Talk:Margaret Hamilton (software engineer)

Photo

There should be a free photo of her getting the Presidential award (published by the US Government). Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 17:42, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Is that portrait really from 1995 ? It doesn't look like she'd possibly be 63 years old, she looks more like 20 on the picture.128.178.126.68 (talk) 12:44, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Dubious - "Coined the term"

Despite all the discussion, and mentions giving Anthony Oettinger or Barry Boehm credit, the section still starts with claiming she coined the term Software Engineering. I'm going to put 'Dubious' back on there rather than 'disputed' to reflect that the claim itself is dubious. The alternative seemed to be inserting a prefae 'The term Software Engineering, variously attributed to either Oettinger or Boehm, has also been according to some sources originated instead by her'. Since I think it's just not prominent enough in her life and works to have even the current coverage, I'm inclined to use the shorter form instead. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 23:27, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

I'm going to repeat the essence of what I said above, but I'll try rewording it, since I don't think I spelled it out clearly enough.

Yes, it's clearly dubious, as in subject to doubt. There are well-sourced claims by others to coining the term. based on that alone I think that any source that simply states she coined the term, with no discussion of possible contrary claims, cannot be considered a reliable source for that claim. based on that alone, I think it should be removed. We can't keep an unaddressed "dubious" tag in there forever.

And again, whether Hamilton's notability does not stem from a claim that she coined a particular term. She's an outstanding pioneer in the fields of computer programming, management and manned spaceflight. There's no loss to omitting a dubious claim that she may have also contributed some terminology. It's quite the opposite; retaining a dubious claim weakens the article and distracts from her very important clear contributions. TJRC (talk) 23:43, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

I agree with the "dubious". Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 03:13, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

An IP user undid the tag and restored a lot of her self-speaking on this topic; I see no remarks here but will revert with note to TALK . I have done searching and ... this just isn't well supported. I see her make the claim on utube "Margaret Hamilton, Computer Scientist & Systems Engineer | MAKERS Profile" and another or same IP user suggest it is syncronicity and independent invention -- but simply put the public use of the term is distinctly traced to the NATO conference, and the wide spread is traced to works of Boehm. She lacks any visible public notice during the period of the 1960s and lacks any prominent works developing the meaning. She's got a reputable career and historical innovations in fault handling, interrupt processes, as recently noted by the White House -- but this topic simply is not visible with her until the 21st century. Markbassett (talk) 01:13, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

On the other hand "made up the term" isn't much of an improvement over "came up with the term" in dubiosity. TJRC (talk) 01:25, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

I appologize for the extremely long edit, but I did it to try to clear all of this up. The following Hamilton quote from Pearson is what is being referred to as “Dubious”.

Hamilton details how she came up with the term "software engineering" in the early days of Apollo:

... During the early days of Apollo, software was treated like a stepchild; it was not taken as seriously as other engineering disciplines.

... Having this kind of responsibility resulted in our creating a “field”, since there was no school at the time to learn “software engineering". This necessitated our creating methods, standards, rules and tools for developing the flight software.

...“What is the difference", I asked,"between what they are doing and what we are doing?” Knowing this, and the lack of understanding by many of what it took to create real world software based systems and the part our software played within these systems, I wanted to give our software “legitimacy” so that it (and those building it) would be given its due respect; and, as a result I began to call what we were doing “software engineering” to distinguish it from other kinds of engineering; yet, treat each type of engineering as part of the overall systems engineering process.

When I first came up with the term, no one had heard of it before, at least in our world. It was an ongoing joke for a long time. They liked to kid me about my radical ideas. It was a memorable day when one of the most respected hardware gurus explained to everyone in a meeting that he agreed with me that the process of building software should also be considered an engineering discipline, just like with hardware. Not because of his acceptance of the new "term" per se, but because we had earned his and the acceptance of the others in the room as being in an engineering field in its own right.

Relationship to the term “software engineering”

There have been many references to Hamilton's coining, making up, coming up with the term “software engineering”. These include references from NASA, The Computer History Museum, various Googled links, the Pearson Fluency-7 interview from which the above quotes were taken; and by direct video by Hamilton herself in the MAKERS reference. And, the most recent reference: ICSE 40th International Conference on Software Engineering, Gothenburg, Sweden. In 2018 ICSE will celebrate its 40th anniversary, and 50 years of Software engineering – 50 years of tremendously successful promotion of research, education and practices in software engineering. 50 years since the NATO conference.

Hamilton is a Plenary Keynote for “50 years of SE”: https://www.icse2018.org/info/keynotes In her CV, Hamilton states:

“To give their software “legitimacy”, so it (and those building it) would be given due respect; she made up the term “software engineering” to establish it as a form of engineering in its own right.”

My take on Hamilton's relationship with the term “software engineering” was simply to provide her statements documented in the Pearson book as her looking back upon what prompted her to “come up” with the term “software engineering” during Apollo. These quotes taken together tell the story of when (early Apollo), where (in her world, in the trenches developing Apollo flight software), and why (to give their methods and techniques legitimacy, just like “hardware engineering”).

These quotes by her in no way “contest” or “conflict” what others have done regarding their relationship to the term “software engineering”. She states: “When I first came up with the term, no one had heard of it before, at least in our world.” Here, she is restricting her relationship to the term to be in her world. Note, that back then Hamilton and her team were hunkered down getting man to the moon, not writing articles nor going to conferences. The quote from Pearson makes clear that there is no “instead by her” as is being brought up by Markbassed: “has also been according to some sources originated instead by her'.” There is no reason to believe Hamilton is assigning herself as being the first to come up with the term or in any way excluding others who may have also come up with the term. There are no “contrary claims” that I am aware of: that is, that someone else in the Apollo trenches came up with the term “software engineering”; in fact they were laughing at her for doing so.

Coming up with the term “software engineering” is one of the most prominent/recent “notable” things Hamilton has become known for: its all over the Web (including reputable sites) and numerous children's books have been written about this. Again the quote I have provided qualifies the context (discussed in the previous paragraph) in which her notability for this term should be considered: in her own words.

By attaching “dubious” to statements she has made regarding her relationship with the term “software engineering” is stating that she is being in some way disingenuous. And, the “her self-speaking on this topic” seems some what derogatory in tone. I don't think this is editor Markbassett's intent; but this is how it comes off. The above quote from Pearson is my attempt at clearing up the dubious issues brought up by Markbasset regarding earlier statements that did not include a clear context for Hamilton's coming up with the term “software engineering”. Hamilton should be afforded one of the many points of view as long as it is neutral, which I believe the above quote is.

I'm not at all sure where this should go but "the software community" as I knew it and worked with it through the 1970s and 1980s credited the term "software engineering" to Prof. Friedrich L. Bauer at the 1968 NATO Conference he had convened for the purpose of making software development less of an art and more of an engineering discipline. The Wikipedia article about Bauer concurs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_L._Bauer#Definition_of_software_engineering

It would be interesting to know what Barry Boehm thinks about the origin of the term, as he was heavily involved in defense software during that time period. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:646:9301:9CAD:ECB5:200:95B1:F3CC (talk) 04:47, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Hamilton's Involvement in Software Engineering

Hamilton states from her perspective what she did while responsible (as Director of the Software Engineering Division at MIT’s Charles Stark Draper Laboratory) for managing a team of ~400 software developers so that they were able work together using techniques that today we in the industry would label as “software engineering” techniques. From the quote above we are discussing:

“there was no school at the time to learn “software engineering". This necessitated our creating methods, standards, rules and tools for developing the flight software.”

She was given NASA's Space Act Award for treating software development as an engineering discipline. See: https://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11Hamilton.html

Software engineering principles embodied into USL

Just because one has “Googled” doesn't mean that Hamilton has not been constantly active in the pursuit of “software engineering” goals. She has embodied “software engineering” lesson's learned from Apollo (see IEEE Computer article listed below) which were principles put in place manually during the Apollo missions and then evolved into a language, the Universal Systems Language (USL). Her company, Hamilton Technologies, developed both systems and software techniques and a life-cycle software engineering development tool in support of this language. These experiences have been documented in numerous conferences and government reports on how her USL language and its systems and software life cycle tool support has developed over the past 35 years. Her formalization of the concept of control embodied as modular control structures encapsulates aspects of “software engineering” principles directly into her USL language (a constructive approach for building systems and software).

Software Engineering Articles by Hamilton

1976: Hamilton, Margaret and Zeldin, Saydean, “Higher Order Software — A Methodology for Defining Software.”, IEEE Trans. on Software Engineering Vol. SE–2, Nr.1 (March 1976), 9–32. This is Hamilton's paper that formally codifies the foundation of systems and software engineering principles in terms of a set of axioms for a “logic of control”. These axioms are an attempt by Hamilton to provide the foundation upon which a language could be constructed to embed aspects of some of the software engineering principles she and her team had to deal with on Apollo.

1979: Hamilton, M. and Zeldin, S. “The Relationship Between Design and Verification.”, Journal of Systems and Software, Vol.1, Nr.1 (1979), 29–56. This paper describes the AXES language which supports the “logic of control” foundations (1976 above). Hamilton's axioms of control from 1976 provides the basis for 3 primitive control structures which enforce the concepts of modularity, information hiding, abstract layering of systems and asynchronous behavior inherently built into the syntax of the USL language.

1980: Harel, David, “And/Or Programs: A New Approach to Structured Programming”, ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, Vol. 2, No. `, January 1989, Pages 1-17. Harel basically credits Hamilton's foundation paper as the basis from which he develops his And/Or programming language while at IBM. Note, Harel worked for Hamilton while attending MIT. Harel however, missed the “dynamics” of Hamilton's foundation (which is distributed and a fully asynchronous formulation). Harel also missed the fact that elements of a USL specification are totally ordered (not partially ordered) because each element has a unique priority. Subsequently Harel went on to develop “Statecharts”, which has a lot of the elements of his And/Or programming language, although using a different syntax.

1979: Randall W. Jensen, Charles C. Tonies, Software Engineering, 1979, pages: 94, 181, 191, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. (refers to Hamilton's work)

1986: Robert N. Charette, Software Engineering Environments: concepts and Technology, 1986, pages: 194, 195, Intertext Publications Inc., McGraw-Hill Company, 1221 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY, 10020 (refers to Hamilton's work)

1992: National Test Bed: Software Engineering Tools Experiment – Final Report, Volume IV, Hamilton Technologies Inc. (HTI) 001 Results, 1992. This is a final DoD report on Hamilton's 001Toolsuite; a software engineering tool for the full life-cycle management of the development of systems and software. As a note, after a small amount of bootstrap code, HTI developers developed the 001Toolsuite with itself.

2002: Robert H. Bishop, The MechatronicsHandbook, Chapter 49, 2002, CRC Press, Boca Raton, London, New York, Washington, D.C. In this chapter, Hamilton describes, among other things, the “Nature of Software Engineering”.

2008 M. Hamilton and W. R. Hackler, “Universal Systems Language: Lessons Learned from Apollo”, IEEE Computer, Dec. 2008 Hamilton goes over lessons learned from Apollo and provides a high level view of her Universal Systems Language in its current evolution.

This list is just a sample (a short list) of Hamilton's involvement in her continuing efforts to evolve “systems engineering” by embodying elements of “software engineering” directly into her USL. For her further concepts of “software engineering” as applied via the automated tool set supporting the “Universal Systems Language”, see references on the “Universal Systems Language” Wikipedia page.

Google search resulted in the following links:

https://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11Hamilton.html NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe stated: "The concepts she and her team created became the building blocks for modern 'software engineering.' ...”

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/margaret-hamilton-apollo-software-engineer-awarded-presidential-medal-of-freedom Which states: “Hamilton led the team that developed the building blocks of software engineering – a term that she coined herself.”

https://www.wired.com/2015/10/margaret-hamilton-nasa-apollo/

http://www.computerhistory.org/fellowawards/hall/margaret-hamilton/ Which states: “During this time at MIT, she wanted to give their software “legitimacy”, just like with other engineering disciplines, so that it (and those building it) would be given its due respect; and, as a result she made up the term “software engineering” to distinguish it from other kinds of engineering.”

https://www.pearson.com/us/higher-education/program/Snyder-Fluency-With-Information-Technology-7th-Edition/PGM336784.html From an interview published in this book Hamilton states: "When I first came up with the term, no one had heard of it before, at least in our world. It was an ongoing joke for a long time.” … etc.

https://www.vox.com/2015/5/30/8689481/margaret-hamilton-apollo-software

https://www.nasa.gov/50th/50th_magazine/scientists.html Rayl states: “With her colleagues, she developed the building blocks for modern “software engineering,” a term Hamilton coined. What later became the foundations for her Universal Systems Language (001AXES) and Development Before the Fact (DBTF) formal systems theory, allowed the team to create what she called ultra-reliable software for the moon trip.

I believe this statement by Rayl is essentially correct by does not provide any of the context in which Hamilton came up the term, in Hamilton's words. Without the context given by Hamilton in “Fluency-With-Information-Technology-7th-Edition”, it comes off as an unfounded statement. The version of the text we are discussing that has been labeled as “Dubious” was intended to remove this unfounded statement and replace it with one that came directly from an interview with Hamilton which is found in “Fluency-With-Information-Technology-7th-Edition”.

http://www.draper.com/news/margaret-hamilton-apollo-software-engineer-named-fellow-computer-history-museum Restatement of information gathered from the Computer History Museum Fellow Award Bio.

https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/251093main_The_NASA_Heritage_Of_Creativity.pdf

http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/margaret-hamilton-the-woman-who-put-the-man-on-the-moon/

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Margaret-Hamilton-American-computer-scientist Abbreviated copy of Hamilton's Wiki. IP:155.52.187.23

References

• I notice the dubious tag had gone from the claim was gone from the line about she made up the term Software Engineering. (And some further edits on the section -- though sadly not adding anything substantial about the bulk of her career, error checking advances to technology and her business career.) I've made the mention about others explicit and put the dubious tag back. It is WP:EXCEPTIONAL when phrased as if she alone put the term in general use as a field and academic area. As stated above, it existed back in the 50s, and generally is known and well-documented became popularized via Ottinger and Boehm starting in 1964. While it is possible that the "When I first came up with the term, no one had heard of it before, at least in our world." is about her either bringing the term to NASA in 1966 or even her inventing it locally, there is no presented evidence of her actually popularizing the term, and it simply is not plausible that in 1966 a 30-year old woman caused the historical events and there were no remarks about it, plus it is simple fact that Boehm did much of the popularizing and she was working not writing the books and papers that did it. Occasional cites, especially self-made or echoing her, just are too weak a basis for that large a claim. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 03:45, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Apollo 8 P01 error

There is a funny anecdote in NOVA s45e17 "Apollo's daring mission" where she was talking about her fear of the astronauts making an input error. Her daughter had been playing with a navigation computer and caused it to freak out by putting in the code P01 which made the computer think it was back on the launch pad as opposed to flying through space. She reported her concerns to the managers and the consensus was that the rockstar test pilots would never make such a simple error. Sure enough during Appolo 8 while they were flying back to earth Lovell (?) was putting in readings of star positions and hit P01 when he meant to put in 01, and the computer went a little nuts.96.241.177.111 (talk) 03:10, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

Apollo 11 section - length?

The lengthy section on Apollo 11 is very interested; what it isn't, however, is encyclopedic. The Apollo 11 article has similar information, though not in as much detail. I think that the information on the computer incident should be greatly reduced in this article, maybe enhanced a bit in the Apollo 11 article, and that there should be a clear connection from this article to the relevant section in the Apollo 11 article, for readers interested in details. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:21, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

I agree that the Apollo 11 content is worth keeping, but not in this article. It should be merged into the Apollo 11 article, with a brief summary here and a Wikilink to more details. Reify-tech (talk) 19:23, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

What exactly in the section is irrelevant or undue in a biography of Hamilton. Can you be more specific so I can move or remove it pre-GA review? --- Coffeeandcrumbs 05:07, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

I put a lot of comments about this section in my review. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 11:39, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 30 May 2019

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: page moved (closed by non-admin page mover) Kostas20142 (talk) 17:12, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

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Margaret Hamilton (scientist) → Margaret Hamilton (software engineer) – Please place your rationale for the proposed move here. --- Coffeeandcrumbs 09:07, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

Margaret Hamilton's notable achievements really fall more into the category of engineering (specifically, "software engineering"), since she did much more building of new systems rather than discovering new fundamental scientific principles. Do not be misled by the term "computer scientist", which really describes researchers who focus on making fundamental advances in the mathematics of computation and algorithms, rather than on building practical computer systems, which is the domain of "computer engineers".

There is no shame in this (I speak as a lapsed Physics major who switched into getting a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science), but the article name should be changed to reflect the facts of her career. This is straightforward, and I am willing to do this, but want to get a consensus among interested editors before acting. Reify-tech (talk) 19:23, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

Using the term "engineer" in the US for persons who haven't gone through a traditional engineering curriculum is controversial. Hamilton's training was in mathematics, and in my day computing was taught in math departments. I would suggest "software engineer", a field she helped create. Computer science has come to be a research-oriented field, but initially it was the way to produce graduates who could program. StarryGrandma (talk) 21:05, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

• Engineer Andy Dingley (talk) 21:34, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

• "Software engineer" or "engineer". Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 22:50, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

• Move to Margaret Hamilton (software engineer) per above. --- Coffeeandcrumbs 00:36, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
• Support. "Scientist" is always a terrible disambiguator. We should be more specific if at all possible. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:26, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Why no disambiguation link for just this Margaret Hamilton?

There are 5 people with Wikipedia entries named Margaret Hamilton (and one Maggie Hamilton, also listed on that page), and I honestly don't see why this one and this one only shouldn't have a backlink, when WP:NAMB allows that when a number of pages have similar titles, saying "There are cases where some editors strongly believe that such hatnotes should be included, such as the various articles about treaties called Treaty of Paris.". She may be better known than others to software developers and spacefight enthusiasts, but that won't help someone who landed on her entry looking for the US Civil War nurse (as happened to me), or any of the others. Can you explain what you think sets her apart from the others? The Crab Who Played With The Sea (talk) 03:45, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

NAMB says "It is usually preferable not to have a hatnote when the name of the article is not ambiguous." What that means in practice is that if you want to add a hatnote when it's not needed, you should first achieve a consensus on the talk page to do so. Also, if you add the hatnote and get reverted, you should then discuss it on the talk page rather than just re-adding it with no discussion. Can you tell me how you landed here while looking for the nurse? GA-RT-22 (talk) 04:39, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

At least one of the people named Margaret (or Maggie) Hamilton with Wikipedia entries (all listed on the disambiguation page) already had a hatnote, so it's not at all clear to me that (or why) it's not needed for all of them including this one. That inconsistency is what moved me to add the same to all such entries. I still don't have an answer to the question that to me is crucial, so I'll ask again: what difference do you see between this Margaret Hamilton and the others I changed in the same way and none of which were reverted, that justifies the exception you seem to be insisting on? (Tangentially, I don't read "in case anyone insists on the hatnote" (in the change message on the first part of the revert) as requesting any kind of discussion.)

Oh, and how I landed on this page looking for another entry? I saw a reference to that nurse elsewhere, wanted to find out more, fed "Margaret Hamilton" to DDG, clicked on the link to this page thinking it would have a link to the list page, and finding none, had to edit the URL in my browser's address bar to get to a page useful to me, with a link to the entry I was looking for. Then I got curious and checked the other entries, noticed the inconsistent use of hatnotes, and decided make them consistent in the way I found most useful: adding the missing ones instead of removing it where present.

The Crab Who Played With The Sea (talk) 00:15, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

more (and final as far as I'm concerned) discussion of this. The Crab Who Played With The Sea (talk) 22:33, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Update: Wikipedia:Hatnote#Disambiguating_article_names_that_are_not_ambiguous now reads "It is usually preferable not to have a hatnote when the name of the article is not ambiguous, but hatnotes should be used when they benefit the reader, regardless of whether the title is technically ambiguous or not." (emphasis on the added language mine). I believe benefit to the reader has been clearly established for this entry. Please restore the disambiguation hatnote. The Crab Who Played With The Sea (talk) 14:16, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

I suggest we wait until a consensus has been reached at Wikipedia talk:Hatnote. GA-RT-22 (talk) 16:31, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

former son-in-law?

how is it possible both she and her daughter married guys names "james cox..."???? is "son-in-law" here a typo for "step-son" or something (who could logically be named after JC hamilton)?

even if it's referring a different ("step-") daughter brought into the marriage by him, how does the name get through her to HER husband then?!

i see no way of making this work, even with divorces and step-children. someone pls clarify!! 2601:19C:527F:A660:EC07:3A64:F214:1233 (talk) 02:21, 24 April 2023 (UTC)