The art of writing computer code and manipulating computer
hardware is always considered to be traditionally dominated by males. It is
ironic that women, who form half of the society, don’t even get half of the
recognition they deserve. However, in this article that perception will be
proved wrong. First on our list of Top female programmer’s is;
Augusta Ada King-Noel
Countess of Lovelace was an English
mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's
proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. She was the
first to recognize that the computing machine had applications beyond pure
calculation, and created the first algorithm intended to be carried out by such
a machine. She predicted the computer’s ability to make music and manipulate
symbols. While Babbage is known as the “father of the computer”, Ada Lovelace
is honored as the “first computer programmer” with her lengthy address.
Ada met Babbage at a party in 1833 when she was seventeen
and was entranced when Babbage demonstrated the small working section of the
Engine to her. She intermitted her mathematical studies for marriage and
motherhood but resumed when domestic duties allowed. In 1843 she published a
translation from the French of an article on the Analytical Engine by an
Italian engineer, Luigi Menabrea, to which Ada added extensive notes of her
own. The Notes included the first published description of a stepwise sequence
of operations for solving certain mathematical problems and Ada is often
referred to as 'the first programmer'. The collaboration with Babbage was close
and biographers debate the extent and originality of Ada's contribution. - http://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/adalovelace/
Grace Hopper (1906-1992) – Invented the Compiler and led to COBOL
Born in New York City in 1906, Grace Hopper joined the U.S.
Navy during World War II and was assigned to program the Mark I computer. She
continued to work in computing after the war, leading the team that created the
first computer language compiler, which led to the popular COBOL language. She
resumed active naval service at the age of 60, becoming a rear admiral before
retiring in 1986. After the war, Hopper remained with the Navy as a reserve
officer. As a research fellow at Harvard, she worked with the Mark II and Mark
III computers. She was at Harvard when a moth was found to have shorted out the
Mark II, and is sometimes given credit for the invention of the term
"computer bug"—though she didn't actually author the term, she did
help popularize it.
Wanting to continue to work with computers, Hopper moved
into private industry in 1949, first with the Eckert-Mauchly Computer
Corporation, then with Remington Rand, where she oversaw programming for the
UNIVAC computer. In 1952, her team created the first compiler for computer
languages (a compiler renders worded instructions into code that can be read by
computers). This compiler was a precursor for the Common Business Oriented
Language, or COBOL, a widely adapted language that would be used around the
world. Though she did not invent COBOL, Hopper encouraged its adaptation.
In addition to her programming accomplishments, Hopper's
legacy includes encouraging young people to learn how to program. The Grace
Hopper Celebration of Women In Computing Conference is a technical conference
that encourages women to become part of the world of computing, while the
Association for Computing Machinery offers a Grace Murray Hopper Award.
Additionally, on her birthday in 2013, Hopper was remembered with a
"Google Doodle."
In 2016, Hopper was posthumously honored with the
Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama.
Jean Jennings
Bartik (1924 – 2011) – Original Programmer for ENIAC
Jean
Jennings Bartik was one of the original programmers for the first electronic
general-purpose computers (ENIAC). She studied mathematics in school then began
work at the University of Pennsylvania, first manually calculating ballistics
trajectories, then using ENIAC to do so. Jean became a lead programmer on a
tiny team of women working on the first all-electronic digital computer for the
army.
After
her work on ENIAC, Bartik went on to work on BINAC and UNIVAC, and spent time
at a variety of technical companies as a writer, manager, engineer and
programmer. She spent her later years as a real estate agent and died in 2011
from congestive heart failure complications.Margaret Hamilton (born 1936) – Wrote code for Apollo by hand
Hamilton, a 24-year-old with an undergrad degree in
mathematics, had gotten a job as a programmer at MIT, and the plan was for her
to support her husband through his three-year stint at Harvard Law. After that,
it would be her turn—she wanted a graduate degree in math.
But the Apollo space program came along. And Hamilton stayed
in the lab to lead an epic feat of engineering that would help change the
future of what was humanly—and digitally—possible.
As a working mother in the 1960s, Hamilton was unusual; but
as a spaceship programmer, Hamilton was positively radical. Hamilton would
bring her daughter Lauren by the lab on weekends and evenings. While 4-year-old
Lauren slept on the floor of the office overlooking the Charles River, her
mother programmed away, creating routines that would ultimately be added to the
Apollo’s command module computer.
“People used to say to me, ‘How can you leave your daughter?
How can you do this?’” Hamilton remembers. But she loved the arcane novelty of
her job. She liked the camaraderie—the after-work drinks at the MIT faculty
club; the geek jokes, like saying she was “going to branch left minus” around
the hallway. Outsiders didn’t have a clue. But at the lab, she says, “I was one
of the guys.”
Then, as now, “the guys” dominated tech and engineering.
Like female coders in today’s diversity-challenged tech industry, Hamilton was
an outlier. It might surprise today’s software makers that one of the founding
fathers of their boys’ club was, in fact, a mother—and that should give them
pause as they consider why the gender inequality of the Mad Men era persists to
this day.
Also thanks to Hamilton and the work she led, notions of
what humanity could do, and be, changed not just beyond the stratosphere but
also here on the ground. Software engineering, a concept Hamilton pioneered,
has found its way from the moon landing to nearly every human endeavor. By the
1970s, Hamilton had moved on from NASA and the Apollo program. She went on to
found and lead multiple software companies. Today her company, Hamilton
Technologies, is just a few blocks away from MIT, where her career began—a hub
of the code revolution that’s still looking toward the stars.
Barbara Liskov
(born 1939) – Invented 2 Programming Languages
(Born November 7, 1939 as
Barbara Jane Huberman) is an American computer scientist who is an Institute
Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Ford Professor of
Engineering in its School of Engineering's electrical engineering and computer
science department. She was one of the first women to be granted a doctorate in
computer science in the United States and is a Turing award winner who
developed the Liskov substitution principle.
Liskov has led many significant projects, including the
Venus operating system, a small, low-cost and interactive timesharing system;
the design and implementation of CLU; Argus, the first high-level language to
support implementation of distributed programs and to demonstrate the technique
of promise pipelining; and Thor, an object-oriented database system. With
Jeannette Wing, she developed a particular definition of subtyping, commonly
known as the Liskov substitution principle. She leads the Programming
Methodology Group at MIT, with a current research focus in Byzantine fault
tolerance and distributed computing
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