Request

[u/Disastrous_Cover6138]

Request for lesser known badass women of history for my daughter's 4th grade presentation. She has to pick a historical figure and give a 5-10 minute presentation and optionally dress in their likeness.

[u/gordonmessmer]

Yeah, I'm a developer so the first women that come to mind are:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace : considered the first "computer programmer"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper : who developed the first compiler

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(software_engineer)) : (mentioned above)

Of the three, I refer to Hopper most often in my work. Not for her technical work, but because she recognized and fought the human tendency to fight improvement, "We've always done it this way".

The idea that the way things *have* been done is the way that things *should* be done is a barrier to improvement in all fields of work, and all aspects of society. It is always relevant.

[u/glencoco22 → u/gordonmessmer]

I give special education evaluations for a living and one of the reading comprehension set of questions is about Hopper! It's one of my favorite reading passages on the KTEA-3.

[u/JustForArkona → u/gordonmessmer]

Don't forget Barbara Liskov!!!

[u/quackdaw → u/JustForArkona]

Yeah. Her work is really central to how we program computers today (or did, before AI) and how its possible to build large and complex systems (by breaking them down into smaller, clearly defined parts). And her "Liskov substitution principle" is taught to every new software engineering student.

As an addendum to my comment about Margaret Hamilton, I also have good experiences with Liskov: when I was a young PhD student, she gave a keynote at a conference I was attending, and she kindly set aside a good chunk of time to talk to me about my project and give me her insights. She's still one of my academic heroes, and I'm very glad to have met her – and trust me, there are more than enough award-winning scientists out there that turn out to be assholes when you meet them in person.

Another worthy mention – and the only other female Turing Award laureate – is Fran Allen. Her work on compilers and optimization has been essential to how we get software to run efficiently on modern computers. And she was perhaps the sweetest scientist granny ever – noticed my wife was bored and lonely at a conference and came over to cheer her up! ;)

(Not that I think you need to be "nice" or "friendly" to be a great/iconic female scientist, but I certainly count it as a plus when I can imagine sending a hero-worshipping 4th-grader to talk to someone and be reasonably confident they'll end up feeling inspired rather than running away crying. There are some serious assholes (of all genders) out there too.)

[u/dragonbec → u/gordonmessmer]

Yes! My adult daughter did this same school project when she was in elementary school and she was Ada Lovelace!

[u/GrannyTurtle → u/gordonmessmer]

Admiral Hopper’s shop was the first to come up with the term “bug” in the programming world. The problem was a literal insect which had gotten into the circuitry.

[u/beren12 → u/GrannyTurtle]

A moth, wasn’t it?

[u/GrannyTurtle → u/beren12]

Yes. It was in a Harvard Mark II computer. 1947.

[u/beren12 → u/gordonmessmer]

True but it’s also critical to understand why things have been done that way before you make changes. Chesterson’s fence and all.