Margaret Hamilton, NASA’s lead developer for Apollo program, stands next to all the code she wrote by hand that took humanity to the moon in 1969

  • @Marduk73
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    2 years ago

    Amazing. Punch cards are before my time but did she have to plot out the code before creating punch cards? I’m wondering about the " by hand " part of it.

    • @mick
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      92 years ago

      I was a CS major in late 70s and used punch cards for Fortran programs. I’m guessing “by hand” meant writing the code with pencil/pen on paper and then typing up the punch cards for each line of code.

      • @Marduk73
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        52 years ago

        Oh that sounds neat. I’ll go look that up as i haven’t heard of core rope.

        • @Marduk73
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          42 years ago

          Alright that was cool. Thanks for the link. I barely understood how it works but sort of got the concept. How far we have come. Wow.

    • JackbyDev
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      02 years ago

      There was a keyboard involved. They don’t use a hole puncher lol.

      • @Marduk73
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        52 years ago

        I was just grasping at straws. Kinda wanted to know more as it sounds like a good story.