Comment by WarOnPrivacy
19 hours ago
Dang. She was a remarkable stand-out, in fields full of remarkable people.
The pic here is often people's first intro to her https://news.mit.edu/2016/scene-at-mit-margaret-hamilton-apo...
19 hours ago
Dang. She was a remarkable stand-out, in fields full of remarkable people.
The pic here is often people's first intro to her https://news.mit.edu/2016/scene-at-mit-margaret-hamilton-apo...
“There was no choice but to be pioneers” is a great line.
At the dawning of the technological age that would change the word in some many ways. Like the quote infers, everything they did was something nobody had before.
You think of the immense advantages we have now whereas back then, they had none. Which makes her contributions as a scientist that much heavier and important.
Oh, at least since the industrial revolution, any given year has had the dawning of some technology or other. Most technological revolutions don't look like much when they're small. I don't think that most people at the time of the moon landing thought much of software. Maybe of computers the hardware, but not software.
They were standing on the shoulders of giants too.
First thing I thought of, too. "Who? ...Wait, not the cool book chick!"
Tangential: the software documented in the books next to her were likely developed with a level of rigor that consumer software can only dream of, per the seminal article on similar matters: https://www.eng.auburn.edu/~kchang/comp6710/readings/They%20...
The term she coined for it was "man-rated". Meaning that it had been tested rigorously enough to be trusted to keep humans alive.
During the Apollo 11 descent to the lunar surface, Buzz Aldarin pressed a button to display altitude and position during the landing sequence. As it turns out, this was the 8th task the Apollo 11 lander's guidance computer was asked to run, and it was only capable of running 7 tasks in real-time. Thanks to Hamilton and her team's priority scheduler, the guidance computer threw an alarm, killed the lowest priority task, and then resumed the execution of the other 7. If that hadn't been programmed to rescue itself like that, the computer would have crashed, and the Apollo 11 lander would not likely not have been the success that it was.
That story is easy to understand and thus catchy, but it is not true. The cause of those 1201 and 1202 alarms is a lot more complex, but well worth taking the time to understand if you are into the topic. Wikipedia offers a short description [1] to get you started.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer#1201_...
That does not seem like particularly notable example of foresight & robustness, given that it’s such a low number of maximum tasks, and such a fundamental & frequently used element of its operation.
Like it wouldn’t even be describable as a “rescue itself” if the response was simply “No. Too many jobs running. Please kill one to continue”
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That is an excellent article and I’d like to read more. Are there other resources about the shuttle software development or projects with a similar level of software engineering?
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It is possible to respect someone and also give them a silly nickname. At least I sincerely hope it is, considering some of the things my children call me.
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she was a straight up fox too, and I can't imagine she'd be offended by that, I mean call me a fox I promise I won't be offended.
also, she should not be confused with the other Margaret Hamilton you might recall
https://facts.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/35-facts-about-...
Yeah, no wonder she married her Apollo boss who promoted her into the famed software lead position.
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> The pic here is often people's first intro to her
Why link to an article instead of an actual picture?
The page you linked failed to show any image without JS enabled (although my ad blocker might share some of the blame, there are a handful of trackers on that site) and the article doesn't link directly to it either. I'm guessing you mean the pic here: https://www.thetechoutlook.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Ma...