A picture of Margaret Hamilton, programmer for the Apollo space program, standing next to not one single microsoft error message or bluetooth problem.
On a more serious note, I didn't realize that Hamilton coined the term "software engineer".

@mhoye didn't know that either.

Honestly man the more I learn about women in computing in history, the madder I am about the state of tech today.

@sarajw @mhoye I'm old enough to remember when I got into this field when there were more women in it. Back then, it was a way to make a decent living, but not a path to riches.

That changed with the internet boom and I ran into fewer women developers and sysadmins. Once it got out of its "clerical" status and into a path to riches, the demographics shifted. My first dev job iin 1990 was 40% women devs to 60%.

I've worked in places since then with NO women devs. Those all sucked, BTW.

@lerxst @mhoye mmhmmm. Amazing how the women got pushed out, I guess because it was seen as something that the clever men should do and be well paid for...

@lerxst @mhoye the way I see it, it *should* be an ideal job for a parent (whether male, female, NB), with good opportunities to work async, part time, from home.

Sadly structural stuff, mandatory meetings, the so many "ritual" meetings make the async part-timeness more difficult.

@sarajw @mhoye So many meetings could be literally two Slack or even IRC messages per person.
@sarajw
I highly recommend Mar Hicks's 2017 book Programmed Inequality on this very phenomenon.
@lerxst @mhoye

@spacehobo is it just going to make me more mad or give me something constructive to do about it?

Otherwise nowadays I can only cope with fiction, novels, I need the escapism...

@lerxst @mhoye

@sarajw @lerxst @mhoye I mean it's a history of the transition of gender roles in computing in the 60s and 70s, with a particular focus on the UK.
@spacehobo @lerxst @mhoye thank you either way, I'd like to know but it might make me feel very frustrated about what could have been..
How the tech industry wrote women out of history

From the second world war to the 1960s, women were a critical part of the computing sector. Would tech culture today be less sexist if they hadn’t been sidelined?

The Guardian

@eons @lerxst @mhoye thank you.

I'm well aware how a lot of it happened - every time I learn a new detail it's more maddening

@eons yeeep:

"But by the 1970s, there was a change in mindset and women were no longer welcome in the workplace: the government and industry had grown wise to just how powerful computers were and wanted to integrate their use at a management level. “But they weren’t going to put women workers – seen as low level drones – in charge of computers,” explains Hicks. Women were systematically phased out and replaced by men who were paid more and had better job titles."

@lerxst @mhoye

Also:

If women had continued to be a major force in computing, instead of being sidelined, the way the tech industry looks today would have been very different, she argues. “If women had been a more important part of the high tech industry all along, would so many platforms and apps have the same problems with rampant sexism and misogyny both in their workplaces and their products? Most likely not.”

@eons @lerxst @mhoye