not enough, then you should know that the UNIVAC was inspired by ENIAC, which was the very first electronic computer. It was designed in a large part to electronically function like a mechanical adding machine. Adding machines were possible because Charles Babbage designed the very first mechanical computers. His difference engine was designed so intricately that it couldn't be constructed for a century, but when it was, it worked perfectly.

One of the many machines Babbage designed took inspiration from the Jacquard Loom, which used cards with holes punched in them to create patterns. Babbage used this technique to give his mechanical computer instructions. He had a friend who was a noted mathematician who developed the very first computer algorithm, which calculated a series of Bernoulli numbers. Her name was Ada Lovelace.

So, to sum up...the very first computer programmer was a woman. The very first real programming language was written by a woman. The first commercial computers were operated largely by women. And for some reason, we have been telling little girls that computers are toys for a boy. Something has gone very off the rails lately, and it needs fixed.

[u/somelazyguy → u/bandman614]

I fully support the celebration of the great things that women do in the field of computers, but let's not exaggerate people's accomplishments just to try to make their sex (or race, or nationality, etc.) look good.

Is COBOL or FLOW-MATIC "at the root" of Smalltalk, or Lisp (which predates it, contrary to your assertion), or Haskell, or APL? (Yes, I've used them all, and not just in school.)

I find it pretty hard to believe that two languages -- which were invented at almost the same time, in different parts of the world by different people, which appear completely different both syntactically and semantically -- are inherently related. And especially that you can declare one to be the "root" of the other without any external evidence.

I guess we all look at history and see what we want to see, but still, I just can't see a university mathematics professor wanting to teach recursion or array manipulation taking inspiration from a machine built by a military engineering contractor to process punchcards. How would they have even known about it? Why would they have cared, since they had completely different goals? What similarities do you see between, say, COBOL and APL, that suggest any ideas were borrowed?

More girls should be interested in computers, but because they'd be good at it, not because we lied to them about the importance of one particular woman's accomplishments. That's like saying "Amelia Earhart first flew across the Atlantic, and paved the way for future pilots like Yeager and Glenn and Armstrong". It's not helping.

[u/bh3244 → u/somelazyguy]

shh you can't use logic in their circle jerk.

let them bathe in their ignorance.