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Modern computing emerged in the early 1940s when the US military hired hundreds of women in tech to solve complex calculations to improve the accuracy of weapons on the battlefield during the WW2.

The first person considered as a computer programmer was British Ada Lovelace, and the American naval officer Grace Hopper who developed a compiler that paved the way for modern programming languages. Women also played a big role in creating ENIAC – the world’s first general purpose computer, FORTRAN, the first high-level programming language, and lots of other cool stuff.

Throughout the 50s and 60s, women specialized in building software and men in hardware engineering. Men saw themselves as above typing on computer keyboards, and freely let women shape what has become the most in-demand profession of today.

Today on March 8th, on the International Women’s Day, we want to wish all women happy International Women’s Day and thank the women who have shaped the technology of their era and inspired a lot of other women to get excited about code. Thanks to these women, modern technology is what it is today.

The women in tech who shaped modern technology as we know it today

 

ADA LOVELACE

  • 1815–1852
  • British
  • Published research in 1843, which described an algorithm for the Babbage analytical engine to compute Bernoulli Numbers
  • Considered to be the first computer programmer

 

GRACE HOPPER

  • 1906–1992
  • American pioneer in computer programming and compiled programming languages
  • In a team that built the first commercial computer UNIVAC I (in the 1940s)
  • FLOW-MATIC, first compiled programming language, the predecessor of Cobol

 

DOROTHY VAUGHAN

  • 1910–2008
  • American mathematician and human computer
  • An expert in FORTRAN and a frontrunner of electronic computer programming
  • Made important contributions to the U.S. space program

 


FRANCES ELIZABETH ALLEN

  • 1932–2020
  • American
  • Developed two major analysis strategies for optimizations in modern compilers
  • First female to win Turing Award in 2006

 


JEAN BARTIK

  • 1924–2011
  • American
  • One of the original programmers of ENIAC computer (1945)
  • The all-female team developed subroutines, nesting and other fundamental programming techniques
  • Worked on BINAC and UNIVAC

 


LOIS HAIBT

  • 1934–
  • American
  • Worked in IBM in a team that developed FORTRAN, the first high-level programming language
  • The first syntactic analyser of arithmetic expression a.k.a. parser

 


MARGARET HAMILTON

  • 1936–
  • American
  • Coined the term “software engineering”
  • Lead-engineer of Apollo 11 onboard flight software, the software that landed successfully on the moon

 


BARBARA LISKOV

  • 1939–
  • American
  • Co-invented the Liskov substitution principle, the basic principle in modern Object Oriented Programming languages
  • SOLID – The “L” stands for Liskov substation principle

 


ADELE GOLDBERG

  • 1945–
  • American
  • Participated in developing Smalltalk (the 1970’s) with Alan Kay
  • Developed various concepts of object-oriented programming

 


LINDA LIUKAS

  • 1986–
  • Finnish
  • Award-winning children’s book author, her “Hello Ruby” book series teach computer programming to children
  • The highest funded children’s book on Kickstarter (2014)
  • Founder of Rails Girls, a global movement to teach young women programming

 

CORALINE ADA EHMKE

  • Notorious social justice warrior
  • American
  • Created the Contributor Covenant
  • A code of conduct used in over 40 000 open source projects
  • Got the Ruby Hero Award in 2016


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