
Grace Hopper and Margaret Hamilton Awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom - bootload
https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/17/grace-hopper-and-margaret-hamilton-awarded-presidential-medal-of-freedom-for-computing-advances/
======
rdtsc
I like this video of Admiral Grace Hopper talking about processing speeds. She
illustrates it with her famous "nanoseconds" \- pieces of wire that a
electricity would travel in a nanosecond.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEpsKnWZrJ8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEpsKnWZrJ8)

What a great role model, for programmers, for women, but also for anyone
working in a bureaucratic system.

One of her famous quotes is "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get
permission". It became a classic. Python's programming paradigm, for example,
which prefers exceptions instead of condition checks is named that.

"Computer bugs" phrase also seem to originate with her.

Also based on Wikipedia she also was the oldest serving officer in the United
States Navy.

~~~
phamilton
> "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission"

In Swedish this even rhymes. (förlåtelse == forgiveness, tillåtelse ==
permission). It's a wonderful phrase.

~~~
joss82
In French too: pardon/permission

Very nice indeed.

------
robotresearcher
Hamilton had possibly the most exciting and demanding job ever in computer
science and engineering. It must have been so much fun. About as full stack as
it gets.

Bletchley Park and the Manhattan project were great computing projects too,
but Apollo is my favorite since they had such a tiny mass and power budget,
real time constraints and the runtime consequences were so personal. Damn that
was a great project.

Hopper was a giant of course. But Hamilton is less well known and I've been a
fan since my youth.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
I actually get choked up watching the appropriate episode of "Moon Machines",
the one that covers the MIT team. That project was an 0xCF. But it worked.

I was 9 when the moon lander landed, but I was still old enough to feel the
Sputnik emphasis in tech. I grew up with that program. It was the era of EE
programs with 50% washout rates.

We would go to Huntsville, Houston or Cape Kennedy on vacation. It was just
like that then.

I don't know how anybody could have survived the first real test of a system
like that being on national TV. That's the stuff of nervous breakdowns.

Ad then by '74 we killed it because nobody knew any economics back then. Or
maybe because they did.

I want a Mad Men style show about the Apollo program. Oh, why not? Why not?

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Ad then by '74 we killed it because nobody knew any economics back then. Or
> maybe because they did._

Probably the latter. By the time Apollo astronauts landed on the Moon, von
Braun and friends were sketching plans for a Mars mission, and pushing for
development of nuclear propulsion. According to Wikipedia[0], US Congress saw
that and decided to kill the space race, out of fear it will expand beyond the
Moon, and consume resources needed elsewhere (like for the arms race).

[0] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA#In_the_space_program](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA#In_the_space_program)

~~~
vanderZwan
> (like for the arms race)

Well, that turned out to be more of a _perceived_ than _actual_ need.

------
tanderson92
It's hard to look at the list of Medal of Freedom awardees and conclude this
list is strictly meritocratic (these two individuals are exceptions who
absolutely deserve it). There were people nominated, e.g. Jack Bogle, who have
made a much more significant impact on Americans' lives than people like
Robert De Niro, Tom Hanks, and Frank Gehry. Even Lorne Michaels won one!

But the guy who gave up potentially billions of dollars to help the average
American investor get a fair shake hasn't had enough of an impact...

~~~
colmvp
Obama said: "From scientists, philanthropists, and public servants to
activists, athletes, and artists, these 21 individuals have helped push
America forward, inspiring millions of people around the world along the way."

I'm glad that the award values contributions from creatives whose works and
organizations have influenced entire industries and the masses.

~~~
Waterluvian
Artists are basically the support class of society. They don't producr
anything directly, but the producers all benefit from, and kind of need them.

~~~
ternaryoperator
Jasper Johns once expressed this sentiment this way: "Artists are the elite of
the servant class."

------
yaakov34
It should be pointed out, just for balance, that Margaret Hamilton was
appointed to be the head of MIT's Apollo software team long after the software
was frozen; she was still a junior programmer on the project when the command
module software was frozen in the 1966-67 timeframe (she became the head of
the command module software development after that), and she became the head
of the overall software program sometime in 1969 after the software was
complete, and key people (such as Dick Battin) moved on to other things.
Obviously it is still a major accomplishment to be responsible for release
engineering and integration for something this mission critical, but in the
media, I often see references to Margaret Hamilton somehow having "written" or
"designed" or "lead the team" which made the Apollo software, which is just
false.

~~~
gemma
What are you balancing by pointing out that she was a junior programmer who
relied on the real key people? Are there incorrect references to her
achievements in this comment thread or in the article?

~~~
yaakov34
Yes, the article states that "Apollo 11 ran her software", which I consider to
be a false statement; and many other articles explicitly give her credit for
designing or writing the Apollo software. I think writers make that mistake in
good faith, since they don't know the timeline of development. And it's not so
much that she "relied on the real key people" \- she was not a major figure of
the development phase of the Apollo software, and certainly did not lead it;
Richard Battin and Dan Lickly led the development, and the latter handed the
leadership of the software effort over to her as he left the project - but
this was after the development itself was over.

I am not at all trying to minimize her accomplishments, which included being
responsible for the software work, such as release, integration, and debugging
during most of the actual flights. However, a lot of people, basically just
because of lack of knowledge, give her credit for leading the development or
writing of the software as well, which is incorrect.

~~~
gemma
NASA[0][3] and MIT[1][2] both agree that Apollo 11 ran her software (where
"her software" means "software she and her team wrote", not "software she
wrote entirely on her own"). The TechCrunch article echoes them, and I haven't
seen anything in the article or this thread suggesting she did everything
single-handedly.

[0]
[https://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2003/sep/HQ_03281_Hamilton_...](https://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2003/sep/HQ_03281_Hamilton_Honor.html)

[1] [https://news.mit.edu/2016/scene-at-mit-margaret-hamilton-
apo...](https://news.mit.edu/2016/scene-at-mit-margaret-hamilton-apollo-
code-0817)

[2] [https://news.mit.edu/2009/apollo-
vign-0717](https://news.mit.edu/2009/apollo-vign-0717)

[3]
[https://www.nasa.gov/50th/50th_magazine/scientists.html](https://www.nasa.gov/50th/50th_magazine/scientists.html)

~~~
yaakov34
Well, if you wanted to find examples of misinformation that needs to be
corrected, you've certainly succeeded, since several of these press releases
make the mistaken syllogism "Margaret Hamilton led the software team" & "the
software team developed the software" -> "Margaret Hamilton led the
development of the software". But this is false because of the timing -
Hamilton did not lead the team _while_ the team was developing the software.

And the statement from the last link:

"At the start of the Apollo program, the onboard flight software needed to
land on the moon didn’t exist. Computer science wasn’t in any college
curriculum. NASA turned to mathematician Margaret Hamilton, of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to pioneer and direct the effort."

... is just jaw-dropping in how false it is. That simply didn't happen. NASA
couldn't have possibly been aware of Margaret Hamilton at the time they
decided to rely on MIT for Apollo guidance; she didn't join the project until
several years later, and in a small role.

~~~
gemma
Cool. I'm going to go with NASA, MIT, Wired[0], and the Charles Stark Draper
Laboratory History of Apollo On-Board Guidance, Navigation, and Control[1] as
my sources of information on this one.

[0] [https://www.wired.com/2015/10/margaret-hamilton-nasa-
apollo/](https://www.wired.com/2015/10/margaret-hamilton-nasa-apollo/)

[1]
[http://klabs.org/history/history_docs/mit_docs/1711.pdf](http://klabs.org/history/history_docs/mit_docs/1711.pdf)

~~~
DashRattlesnake
This argument probably should be settled by primary documents like
contemporary Apollo org charts and development milestone reports rather than
modern press releases.

~~~
yaakov34
I can do one better; the source code itself, which has been scanned
([https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11](https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11)),
lists Margaret Hamilton as "COLOSSUS programming leader" \- COLOSSUS being the
command module software - as of March 28, 1969, reporting to Dan Lickly -
Director of Mission Program Development, i.e. in charge of software
development at this point, and Richard Battin - Director of Mission
Development, who was basically the technical lead of the AGC project at that
point. There are also some other senior scientists on the approver list, but
those two are the senior software leaders. So Margaret Hamilton was not in
charge of the software development team as of March 1969 (she was still in
charge of the COLOSSUS module), and in fact not until Dan Lickly left the
project, which I think happened around the Apollo 11 flight.

It should be needless to point out that the AGC software was complete and
frozen at this point, although bug fixes and some minor features made it in.

This doesn't stop misinformation from appearing all over the place, e.g.
Wikipedia says "Details of these programs [LUMINARY and COLOSSUS] were
implemented by a team under the direction of Margaret Hamilton", but this is
false, as we've seen - LUMINARY, the moon landing software, was frozen while
Hamilton was still on the COLOSSUS project. Also, if you root around the
history of COLOSSUS itself - which I did at some point - you'll see that
Margaret Hamilton became its programming leader in 1968, after COLOSSUS was
complete.

~~~
nickpsecurity
The source of that claim she and her team were behind both programs' code was
this paper:

[http://klabs.org/history/history_docs/mit_docs/1711.pdf](http://klabs.org/history/history_docs/mit_docs/1711.pdf)

On p20 of PDF reader, it says this:

"Names notable here are Dr James Miller for the first lunar program SUNBURST,
Dr Frederic Martin for the Command Module program COLOSSUS, and George Cherry
for the Lunar Module program LUMINARY. These last two were the programs used
for the lunar landing missions... [next paragraph] Much of the detailed code
of these programs was written by a team of specialists led by Margaret
Hamilton. The task assignments to these individuals included, in addition to
writing the code, the testing to certify the programming element met
requirements."

Goes on to say they had to be error free and were. That was what the NASA
press releases and other writings on her team said was essentially their
specialty. Consistent so far with claims about her _if_ that author got the
right information from the right people. It's hard to say without talking to
him about where those claims came from. I do note he's writing on behalf of
the laboratory named after one of them (Draper) citing that guy's work along
with other solid-looking references. Edit to add that I just noticed his name
in the Apollo code you submitted. He apparently was on the team, too. Now I
consider his write-up authorative.

------
wallace_f
I would have guessed Grace Hopper already given every applicable award
possible for her contributions by now. Late is better than never though.

I guess great scientists going under-appreciated is nothing new, however.

------
sotojuan
I've noticed that Grace Hopper and sometimes Ada Lovelace are the only women
in computing people ever talk about. I'm glad I got to know about Margaret
Hamilton, but this is the first time I've heard of her at all.

There's so many awards, events, and groups named after Hopper or Lovelace that
you'd think they're the only two women in computing :/

~~~
bandrami
Radia Perlman deserves more credit than she gets. She invented the Spanning
Tree Protocol at DEC. Also Elizabeth Rather, co-inventor of the Forth
language.

~~~
todd8
Barbara Liskov:

\-- ACM Turing Award, "For contributions to practical and theoretical
foundations of programming language and system design, especially related to
data abstraction, fault tolerance, and distributed computing"

\-- IEEE John von Neumann Award, “For fundamental contributions to programming
languages, programming methodology, and distributed systems.”

------
dkarapetyan
Back when real programmers where women. I don't think it is nostalgia to say
that we need more programmers like these women. They make an excellent case
for a more diverse technology workforce.

~~~
venomsnake
We will take anyone as long as their IQ and capabilities are off the scale (as
the two ladies in question) probably won't result in the kind of diversity
that the diversity people would appreciate. They (diversity advocates) have
been fighting against the SV meritocracy in the last couple of years.

~~~
lucio
Question: Did u knew that there will be downvotes, but post-it anyway? Or you
didn't expect the downvotes? I'm asking because I'm curious about the impact
of the "politically correct" culture and its effects.

~~~
sangnoir
Why should you worry about imaginary Internet points? If your opinion can
stand in it's own no matter how controversial, post it.

Being civil isn't being "politically incorrect" online or offline. If you say
something that might get you punched in the face (literally or
metaphorically), don't be surprised when you do get punched in the face.

~~~
lucio
somebody else punching you in the face does not means your comment is uncivil.
I'm guessing, but two centuries ago you could be punched in the face for
opposing slavery. You cannot measure and argument by how offended others get
when they contemplate it.

~~~
sangnoir
> somebody else punching you in the face does not means your comment is
> uncivil

I never made this argument - you seem to have skipped my first paragraph
entirely. I'm all for sharing controversial opinions that _have merit_ and in
a manner that is not dickish.

------
bandrami
Grace Murray Hopper Memorial Park is right next to my apartment complex (we're
across I-395 from the Pentagon and apparently she lived here when she retired
because they kept calling her back in for consults). Somebody left some
flowers there yesterday; not sure if it was because of this or something
unrelated, but I thought it was nice.

------
chrisseaton
I was at a conference recently when someone said that Hamilton invented multi
threading. Is that true? Does anyone know if that's what the prioritisation of
critical systems this article talks about was?

~~~
nickpsecurity
I think she co-invented it. Several people independently invented some
important stuff around the same time. Bob Barton in late 50's for all kinds of
things, Hamilton in Apollo, and Dijkstra. They were figuring it out around the
same time. Hamilton outdid Dijkstra by doing that, asynchronous execution,
real-time, fault detection, recovery system, and putting it into production.

------
markrages
The last Code Less Code is appropriate here:
[http://thecodelesscode.com/case/234](http://thecodelesscode.com/case/234)

------
nickpsecurity
Bout time! They both deserve it as their contributions definitelt impacted
America in huge ways. :)

------
linker3000
My development and test server rack contains:

Babbage

Turing

Wilkes

Grace

Ada

Margaret

Not sure how I ended up with male surnames and female first names, but there
you go.

~~~
mcv
> Not sure how I ended up with male surnames and female first names, but there
> you go.

A common but subtle sort of sexism in our society, I suspect. I noticed a lot
of people talking about Hillary and Trump during the election. Whenever I saw
that, I tried to counter with Donald and Clinton, but despite that, I fear I
wrote about Hillary and Trump more often than about Donald and Clinton.

------
sabujp
Richard Garwin? What an amazing character, went from helping to develop
weapons to speaking for non-proliferation.

------
cfhff3
> Grace Hopper and Margaret Hamilton Awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom

> Grace Hopper and Margaret Hamilton Awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom

