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Talk:Margaret Hamilton (software engineer)

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by SDCHS (talk | contribs) at 05:53, 30 August 2015 (→About the picture of Hamilton next to a pile of books). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Untitled

I'll try to tackle this one, as my second Bio :) ~ Dr. Lords (talk) 18:16, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Done and ready for reviewing ~ Dr. Lords (talk) 00:14, 30 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Article comment

Hi, similarly to Praveen Chaudhari the article needs work, please compare what I did there. Please check WP:LINKS and WP:CATEGORY, and take a look at WP:LAYOUT. You can also compare other good or featured articles on scientists for ideas on layout and content structure. Hekerui (talk) 07:04, 30 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I will do so :) ~ Dr. Lords (talk) 18:27, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

References are incorrect

Hi, it appears that the references are just a copy+paste from somewhere else. There are many references to different Marget Hamilton's. e.g the X3D-UML publications are not the same Marget Hamilton (they refer to this Marget Hamilton http://goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au/~mh/). I suggest that this section be rewritten. A suggested approach is to use google scholar and find only 2 or 3 highly cited papers that are definitely written by the correct Marget Hamilton. These will be the papers she is widely known for and of interest in a wikipedia article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Internetscooter (talk • contribs) 23:58, 3 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I'll look into it and correct where needed :) (nice catch) ~ Dr. Lords (talk) 18:26, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It seems that the only correct reference was the Apollo one, so I just removed them all for now, and later when I have more time I will re-research the issue. Thanks again, ~ Dr. Lords (talk) 18:52, 4 August 2010 (UTC).[reply]

Coining the term Software Engineering

The article states "Margaret was also the individual who coined the term “software engineering”" and has a citation "By A.J.S. Rayl "NASA Engineers and Scientists-Transforming Dreams Into Reality"" at http://www.nasa.gov/50th/50th_magazine/scientists.html that says "With her colleagues, she developed the building blocks for modern “software engineering,” a term Hamilton coined." Is there other evidence of this? The Wiki page for Software Engineer states "The term software engineering first appeared in the 1968 NATO Software Engineering Conference". Searching the web shows that F. L. Bauer is credited with coining the term, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_L._Bauer#Definition_of_Software_Engineering. Which is correct? Cxbrx (talk) 16:08, 18 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

About the picture of Hamilton next to a pile of books

I undid the 16:47, 7 June 2015‎ revision that claim she is standing next to (AGC) source code. The source for that claim is a VOX article that list no references except a supposed quote with no source. Arguably the "Apollo 11 Owners' Workshop Manual" (Haynes) is a more credible source for now.

http://i.imgur.com/gjGw42K.jpg?1

More proof:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWcITjqZtpU#t=76 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.16.136.224 (talk) 18:32, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The VOX article references a direct quote from Margaret Hamilton, herself, provided to the author of the article, Dylan Matthews. The information provided in the caption under Margaret Hamilton's photo in the "Apollo 11 Owners' Workshop Manual" (Haynes) is not correct. The quote in the VOX article is as follows: "In this picture, I am standing next to listings of the actual Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) source code," Hamilton says in an email. "To clarify, there are no other kinds of printouts, like debugging printouts, or logs, or what have you, in the picture."
In "Moon Machines: Software for the Apollo Mission", Margaret Hamilton, in this same photo, is NOT identified as standing next to "printout results from simulations" The definitive proof is Ms. Hamilton's own statement to the fact that these are, indeed, listings of actual AGC code next to her in the photo. See above paragraph. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Annaamalia (talk • contribs) 20:17, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hamilton's statement is in no way definitive, considering the time interval. When reliable sources disagree, Wikipedia should present all the views. Rhoark (talk) 23:00, 8 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with user Rhoark's statement. I retired with over 40 years of experience in developing software, much of it systems software. I can't remember a time when anybody had a stack of listings of pure source code. More than likely those are compiler or assembler listings, which typically contain lots of information beyond the source code, such as cross reference information, the assembly language corresponding to the high level source statements, etc. Such things can easily double the amount of paper used over a simple listing of the source code.
This photograph has appeared on Facebook with the claim that the stack is "the code she wrote by hand". I doubt that she wrote this much code "by hand" (whatever that means) in her career. This woman is very impressive. She doesn't need the help of such puffery. SDCHS (talk) 05:52, 30 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Apollo 11 "checklist error?"

According to this article, the problem that nearly doomed the Apollo 11 moon landing wasn't a "checklist error" but rather a design documentation error. (Or more specifically, "it was an absurd confluence of events that started with a documentation error and ended up with a switch being flicked at precisely the right (or wrong) fraction of a second.") Kmote (talk) 19:55, 28 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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